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	Discouragement, A Disease — How To Cure It <  Previous Contents Next  >

Discouragement flies before the thought of God, when we become conscious of our partnership with Him.

Eight hundred and sixty men, women and children on the average in New York City commit suicide every year—much more than two a day. In one year Bellevue Hospital treated two hundred and thirty-five people who had tried to kill themselves. In other large cities of the world the suicide toll is even larger than in New York.

It is estimated that more than fifteen thousand people commit suicide each year in the United States. In the entire civilized world, a million people each year—more than five hundred a day—are guilty of self-destruction!

Just think of the tragedy of it,—one suicide every three minutes somewhere on the earth!

Since life is so precious to the normal man that even the basest criminals count the days and the hours before their execution, dreading the cutting off of life even in a prison cell, why do so many people take their own lives? Because they are discouraged.

The psychological aspect of the suicide has never been properly studied, but in nine cases out of ten, if not in every case, discouragement is the cause of self-destruction.

Not long ago a young musician in New York, in a fit of despondency, committed suicide. He was so poor that he had been obliged to pawn his violin. Discouraged at his lack of success and filled with fear at the possibility of not being able to redeem his beloved violin, which was a very rare one, he decided that life under such conditions was not worth living, and then and there ended it.

These crises on the mental or physical plane are a part of every life. How we meet them is the test of our courage, the measure of our faith in God and our conscious oneness with Him.

In a description of his sensations under fire a British officer fighting in northern France in the great war said, “There’s a good deal of rot talked of heroism at present. If it is all true, there are many millions of heroes in Europe just now, and I leave that to you. I’ve found it harder to go straight in life than to go under fire.”

We are “under fire” all our lives, and the real hero is the one who keeps straight on in spite of discouragements and disappointments, never losing one jot of heart or courage, never giving way to despair, trusting always in the Divine Power that will lead him to his goal.

Many a talented young artist has given up in despair because critics discouraged him, told him, perhaps, that he did not belong to any established school, and that if he did not follow the conventional rules of art he would not be recognized. These discouraged souls did not realize that the one who listens to the voice in his own soul, and who, trusting to the power within, blazes a new path, is the one who most certainly attains distinction.

When Ole Bull first came to this country, musical critics said he would make no great impression here. They predicted that his American debut would be a failure because he violated so many of the laws of musical composition, that a certain violinist, popular at the time, was head and shoulders above him and that he would stand no chance in competition with him. The name of that man who was so technically perfect, but who lacked Ole Bull’s soul, is not known to the public today, while the name of Ole Bull is enshrined immortally in the minds of American people— in the minds of all peoples.

Discouragement is one of the greatest of human enemies. It is an unmitigated curse. It has done more to dwarf the efforts of the race, has thwarted more careers, stunted and starved more lives, ruined more creative power than any other one agent. It is a disease that is well-nigh universal in some form. Everybody suffers more or less from it, is the victim of its poison. It bombards us from within and without.

There are always plenty of people who will attack you from without, who will see reasons why you will not succeed in your undertaking, who will tell you that it is impossible to overcome the obstacles in your way, and unless you have a sublime faith in yourself and a resolution which knows no retreat, which takes no backward steps, you are likely to become discouraged and then sidetracked.

Discouragement, however, comes most frequently from within, and causes more poverty and crime than almost any other one thing. It is an indirect producer of poverty, because it paralyzes ability and blights efficiency. A person is in no position to produce anything when his mind is full of doubt and fear. When suffering from discouragement one’s whole being is negative, demoralized. Courage, the leader of the mental faculties, is paralyzed, and the judgment is not sound. No man is level headed when he is discouraged or blue. He is in no condition to look squarely at an issue, because his reasoning powers are dulled and his enthusiasm is dampened. In other words, there is anarchy in the whole mental kingdom and, until the order is restored and courage again leads the way, the faculties will not respond with their best.

This was recently illustrated by the suicide of a man who feared he could not raise the thirteen thousand dollars he believed he needed to save himself from ruin. In settling up his estate, however, it was found that the man was not in straitened circumstances and did not really need any such amount to keep his business going.

Time and again it has been found that people who lost heart under fire were just this side of victory over their difficulties when they threw down their weapons and gave up the battle in despair. How often has a letter or a telegram with good news that would have heartened and encouraged a discouraged one to fight on, come just after the sufferer had ended it all! How often has a friend bearing relief come just after the irrevocable deed had been done!

Yet we continue to read daily in the newspapers of people, young and old, who lose faith and commit suicide because of failure in business, loss of property, loss of friends, trouble in the home, disappointment in love—for a thousand and one reasons. But they may nearly all be summed up under the one head— discouragement.

