If you're facing an obstacle, or a deep discouragment, or failure, know that we've all been there. Here are some words that have helped me when I've needed some encouragment:
Encouragement for daily practice & grit
"Figure out when and where you’re most comfortable doing deliberate practice. Once you’ve made your selection, do deliberate practice then and there every day. Why? Because routines are a godsend when it comes to doing something hard."
Angela Duckworth
"Seek the small improvement, one day at a time. It's the only way it lasts."
John Wooden
"Grit depends on a different kind of hope. It rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future. ‘I have a feeling tomorrow will be better’ is different from ‘I resolve to make tomorrow better.’ The hope that gritty people have has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting up again."
Angela Duckworth
"Trying to run away is never the answer to being fully human. Running away from the immediacy of our experience is like preferring death to life.
Pema Chodron
"If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning."
Mahatma Gandhi
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.
Anne Lamott
For when you’re facing failure:
"When you have setbacks and failures, you can’t overreact to them. You need to step back, analyze them, and learn from them. But you also need to stay optimistic… Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts."
Angela Duckworth
"Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
Samuel Beckett
When you’re facing harsh criticism:
"There is only one way to avoid criticism: Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing."
Aristotle
"If you are not in the arena, getting your ass kicked on occasion because you are being brave, I am not interested in or open to your feedback about my work. Period. There are millions of cheap seats in the world today, filled with people who will never once step foot in that arena and who will never once put themselves out there. But they will make it a full-time job to hurl criticism and judgment and really hateful things toward us.
And we’ve got to get out of the habit of catching them, and dissecting them, and holding them close to our hearts. We have to let them drop on the floor. Don’t grab that hurtful stuff from the cheap seats and pull it close. Don’t pull it anywhere near your heart. Just let it fall to the ground. You don’t have to stomp it or kick it. You just have to step over it and keep going. You can’t take criticism and feedback from people who are not being brave with their lives. It just will crush you."
Brene Brown
"Do not think you can be brave with your life and your work and never disappoint anyone. It doesn’t work that way."
Oprah Winfrey
"Don’t try to win over the haters; you’re not the jackass whisperer."
Brene Brown
"Praise and criticism are two sides of the same coin. If we believe in one, then we must also believe in the other. Better not to get too attached to either of them.
It’s very tempting to become very attached to the ideas or the people who praise us, and to have a lot of aversion or resistance to the ideas or people who criticize us in some way. Naturally, we tend to lean more towards a sense of praise.
But as long as we’re caught up in this cycle where we are reliant on praise to feel good, and we are susceptible to feeling bad when someone criticizes us, then we’re in a very delicate, very fragile position in life. If we’re able to go beyond those things, to understand that sometimes people are going to say nice things, and sometimes people aren’t going to say nice things and to be able to respond and engage with that, but at the same time not to let it shake our sense of contentment or sense of ease, then that’s a real place of stability and groundedness that we can come back to, no matter what is going on in our life."
Andy Puddicombe, via the Headspace meditation app
Encouragement for studying:
Your days are mentally exhausting. The pressure to perform feels all-encompassing. It seems as if everything hinges on your performance on a test. But you are more than a score. You are more than a test. You are more than a percentile. Remember this.
You’re a human too. You deserve the health you strive so hard to give to patients. Get enough sleep, exercise, find healthy ways to reduce stress, connect with your people, and nourish your body with good food. Time spent caring for your mental and physical health is not wasted. It will make you a better learner and protect your health for decades to come.
Encouragement for writing & creative pursuits:
"I knew what kind of writer I wanted to be... I was banging my head against the wall and nothing was coming out. Failure is probably the most important factor in all of my work. Writing is failure over and over and over again. The challenge of writing is to see your terribleness on the page. To see your terribleness, and then go to bed. And then to wake up the next day and see your terribleness and horribleness and refine it. And make it not so terrible. And not so horrible. And then to go to bed again, and come the next day, and refine it a little bit more, and make it not so bad. And then go to bed the next day, and do it again. And make it, maybe, average. And then one more time if you're lucky, maybe you get to good. And if you've done that, that's a success.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Recognizing that people's reactions don't belong to you is the only sane way to create. If people enjoy what you've created, terrific. If people ignore what you've created, too bad. If people misunderstand what you've created, don't sweat it. And what if people absolutely hate what you've created? What if people attack you with savage vitriol, and insult your intelligence, and malign your motives, and drag your good name through the mud? Just smile sweetly and suggest—as politely as you possibly can—that they go make their own art. Then stubbornly, continue making yours.
Elizabeth Gilbert
For women facing misogyny:
"For centuries, the voices of women have been muted, discounted and minimized. Our right to speak has been questioned, our power undermined, our authority mocked. The cultural underpinnings of this run deep in church and state and still erupt grotesquely online. We are regularly told to apologize, to shrink, to shut up.
So don’t. You don’t need a title to speak. But if you do have one, use it. Find your voice, and raise it. Stake your authority, and state it. Don’t recoil. Don’t back down. Sometimes authority should be worn lightly. But sometimes it should be brandished like a torch."
Julia Baird
On finding your purpose and path:
Time and energy are limited. Any successful person has to decide what to do in part by deciding what not to do.
Angela Duckworth
What we know matters, but who we are matters more.
Brene Brown
What ripens passion is the conviction that your work matters. For most people, interest without purpose is nearly impossible to sustain for a lifetime. It is, therefore, imperative that you identify your work as both personally interesting and integrally connected to the well-being of others.
Angela Duckworth
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight—and never stop fighting.
E.E Cummings
Sending you peace and encouragement today for whatever you're facing.