Feeling Discouraged Might Mean You’re Doing it Right

I wrote recently about how your scores don’t define you but your reaction to them does.That’s absolutely true. And it still doesn’t make all the negative feelings magically disappear. 

What if I told you that maybe feeling discouraged is a good thing?

For a while, longer than I want to admit,  I thought that the discouragement and dread I would feel at the end of some years was a weakness. But then a really insightful person asked me to consider, what if my discouragement wasn’t really a weakness? What if it was actually solid evidence that I was passionate about the work and deeply committed to seeing it through?

Discouragement is a signal and not a symptom.

Naturally you’ll feel down when you care about the campus and the progress you see isn’t in the final scores. And when there’s a devastating gap between expectations and what reality delivered. And then there is the weight you carry for kids, teachers, and systems that don’t easily or quickly change.

All those emotional responses you feel inform you. And just like scores and results don’t define you but your response to them does, what you do with those emotions is vital.

This reflection sits between data analysis and strategic planning. It’s about how we care enough to respond thoughtfully.

Let’s be strategic for a minute

Leadership isn’t about avoiding hard emotions. It’s knowing what to do with them. The discouragement is a pause point. It’s a sign to stop, reflect, and course correct. In another post, I wrote about the essential practice of staying grounded, reconnecting with your “why” and taking a literal and figurative breath (or several). 

What I’m NOT saying is that it’s ok to feel terrible all the time. It’s perfectly ok to have a bad day but it’s not ok to have a bad life. What I AM saying is if you’re feeling a certain way about things right now, you’re not broken, you’re engaged and you care. The fact that you are having this emotional response is a sign that you are, in fact, a good leader. Use this moment to get more clear and not more critical.

Feeling discouraged doesn’t mean you’re in the wrong seat. It might actually mean you’re the right person, wrestling with the right questions at exactly the right time.

Here are some questions to help reframe when you are really feeling it:

• If I wasn’t invested, would I be feeling like this?
• What is this feeling telling me about what I value?
• What exactly am I feeling right now: discouraged, disappointed, tired, stuck?

Next, try these when you are ready:

• What does my response say about the kind of leader I’m becoming?
• If I take the big picture view, where have I grown even if the results don’t show it yet?

Ready or wanting some support:

• Who is someone I admire that has probably gone through this before?
• What kind of supports would help me get through this with some compassion and more clarity?

Now I’m ready for some action without pressure:

• What’s one small thing I can do this week that aligns to what matters most to me?
• If I were coaching someone feeling like this, what would I tell them?