And what is this Moloch to which so many lives are sacrificed? It is simply a diseased mind. Discouragement is a mental disease. It is just as truly a disease as smallpox, typhoid, scarlet fever, or any other ailment which physicians diagnose as physical disease. Discouragement is much worse than any of these because it so often unbalances the sufferer and drives him to crime, or to drink and consequent failure and misery.

A letter just received from a young man who is undergoing a term of imprisonment for robbery shows how easily discouragement drives some minds off the right path.

“When we make our slips, our bad breaks and unfortunate ventures, our bad decisions,” he writes, “we are in a more or less discouraged, despondent and unbalanced state, and are willing to do almost anything to get rid of our fears and anxieties for the moment. When our minds are negative we are always cowards.”

This young man had been out of work for a long time, and when a shiftless station agent with whom he was acquainted loaned him his keys, he stole a book of Wells Fargo Express money orders from the station and succeeded in passing some of them before he was arrested. He says that the awful price he has had to pay for his slip has taught him that it is infinitely easier to do right than wrong, and that when he leaves prison he is determined to do his best to redeem his past.

Another young man who was on the verge of discouragement tells how he was turned right about face by the appearance and the story of one who had fallen a victim to the discouragement disease.

This young man who was in business in New York had had such a severe setback when the Great War broke out that he was just ready to give up the struggle. Quite disheartened he sat down one day on a bench in Madison Square to decide just how he would wind up the business in which he had practically failed and also to decide what he would do next.

While sitting there thinking the matter over a ragged, dejected tramp came along and sat down beside him. The man was evidently a victim of drink and all sorts of dissipation, and looked as though he was near a complete collapse.

The young man, noticing his companion’s wretched appearance, asked him how he happened to be in such a predicament. The tramp, whose quick intelligence saw at once that there was something very serious on his questioner’s mind, instead of replying to his question asked him in turn what his trouble was.

The young man frankly confessed that his business was ruined, and that he didn’t know what he was going to do. Then the tramp looking him straight in the eye said: “My friend, do you realize how rich you are compared with me?

“You have youth, health, and strength. Your vitality has not been sapped by dissipation. You have everything to live for, and as you value your life, don’t give way to discouragement. That was what ruined me. I am a well-educated man, and was once a prosperous one. But years ago, after a business failure, in such a crisis as you are now facing, I lost my pluck and thought whiskey would brace me up, temporarily, until I could get on my feet again. It did. I had never drank before, and at first it seemed to me that I had found a very valuable aid, something which would give me courage, strength, initiative, something which would help me to dare to take chances, which I had previously shrunk from. For a time whiskey seemed to me to be the elixir of life.

“It braced up all my faculties and, apparently, doubled my brain power. But I had to keep increasing the quantity I took to get the desired effects, and then all at once I found my will power was weakening, and the courage which whiskey had temporarily stimulated gradually lessened until I had less than before. Then I began to see what whiskey was really doing and resolved many times to quit it. But the awful craving, the cruel thirst for drink, together with my increasing despondency and weakened will power, got the better of me and I drank again and again until I could not quit. And now, look at me! I am a wreck, without hope, without a future!

“But you have most of your life before you and really have nothing to be discouraged about. You have done nothing dishonest or disgraceful. The only disgrace is in quitting after failure. And there is no failure that can not be retrieved. Men who have done great things, made stepping stones of their failures. The disgrace is not in falling, but in not rising every time you fall.

Brace up, and remember that, ‘Not failure, but low aim is crime.’”

The young man was deeply impressed by the story of his unfortunate companion. The evidences of superior intelligence and education still manifest in the poor human wreck appalled him, and he said to himself, “If this unhappy wretch can still look at life in that way, can see its great possibilities, there is certainly something left for me.” And after doing what he could to help the man who had tried to help him, he went out of Madison Square a new man, with new resolution in his face, a new courage and determination in his heart.

He is now a prosperous man, and he says, “I attribute a large part of my success to the stimulus imparted at a critical moment by that unfortunate fellow who had given way to discouragement and sacrificed everything that life held dear to the thing which had enslaved him.”

Victims of discouragement little realize the tremendous damage they are doing to themselves when they allow this fatal enemy of their happiness, and their efficiency, to get lodgment in their mind. Nobody does good work when discouraged. There is no spontaneity in it, no resourcefulness, no inventiveness, no originality, and no enthusiasm. It is mechanical, life-less.

