No One Can Keep You Down

If you do not lose hope and become discouraged no one can keep you down.

We Tibetans have a saying: “You could bury them six feet under and they’d still come out on top.” We say this about the sort of person who is indomitable and never loses hope.

To succeed you must neither lose the hopes you hold for yourself nor dash the hopes others place in you.

One’s downfall often starts with the second of these. The people close to you trust and believe in you, but then you act in such a way that undermines their trust and belief. You prove yourself unreliable. This does not mean that they lose their love for you. That’s different. The parents of a drug addict will still love their child even though they would not trust them with money, or believe they will succeed in life.

Once you have caused people to lose trust in you, they will not give you opportunities. Then you may start to doubt yourself and your ability to succeed. If that happens you may spiral down quite quickly and find it very difficult to turn things around for the better. You can turn things around, of course, by reversing the process and remembering that all is never lost.

So those who are wise, prove themselves reliable when people trust them with an opportunity. If you work hard to make the most of the opportunities you receive, you will be given further opportunities. This will fill you with confidence and inspiration that enables you to not only continue but to take on more.

The bedrock of that is self-belief. As long as you retain belief in yourself and do not lose hope, people may ridicule you, scorn you, imprison you, but sooner or later you will come up smelling of roses.

13 August 2026