What To Do When You Feel Like Giving Up

Life has its ups and downs. We all know that.

Sometimes, we start with a task or change we want to do for ourselves, but after a while we begin to feel discouraged. We feel like giving up.

So how do we deal with that situation? How should we react when we feel like giving up?

Let's say your goal is to learn spanish. You have already tried for several weeks, but now you feel discouraged because you don't see much progress.

Let me share some of my tips with you on how to keep going:

1 - The 5 Minute Hack

Even if you don't feel like it at all - tell yourself to start practicing spanish for 5 minutes. Only 5 minutes! After that you allow yourself to take a break.
The psychology behind this is that we humans often make a much bigger deal out of something that actually isn't that hard. The key is just to get started! Once you have started your practice, you will realize that it's not as bad as you actually imagined, and you will probably keep studying for longer than 5 minutes.

2 - Make a commitment 

You want to learn spanish? Great. tell everyone about it!

Tell your friends/family: "I will learn to speak basic spanish within 4 months. " or "if I don't learn spanish grammar structure within 2 weeks, I will treat you to a coffee!"

By announcing your goal publically, you feel like you entered a commitment and you don't want to quit or lose your bet.
Of course, you can also do it less drastically and make a written contract with yourself, as long as you keep your promise and don't fool yourself!

...Or maybe write a steemit article about the goal you want to pursue? ;)

3 - Focus on your goals 

"When you feel like quitting, think about why you started". I love this quote, because it's so true. 

I have already talked about the power of visualization in several posts, and I can only repeat that it's so important and helpful!
We always have a good reason why we start a new task or project.

In our example, we probably wanted to learn spanish because it's a helpful skill in life, or maybe because your job requires another language, or because you are going on holiday to a spanish-speaking country.

Whatever the case may be - remember why you started. That alone is a good enough reason to keep you going!

4 - Allow yourself a break

If you've been practicing spanish everyday for 3 weeks straight, maybe you just need to step back and regain your focus. Treat yourself to one day off. Get out of the house, meet up with some friends, have a good time. Just take some time to re-fuel and re-energize!

When you get back to work the next day, your head will be much clearer, and you will feel refreshed and maybe even more motivated than before. 

Sometimes a break can have a positive impact on us - of course that's only the case if you limit your "down time" to a certain time frame, and continue working afterwards!

5 - Look how far you've come

If you give up now, everything you've done to work towards your goal so far would go to waste. You may feel like you haven't made much progress in learning spanish, but think about what you HAVE learned - wouldn't it be a pity to just forget about all of that? All the hours that you put into this already? Than you might have just watched TV instead of practicing spanish.

Look at your accomplishments, and you will realize that it wouldn't be a smart decision to give it all up now. 

And if you need help realizing how far you've come, visualize it, write it down, or let someone else tell you it. You are not giving yourself enough credit!

Whatever your goal is - losing weight, learning a new skill, working on a project or even writing a Steemit post -  keep going. Even if you feel like taking a nap, like forgetting about everything - DON'T. Keep moving. 

There's a reason why you started, so you have a reason to finish it!

You can do it!

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