Ep #168: 5 Reasons Why We Get Discouraged & How to Beat Them

Welcome back to the Get a Six Figure Job You Love and Thrive podcast. This is episode 168, 5 Reasons Why We Get Discouraged and How to Beat Them. Stay tuned. Welcome to the Get a Six Figure Job You Love and Thrive podcast, where I, Natalie Fisher, am teaching you weekly how to land your premium role that you love and thrive in it. Let's go. All right. There are 5 specific reasons that I've been thinking about as to why we get discouraged, and I wanted to bring those today to the podcast and help you to turn those around and also help you understand why it happens and how it can be mostly avoided and how sometimes it's okay to feel discouraged. But for the most part, I don't really feel discouraged that much. It's not like a primary feeling that I feel. It's not really a part of my life as much. I used to all the time, but I'm thinking I can't remember the last time I felt discouraged. Very much looking at things neutrally, just being like, oh, interesting. Okay, that didn't work out. Oh, okay. Just kind of trusting, moving along, being like, well, I guess that happened for a reason. I'll be working out why that happened, and I'll be curious about what we can do about that. It's not like a— a really big highs and lows journey. It's more of a kind of just cruising along and looking at things with curiosity journey and getting where I'm going eventually, knowing that that's happening no matter what, knowing that it's happening soon, but that I'm not in a hurry either because once I get to where I'm going, I'm just going to want to get to the next place. So with that said, I know the job search for people And I love the job search because I get to meet people in that place where they're starting this journey, but it turns into something so much bigger from there.

And I love it because it's kind of like you enter the world of coaching with me because you needed or wanted to get a better paying job, but you end up with so much more Other than that, like, it's kind of because— and I took the coach, the Life Coach School certification, and I've been in the life coaching arena for a while. And, and so I've been coached on a lot of things. I've been coached on relationships, I've been coached on weight loss, I've been coached on, on money, I've been coached on business. So I, like, I love to get coaching and I love to invest in that and expand my own brain and And so I bring that to everything.

So a lot of the times people will ask about things that are not specifically job search related, but they somehow always tie back because it's our lives, we're human. So we always have things that kind of interfere and overlap and cross over. But really what it is, it's a management of your emotions, it's a management of your results, it's a management of your control of everything you have control over here in this life on this planet. So, Yes, it's, you enter through the lens of the job search, but it's really so much more than that. All right, let's get into the 5 reasons. So the first reason I observe that people get discouraged is because they make circumstances mean things that are disempowering and don't serve them. So for example, the most common one is you get a rejection. Happens all the time. You get a rejection or you get somebody who doesn't call you back, you get ghosted, whatever that's the case. Maybe that happens 3 or 4 times. Maybe it happens a bunch of times. Maybe it happens 50 times. Okay? Let's just say. And then what happens there is that's a neutral circumstance. Rejected 50 times, not responded to, whatever, right? That's the circumstance. That's the fact that can be proven in a court of law. This is what happened. And then you make that circumstance means something. And that's what we are as humans. We're meaning-making machines. We make everything mean something. We assign meaning to things. We have the power to assign meaning, whatever meaning we want to things, to our circumstances. And so you assign a meaning to what that means, right? And the meaning that we assign is often very disempowering and doesn't serve us. And that's why we end up feeling discouraged. So some of the meanings that we might assign To, let's say we've been rejected 10, 50 times or submitted applications 100 times, 600 times, whatever. I've heard a lot of people doing this. Then the meanings that they can assign to these circumstances might be, I'm not good enough. I'm not putting myself out there enough. I'm not communicating my value well enough. I'm missing something. So it's either they make it mean something about themselves. They make it about how their worthiness or their good enoughness, or they make it mean something about the world, the market, the conditions, and they make it mean something negative about