The moment you yield to discouragement all your mental faculties become depressed. You lose power. Your initiative is paralyzed, your executive ability strangled. You are in no condition to do anything effectively. Your whole mentality is placed at a tremendous disadvantage, and until this enemy is driven out of your mind, neutralized by the affirmation and the contemplation of its opposites—of courage, cheer, hope, and a vigorous expectation of splendid things to come—you are in no condition to do good work.

Every suggestion of discouragement, of fear of failure, is a destructive force, and in the degree that we allow ourselves to be influenced by it will it tear down and retard our life processes, our life work. It will darken the mind and cause one to make fatally wrong decisions, to take steps which may ruin one’s happiness, one’s whole life.

Many divorces are the result of unfortunate decisions to marry when girls were discouraged, when they could not see any other way out of their difficulties. I have known of many girls, after some great sorrow had come to them, marrying men whom they could never have been induced to marry in happier days. They had lost a mother, or a father, or some calamity had overtaken the family, and the girls consented to marry men they did not love in order to relieve the suffering of those dear to them, or because there seemed to be no other resource for themselves in a difficult situation. They were willing to do anything to get rid of the thing that was perplexing and troubling them at the time. Like sufferers from sea sickness they felt their troubles never would pass away.

It is characteristic of seasickness that the victim cannot see any end to his misery. Try as he will to imagine himself well in so many days or hours, he cannot do it. This hopelessness is in some degree characteristic of sick people generally. They cannot seem to picture themselves as strong and well again. When suffering extreme pain of any sort, such as a severe toothache, for instance, it is difficult to believe that it will ever cease.

Still more difficult is it to try to picture an end to mental suffering. When trials and troubles come to us, when overwhelmed with sorrow, when death comes into our home and snatches away some dear one, it is very difficult to see through the storm, to pierce the black clouds and see the healing sun behind them. Struggling with the sorrow of that great loss in our life, it doesn’t seem as though we could ever be happy again. When so suffering we wonder in a sort of dumb resentment how other people can possibly be laughing, having a good time, going to theaters, dances, enjoying life as usual. It seems cruel, almost, for others to enjoy when we feel as though we could never even smile again.

But we know that time heals the deepest sorrows, that physical and mental ills pass away, and that the brave soul is the one that adapts itself to the storms and sunshine of life.

Just as on a tropical summer day when the sun is suddenly blotted out of the heavens and the whole sky is so blackened by a sudden storm that we are obliged to light our homes and offices, and presently the clouds pass as quickly as they came and the sun blazes forth in all its glory just as though nothing had happened, so there come times in our lives when everything appears black and threatening, and then, suddenly, just as in nature, all becomes serene again.

The great thing for us to keep in mind when a life storm breaks is that, no matter how violent, it is only temporary and that behind the clouds the sun is always shining.

The new philosophy helps us to conquer discouragement by putting the emphasis on the right things, the things that are worthwhile. This is why we generally do not go to pieces when we happen to fail in our vocation. We have learned that material things are not the first essentials. We know that the great emphasis should be placed upon the life, the reality of man, which is divine. We know that a person can be a tremendous success although he has not a dollar in the world, though he has no home, no abiding place, no money, and dies in the poorhouse. In other words, the new philosophy teaches that real success does not consist in accumulating mere things.

It is a matter of personality and character. The accumulation of money is a side issue; the making of a living is a mere incidental to making a life. Time and again I have known people to go through what in the old thought would have been the most humiliating failures, failures which would probably have wrecked their lives and entirely destroyed their confidence in themselves. But in the new philosophy these things do not touch the soul. They are not realities in the highest sense.

None of Mr. Rockefeller’s money touches the real Rockefeller. The reality of him is spiritual, is mental. It is mind, it is soul, it is God, and it is this reality of us that the new philosophy emphasizes.

God never intended that his children should go to pieces mentally and physically, be miserable and unhappy, that they should suffer mortification and chagrin when they have been honest and have done the best they could do, just because they have failed in their particular undertakings.

We were made to hold up our heads, to look the world in the face without flinching, as princes of the Most High. No matter what happens to our material possessions, if we have made good as men, as women, if we have been dead-in-earnest in delivering to the world the message we were sent here to deliver, there is no reason why we should feel humiliated or discouraged about anything.

There is only one thing that should make a man hang his head and feel humiliated, discouraged, only one thing that should make him wince when the world looks him in the face and that is his own wrong doing, his own sin.

There is a vast amount of splendid unused success material in the “down and outs,” in the people who have lost their grip upon themselves because they have lost their courage. Some of them while out of work, suffering from discouragement, did something which caused them to lose their self-respect and now discouragement has become a disease with them. It has become chronic and no one can succeed with a discouraged mental attitude.

