Do you ever emotionally beat yourself up for feeling down and discouraged?  Sometimes it feels like everything is going wrong.  Appliances break, a family member is ill, your hours are cut at work.  You start to get really discouraged and just want to run away from it all.  Then you may even have a party – a pity party, that is.  Gloom, despair and agony on me.  So many problems and no way out.  What can I do now?  It just isn’t worth the effort anymore.  On and on and on you go.

Then, you catch yourself.  Thoughts of others who have much more serious concerns than yours make you aware that life isn’t so bad after all.  In fact, there are many good things that you enjoy very much.  As you dwell on the good and mentally make a list that continues to grow longer and longer, you begin to feel guilty about complaining and making such a fuss.  You start feeling bad about feeling bad!

Be aware that everyone gets discouraged at times.  It isn’t just you.  In fact, normalcy is not always being happy.  If we never had the bad times, we wouldn’t know how to appreciate the good.  Accept that there will be struggles and difficulties in life and just face them when they come.

Work through the issues and your feelings about them and then just keep going.  That is when you can live . . . your life to the fullest.