those conditions. So they make it mean something like, oh, it's just a tough time right now. It's radio silence. Just nothing is happening right now. And so they make that circumstance mean that. Right. I just want to offer that these are all made-up meanings. They're made up. And we are really good at making up meanings that don't serve us, meanings that make us feel like crap. And when we do that, of course we're going to feel discouraged, right? Because when we make it mean something about us, like we're not good enough or we aren't putting ourselves out there enough, we don't know how to do this, we aren't smart enough or capable enough to get hired, or we make it mean something like we should have already had this by now, why is this so hard? When we make it mean something about us, our ability, our worthiness, our intelligence level, obviously we're going to feel bad about it, right? We're going to be like, well, it's about me. I'm the one who's not good enough. I'm the problem, right? Obviously that feels crappy and it doesn't have to. That's made-up meaning. We made that up. Okay? And then if you make it mean something about the outside world or whatever, then it's out of your control. And it's like, well, I can't do anything about that. That's just how the market is, or this is how the The world is. That's just how tough times are upon us. It's a bleak time. I heard a lot of these things. So those meanings make it feel like it's totally outta your control and you can't do anything and it's hopeless and there's no hope because there's no options, right? These things feel bad. Of course they do. They feel like crap. And that's what a lot of people, most people are doing. And when they feel like this, they perpetuate the cycle and they perpetuate the identity Of one, the person who isn't good enough, they perpetuate that identity. And 2, they perpetuate the identity of someone who's not responsible for going out and getting their own job. They're just blaming it on the outside times, the market, the people who aren't responding, making outside circumstances responsible. And so that takes away your power, takes away your power to do anything. And oftentimes if you're in that state, Oftentimes what I see is people don't know what to change. They're like, well, I knew I need a different approach, but they don't know what approach to take. Or even if they know they need to do something, they aren't really doing it because it's easier just to repeat the same actions. It's easier to send out another 100 applications, right? So this is all very discouraging and it's all made up. It's a cycle, it's a loop that is very common for people to get into. And you'll probably see it if you're on LinkedIn. talking to people, you'll see it, right? You'll see people in that loop. And I just wanna encourage you that you don't have to be one of the people in that loop. You don't have to be one of the people who kind of lowers yourself to that level of thinking because that is a low level of thinking that leads to low-level activities that leads to low results, right? And then it leads to complaining and it leads to more misery. And it leads to like that repeated in a loop. Okay? So, that is all optional. It is all made up. It is not necessary. So, the second one is low belief in the fact that you're going to be able to achieve the job for whatever reason. Right? So, you might have low belief for whatever reason. You might not believe that you are capable. You might not believe that it's available. You might believe that the economy isn't good right now. You might believe that no company's willing to pay that much. You might believe that everyone has unreasonable expectations instead of believing the things that someone who lands the job would need to believe, which would be things like, of course there's a company out there who wants to pay me for the exact value that I offer.

Of course I'm capable of presenting that value in a way that is so irresistible that it's a no-brainer for them to say no to. Of course I'm the person who can do this. Of course I'm responsible for this and I know I can do it. Of course I've figured out harder things than this before, right? Those are the things that The person who achieves it would need to believe, right? But we get caught in the other beliefs, the ones that I mentioned before, and then we just feel bad. And we don't often know that we need to switch and shift into better feeling beliefs.

And the beliefs take work because if you have been thinking one thing for a long time, then you will need to redirect yourself on a daily basis. And it will take a little bit of effort and it'll be harder to do than just thinking the same old low-level beliefs because those are easy to think because you're used to them, even though they feel crappy.

