ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how to identify the discouraging beliefs that people like Joanna and Kevin have toward themselves, others, and their lives. After identifying some discouraging beliefs, it discusses ways of helping such people overcome their constrictions and thus opens up new hopes and goals for them. It was through first understanding Joanna's emotions-anger and disappointment-that we were directed to the source of her perceptions about her life. Discouragement occurs when people fail to overcome one or both of these errors. The unwillingness of people to accept reality as it is results from a superiority complex. Either mistake of underplaying or overplaying the importance of reality results in discouragement. The process of overcoming both of these discouraging beliefs is perhaps the most important road to the courageous life. Identify some feelings, thoughts, or actions you might observe which demonstrate that people suffer from the fiction of irresponsibility.
