How to go 25 years without being discouraged

By Tom Quiner

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkLjBJWYR68]
I meet with a great group of people every Wednesday morning.
We talk about serious faith issues. We’re all Catholic, and love learning more about our Church. The bond amongst this group is tremendous. Some of us are converts to the faith, coming from diverse faith backgrounds such as Christian Science, and even atheism.
We each have problems in our lives. When things are particularly tough, we pray together about these problems. We talk them out, encourage each other, sometimes injecting a little humor to put things in perspective.
Each of us, probably you too, have to fight discouragement at some point in our lives. We don’t always get our way in life. Sometimes it seems like we never get our way. Sometimes bad stuff happens that seems so unjust and inexplicable.
For modern man, sometimes we feel that we are the master of our destiny. When life interrupts our expectations, discouragement  can set in.
The subject of discouragement got me thinking about a man famous for teaching us how to overcome discouragement. I’m talking about the great Protestant minister, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who was also the author of the watershed book, “The Power of Positive Thinking.”
Above, you can hear a short sermon from him that deals with discouragement. He talks about a man who discovered the secret for overcoming discouragement, put the secret into action, and avoided discouragement for a quarter of a century until his death at a ripe old age.
Dr. Peale  died in 1993 at the age of 95. His delivery and his message are timeless.