So low belief, low belief that it's possible, because if we don't believe something's possible for us, then we don't have access to all the resourcefulness that we need to do it, to make it happen, right? If we don't believe it's possible, right? And so working on the belief that it's possible, that it's happening, that it's done is like, if there was just one thing I could offer you, it would be that. It would be like— You need that belief. That belief has to be cultivated. It has to be there. It has to be grown and watered every day. Third is the belief that the future equals the past. So, if you have a long line of rejections or you have a history of putting in a lot of applications with no results, then you're believing that the past is going to keep repeating itself, right? And so, it's not very motivating. There's not really much to look forward to. There's nothing really that compelling if you think that the past equals the future. And it doesn't. Of course it doesn't. If we look at so much evidence, if it was really true that the past equaled the future, then nobody would change, right? Nobody would've ever changed. Nobody would've ever gotten a quantum leap in a higher-paying job. Nobody ever would've switched careers. Nobody ever would've Invented something that hadn't been invented before because the past equals the future, right? But it doesn't. The past doesn't equal the future unless we keep repeating it in our mind. So unless we keep thinking the same things, we will not get the same results. But that's the thing, most people keep thinking the same things. They keep in the same mental patterns. And we have about 60,000 thoughts a day. And I do believe I heard somewhere that it is scientifically proven, and I don't know how they would prove this, but that we often are thinking the same thoughts every day, or a percentage of the same thoughts every day, which makes sense if we're getting the same results. So I was doing coaching inside my community the other day, and my client who was coaching, she was asking, she's like, okay, well then I need to do this, or I need to do more of this. And I said, no, it's not about that. It's not about doing the same thing with the same crappy thought that feels like crap. It's about changing the thought. It's about changing the thinking. It's not about doing the same things. with the same feeling and thought that led you to the same results, right? It's about changing the thinking. That's why it's so holistic what we do, because I really dig into the root of it. I'm like, I want the root of the problem, why you are not seeing a result, why you are feeling crappy, why you are feeling discouraged. I want to know why. I don't want to just dive into being like, oh, well maybe you should tweak your resume and put this at the top. No, that's not what's ultimately going to create a breakthrough. Or lasting results for you or a lasting epiphany where you can actually think differently on your own next time. That's not going to help you if I just say, oh, put this at the top of your resume and then try it. No, it's about changing the root cause of your thinking. That's the problem. Your thinking is leading you to feel discouraged or crappy or whatever, disheartened. And that thinking is what is creating the results or the actions that you're taking not to work. And probably you're not taking enough, or the quality of the action you're taking is repetitive and humdrum, and it's just coming from the same discouraged space, right? And you can try to fool yourself, because I know people do. They'll be like, oh no, no, but I am, I do believe, and I do feel like I am. And it's like, yes, I know that you do have models that are good. And you're really trying to have those be the loudest, but we can tell what thoughts are winning by the results you're getting. So yes, everybody's going to have a combination of thoughts that serve them and thoughts that don't serve them, and beliefs that serve them and beliefs that don't serve them. But the way that we can tell which beliefs are winning are in your results. So if you don't have that result yet, if you're not close to it, if you're not in the midst of it, then the thoughts that are not serving you are winning. Okay? So that's what's happening. So that's the belief that past equals future. The 4th is when we beat ourselves up and shame ourselves for not having done enough or generally talk to ourselves in a mean, abusive way. Like, we can really assault ourselves with our own thoughts sometimes. Tell me if you get this, because I used to do it all the time. So when we shame ourselves, when we tell ourselves things like, you should have done more, you should have reached out to more people, you should have been on top of that, why haven't you done more? Like, it's your fault you haven't got the job yet because you somehow are not enough, right? Like, when we talk to ourselves like this, then we are also going to create bad feelings. We're going to feel bad about ourselves, right? And that's not the kind of feeling or energy that we need to go take out there to offer our value in an excited, expectant way. It's the opposite. So I have a podcast on this. It's called Being Your Own Worst Self-Critic, I think. But it explains the psychology of why we thought this worked, but why it actually doesn't work at all, or why it's not sustainable to get results. Under the guise of like, I'm going to beat you down so that you'll do better kind of thing. It doesn't work. So that also, if you have that kind of mental talk to yourself, that's also going to make you feel really discouraged. Okay? And it's also not going to want to get you to take action. You're not going to be really inspired to take good quality flowy action because you're feeling bad about yourself and you're shaming yourself and treating yourself badly. Right? And I use that example of a child all the time where it's If you're always