In our lives we all face discouragement or disappointments. It’s impossible not to have them once in a while. Some people may look at that point in their life as a failure, when I don’t believe that it is. I recently read an article by Ryan Clements on discouragement and he pointed out that there is no such thing as failure.
I believe that to be true because as long as we look at our experiences, whether good or bad as an education, we haven’t failed. Sure some of us have lost our jobs for some reason, but it doesn’t mean we failed. As long as we learn from the experience and as to why we lost the job, it will help us in the future. Or maybe, we were used by someone in the past. Take what you have learned from it and make different choices.
I understand that it may be easier said than done, to just accept a disappointment. But in order to move forward and be productive again, we have to let go. Holding onto discouragements or disappointments only slows down our progress in life. Let me give you an example that happened to me not too long ago.
Scammed By Ignorance
I’m fairly new to the writing world and unsure about the kinds of opportunities that are out there. I have a couple of different blogs and my newsletters here on Substack. So far, my Substack platform is the only place that I have made any money with my writing. I share my work on a couple of different social media platforms to hopefully create notice . This is a good thing to do in order for people to see my work. However it also opens up windows of opportunity for scammers too.
Someone reached out to me on twitter explaining that she was a recruiter for a company. She offered me a chance to write for this company and get paid for it. I looked into it the best that I could and had some doubts. Right there I should have stopped but I didn’t. It was set up to where I met with a few different people online as an interview would be. It seemed legit but I still had doubts. I was accepted as a writer for their company after a couple of meetings. The company does exist but these people I was talking to weren’t really part of them.
For four weeks I was played and asked to submit two stories a week to them. Now to make a long story short, the only thing they got out of me was my time and four stories. Their plan was to get money out of me when I set up my account with them, but it didn’t work. I may have been ignorant for part of it, but smart enough to know not to have my money involved. However, this left me very discouraged when I realized I was scammed.
Future Of Learning
Feeling discouraged left me feeling angry too. The thoughts of how stupid could I be and I’m not going to trust anyone online again. This all, is a learning experience that I can use and I don’t consider it a failure. The choice I made to join the company and write for them was done out of trust. They took advantage of that trust and tried to get money from me. That’s it and it didn’t work out for them. I could continue to hold onto that disappointment but where would it get me? No where.
Now, I learned that great opportunities are not going to come and knock on my door. I have to reach out and knock on their door. In order to find, receive, and keep a good thing takes drive and hard work. So, if this means writing for free to gain trusting followers like you, that’s what I’ll have to do for now. But I’m not going to let that setback take away from my goals. Life will always be full of lessons that we can learn from.
Reference: Ryan Clements Article