Courage is the leader in the mental realm, and when that is down all the other faculties drop in sympathy. Until courage says the word, neither initiative nor any of the other faculties will take a step forward. They refuse to work under discouragement. But when courage leads the way, all the others brace up and come to the rescue in team work.

What most people in the great failure army need is to have their courage restored, renewed. The discouraged have their backs turned toward the light, so that all the black shadows fall across their path. They are walking in their own shadows instead of in the glorious sun of God’s light and love. Their disease has made them morbid. They need mental treatment, treatment that will let the light into their souls and show them what they still can do.

Emerson says, “What I need is somebody who will make me do what I can.” What these discouraged ones need is somebody who can make them do what they can. They need to be turned around mentally. They need to be shown that they are not failures, but that they are mentally ill, sufferers from chronic discouragement.

There is one who can do this for you who are discouraged better than anyone else—your own higher self.

No matter how old you may be, or how depressing your present condition, if you take this other, higher self for your guide, you can recover your footing. And when you once get a glimpse of your real self, your real possibilities and assets, when you once get a glimpse of your divinity, and realize that you are a god in the making, that you are intended to be a glorious success instead of a miserable failure, you will jump back a quarter of a century or more and start life anew. Your courage will be restored and you will see life in a new light. You will see yourself as you never saw yourself before, you will get hold of yourself and your mental and physical resources as you never did before, you will make tremendous leaps forward. You will have a new motive for redeeming your past, you will have a new outlook on life, new hope; in other words, you will be a new creature. You will put off the old man, and never again will be content to grovel, never again be content with your second best. Then only your highest and best will satisfy you, and you will strive to make your highest moments permanent. The very consciousness of having lost so many years will be an additional prod to your endeavor.

You can begin now to make good. Lift up your head and face toward the light. Quit fretting and complaining of your ill luck and be the poised, harmonious soul, the brave, successful, happy being the Creator planned. Cure yourself of your disease by conquering your mental enemies. You can drive out fear, worry, the “blues” and all discouragement, all the enemies of your success and happiness, by claiming your inheritance and asserting your kinship with God. Say to yourself:

“The truth of my being, the reality of me, is God. Why then should I be discouraged about anything? The Creator never intended me to express pessimism, doubt, discouragement or despondency, and I will have nothing more to do with them. I was intended to express joy and success, not gloom and failure. I am victory organized. I was planned to win out in life, not to be defeated. I was born for happiness, not for misery, for peace and serenity, not for perpetual anxiety and discouragement. There is something inside of me which tells me that I am bigger than circumstances, that nothing but my own consent can keep me in poverty and wretchedness, that there is no destiny which can keep me down, for I am my own destiny.

“I am a son of God, and I was never made to cower, to slink, to be discouraged, afraid of anything. I am one with my Father, and co-heir with Christ of all that He has. I do not fear want or failure. Fear is not an attribute of divinity, and has no place in my life. I am brave, courageous, a conqueror, and not a slave of circumstances. I am free and not bond. I will not allow my efficiency to be strangled, my hopes for the future blighted, my life to be spoiled by any form of discouragement or cowardice. I am courage, strength, confidence, masterfulness. Discouragement has no power over me, because it is not a reality. It is a mere bogey of the mind, a ghost of the imagination. This discouraged, yellow streak in my nature is really a reflection upon my Creator, an indication that I lack confidence in Him, that I am not sure that He can protect me. It is an intimation that I believe there is a greater power than His and that an evil one.

“No matter how many troubles or difficulties threaten, it is my business to trust, and not to fear, and from now on I shall do so. I shall hold a poised, serene mind, and shall lie down at night with confidence and assurance that my life, my welfare and my destiny are all in the hands of Him who controls everything and who doeth all things well.”

Remember that whatever you dread, fear, you are attracting, because the mind always relates with whatever dominates the thought. That which we think most about we tend to get, and it is the easiest thing in the world to kill the possibility of realizing our ambitions and drawing to us the thing we fear by holding it in mind, by allowing doubt thoughts, anxious, discouraged thoughts to get possession of us and strangle our efficiency.

When in danger of giving way to discouragement, you will find a wonderful help in eliminating everything which stands between you and your Maker, and to allow free access to the flow of divine power. When one is thoroughly alive to the consciousness that he is supported by this divine power, in so far as he trusts it, and that it will rush to his assistance in any emergency or trouble, he is neither afraid nor discouraged.

