Discouraged but never defeated is one of my favorite lines.
Discouraged can mean to feel a loss of hope or confidence, often due to a perceived lack of progress.
Discouragement puts me in the mind of a roundabout.
Just because you miss your exit doesn’t mean you can’t go through a different one—or even go all the way around again to get to the one you missed.
Meanwhile, being defeated is to be overcome or vanquished.
Defeat can put you in the mind of failure.
The key difference between defeat and failure is that failure is attempting something and not succeeding, but with defeat, you surrender and stop trying.
Once I distinguished the difference between the two, I realized I couldn’t be defeated in any aspect of my life.
Neither can you.
A perfect example of this would be the movie The Pursuit of Happyness starring Will Smith. He played the character Chris Gardner.
He was a single father who endured many hardships.
Some examples would be financial hardship and homelessness.
Despite everything that discouraged him, Chris Gardner had a dream.
He strived to have a better life for his son and himself.
There’s this specific scene that sticked with me.
It was the scene when Chris Gardner was at his lowest.
He had an awful and tiring day and went back to his apartment with his son, just to find out they were evicted.
With nowhere to go, Chris Gardner and his son went and slept in the bathroom at a train station.
Chris could’ve easily given up on himself.