telling the child what they're doing wrong, if you're always telling them that they should have done better, why couldn't they be more like this or more like that, right? They're just gonna grow up with that context of, I'm never good enough no matter what I do, so why even bother kind of thing. I mean, they will try for a while and they'll always kind of be trying to be good enough, but they'll always kind of have that underlying like, I'm really not good enough and it really doesn't matter what I do, I'm just no good, right? If you're talking to yourself in that way, that could be a leading reason for feeling discouraged and not getting results. And then number 5 is thinking that the problem is unsolvable and not really believing that there's a way to solve it or get ahead, thinking that you are just struggling like everyone else and everyone is just struggling and that's just how it is, thinking in a way where you think that inherently the universe has screwed you over, It's ambiguous. You don't know why, but it's just not going to work for you, or you just can't seem to get a break or whatever. If you ever talk to yourself like that, or if you ever have thoughts like that, if you're ever like, oh, I can't seem to catch a break. Oh, of course it was going to not turn out for me. That kind of thing. If you think the problem is unsolvable. So the cure to that is, first of all, to recognize that that's what you're thinking and believing. If you're believing, oh, the universe just isn't on my side. It's not responding to me. It's not working, right? If you say those things to yourself or you believe any of that, it's going to take your power away as well, right? I mean, it's going to be very difficult to create miracles and have great things happen in that space when you believe that you just don't know what's wrong and you don't know how to solve it, and it's just some mysterious nebulous thing that's not working, right? So what we need to do is get curious instead. And get so incredibly curious that we start to figure out what it is that we could change, right? What it is that we could be doing or thinking. That's what it is really. It's what we could be thinking differently in order to start feeling differently, in order to start taking different actions. And there's always something different that you can do. And I remember I said this to one of my mentors. I was like, I've tried everything. Look at everything I've tried. And she just said, There's no way you've tried everything. You know how I know? Because you don't have the result yet. Yeah. And that is very difficult to argue with, I tell you, because it's true. You haven't tried everything. There's no possible way because you can get the result. There is a way. There is a way. Everybody, like everybody has that opportunity to get curious, shift their thinking, and take action from a different space. Everybody has that opportunity every single day to do that. The problem is, is most of us are not utilizing it. Most of us are not trained in it. Like, this is what I train you in my program to do, is to analyze your own thinking and shift it and then take action from a different space, right? So the first thing I wanna do is getting you to feel better about whatever the circumstances you're making mean things that are not serving you, and then getting you to take action from that space of feeling better and instantly You start seeing different results. Like you'll start actually seeing different things happening that you weren't seeing before because you're in a more positive, more abundant headspace. And I'm more productive because really it's about effective thinking, efficient thinking, because right or wrong is subjective. But it's like, is your thinking right now getting you the results that you want? And if it's not, then that's how you know you need to do some work on this. There's work to be done. There's things to figure out. There's problems to solve right inside your own mind. It's like it's a thought problem. It's not something wrong with you. It's not something wrong with the universe. It's not something wrong with the economy. It's a thought problem. And when that opens up for you, then it becomes fun to dig in and do the work and be like, this is a challenge and I have dealt with way bigger ones than this. And the way that I teach it is Just, it opens things up so much because there are infinite ways that you could be thinking about your current circumstances. And I bet you that you are not thinking of them in the most empowering way that you could be. And that's what I'm really excited to share with you when you come for coaching inside my community. So there we go. There we have it. The 5 reasons why you get discouraged and how to beat them. And if you'd like additional coaching on this, if you want more personalized attention, I do that inside my program. Every week we coach. I use my tools, I pull out my board, and we get to work on your mindset specifically. So I look forward to next week. I will see you then. Have a great week. Bye-bye. Hey, have you left me a review yet? If not, leaving me one Now comes with an awesome bonus perk. I'm gonna give you access to my $97 course. It's titled 8 Reasons Why You Get Interviews But No Job Offers. This course is normally $97, but when you leave me a review, as a thank you, I will give you access to it for free. And it's helped many professionals like you land their premium job offers and make more money just by simply going through this 4-day training that I did. I received so much feedback on so many of the results just from this $97 training, and I'd love to gift you that for free. So all you have to do is leave me a review on your favorite podcast platform, preferably iTunes, screenshot the review, email it to me. The details are in the show notes of the episode, and I can't wait to read your reviews and send you access to that course. Thank you so much.