All our discouragement and anxieties come from a feeling of separateness from our Creator and the consequent consciousness of weakness, of not being sufficiently protected, the feeling that we are standing alone. One who lives in conscious union with his Maker rises above disappointments and discouragements, and develops a hopeful, optimistic philosophy. Such a one sees in all his experiences, no matter how trying, growth and enlargement. He sees in the overcoming of life’s problems an opportunity to become a full, complete man. He rises above circumstances, while those who do not see any saving, stimulating influences in their trials and disappointments are simply crushed by them.

What a superb sight is a soul who has ridden triumphantly through the storms of life, who has developed a beautiful, cheerful philosophy, who instead of being crushed by his trials and hardships has built them into a tower of hope and strength!

Compare such a man, who bears his burdens uncomplainingly, who laughs at difficulties and keeps pushing ahead as best he can, trying to make each day a real victory in his life, performing as nearly as possible a human being’s ideal duty, to the one who curses his fate, rails at his ill luck, and grumbles at the burdens which are crushing him!

When things have gone wrong with you; when you are ready to give way to discouragement, think of these two pictures, and turn about face and vigorously assert your manhood or your womanhood. Declare your power to conquer your difficulty, whatever it may be. Say to yourself:

“Now it is right up to me to make good. I can’t give way to discouragement, show the white feather, and yet keep my self-respect. I am able to overcome this thing; it has no power to keep me down. No matter whether I can see the way out or not I shall trust in God, keep going, and forge ahead. No matter what opposes, I shall keep the rudder of my ship headed toward the port.

“I will quit this everlasting self-depreciation, for it is a crime against my Maker as well as myself, and I will believe that what the Creator has made and pronounced good is so. I am done with this putting myself on a bargain counter. I am no longer going about the earth making the impression that I have a skim-milk opinion of myself. No more of the poorhouse attitude for me. There are better things waiting for me than that. I am a prince, and I have inherited princely things. I have a princely inheritance.

“I know that every time I say ‘I can’t do this,’ or ‘I can’t do that,’ ‘I can’t afford this,’ or ‘I can’t afford that,’ I undermine my power. Hereafter I am going to deal in positives, in affirmations of power—’I can,’ ‘I will,’ ‘I am able.’ Henceforth I will have nothing to do with negatives that tear down, destroy.

“If I am part of Reality; if I have existed millions of years, and will continue to exist for untold ages to come; if my existence is from everlasting to everlasting, why should I be anxious, alarmed? Why should I be perturbed about temporary happenings, the mere accidents of everyday life? They have no power over me. I am a part of the divine Entity. My being is beyond the possibility of destruction or change. There is something in me that is absolutely indestructible, and I shall not get into a flurry of uneasiness. become discouraged by what I can really control. I know I am anchored eternally. Therefore, I will allow nothing to trouble or disturb me. Henceforth nothing will. I stand firm in this resolve.”

Multitudes of people find great help and comfort in repeating such Bible promises as these: “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” “He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust; his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.” “There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.”

What a solvent for discouragement and the “blues,” what a healing for all heart hurts are found in these wonderful promises!

The habit of driving out of our consciousness every suggestion of failure, of disappointment, of discouragement or evil by substituting its opposite is of inestimable value. The ability to do this, to clarify the mind of everything which can possibly injure it, is the secret of all success and happiness.

The scientific fact that the mind can not contain at the same moment opposite thoughts or emotions makes us absolute masters of our fate. To live upward or downward, to be a success or a failure is simply a matter of choice. It all depends on the suggestions we assimilate, the kind of thought we prefer.

We can allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by discouragement, or we can rise above it, just as we decide. It is natural for all of us to think of the wonderful things we would do if we could only get rid of the things that block our way and defeat our possible successes. If we did not have to struggle with disappointments, with heartaches, with trials and troubles of all sorts, what a triumphant journey life would be! Yet the real test of your bigness is whether or not you will fulfill your ambition to the letter, whether you will carry out your great life plan grandly and superbly regardless of things that are apparently trying to down you.

Nothing will help more to overcome discouragement than the suggestion of courage or success. The constructive force of the positive thought will not only drive out the negative thought, but it will up build and strengthen all the faculties.

Every human being can increase his courage and multiply his strength by frequently saying to himself: “I am a child of the King of Kings, and have nothing to fear. If I always do the best I can in all circumstances, there is no reason why I should ever be anxious about the results. I shall not. I am courage, I am success. Nothing can harm me because I am one with the One, I cannot want, I cannot fail, because I am in touch with the Infinite Source of all life.”