How to deal with disappointment

Disappointment is part of being alive and by its nature disappointment is not a pleasure, but if you approach it in the right way it can be a useful part of your journey.

You have big dreams, don’t you? Virtually every Life Coaching weekend seminar in a vineyard somewhere has featured a PowerPoint presentation that featured slides advising, “If you can dream it, you can do it” or “Every success story started with a dream.” We are encouraged endlessly to dream, to aspire, in order to achieve. There’s a kernel of truth in all that optimistic visioning, but there’s also a hard outer shell that is often ignored. That shell is disappointment, and you can easily break a hopeful molar on it as you bite in expecting the sweet soft centre of fulfilment. Yet, as soon as you set up the target of expectations then you have also opened the field of disappointment.

The bigger the expectation, the greater the risk of disappointment, and the zeitgeist these days encourages everyone to dream big. The reality is, however, that there can’t be 5.85 billion best-selling authors (that’s the number of people over age 15 in the world), any given suburb can only handle so many vegan cafés, and if everyone became a bitcoin billionaire the economy would dissolve. None of this should discourage anyone from dreaming, but the wise dreamer knows that disappointment is the other side of the aspiration coin. It is also true that disappointment does not just come with fanfare and in a flowing red cape and sequins, it can also appear in tracksuit pants and slippers. Yes, disappointment happens daily and it happens to us all, on many different levels. Disappointment might be:

• You fail to get the job.
• Your new partner proves to be less than ideal.
• You can’t yet afford your ideal home.
• Your new hairstyle draws suppressed giggles from your workmates.
• That shirt you ordered online during lockdown appears to have been manufactured for a hobbit-size “L”.

Staying flexible

The key words that keep emerging already when coping with disappointment are “possibilities” and “choices”. This all implies a requirement for you to be flexible in your thinking and to keep seeing things from a fresh perspective. This is where meditation and breathing come in. When your mind is continually bombarded with thoughts it wears you down and saps your energy. Meditation gives you the inner strength to endure situations, no matter how unbearable they may appear at the time. It brings qualities of centredness, steadfastness and equanimity.
When things go well it is normal to feel happy, and when disappointments occur it is easy to feel sad, angry or agitated. Looking for the gifts in what has happened, reframing it and using techniques like meditation to focus your mind and transcend your emotions enable you to avoid the devastation that disappointment can bring and maintain your balance.

Emotional rescue

It is hard to consider your options and make good choices if your disappointment has left you a blubbering mess in the corner. You need to think in advance about the emotions that disappointment will inevitably generate and how you might deal with them. You need a DAP (Disappointment Action Plan) to deal with the emotions (never underestimate the power and prestige you add to something by giving it an acronym).

The first thing to be aware of is that emotions can be signposts to what is going on inside you. Equally, they can also be red herrings dragged across your path and distracting you from the true issues at hand. Victor Sultas says, “Each emotion is filled with information, it is a message or an action signal to alert you. It is asking you to take notice, observe and be aware. Everyone deals differently with emotions. How you manage emotions is your individual choice. I observe my emotions first and then ask them what they are communicating to me? Sometimes the body needs to release pent-up emotions, so I walk, do yoga or move and stretch.”

To wallow or not to wallow?

When you experience disappointment it is tempting to look on the bright side, but is that really productive? To adopt a false positivity is as damaging as becoming excessively negative. Research has shown that simply repeating positive “affirmations” that are not genuinely believed simply serves to heighten anxiety (refer to the article “The positivity trap” on page 26 of this issue). If you feel pain at some disappointing life event, then experiencing that pain is to some degree appropriate and necessary. The question becomes, how much of the experience is necessary and when does it cross over into harmful wallowing?

Who could say that they have never wallowed, rolling in the muddy waters of some unproductively murky mood? Even as you do it you know that you shouldn’t, but the pain itself that has initiated the wallowing seems to be somehow soothed by rich waters of the negative emotions you have immersed yourself in.

Disappointment reset

When disappointment strikes you can create an honest awareness of what happened and hit your personal reset button.

• Make a list of the things that you did to contribute to the situation. Do not allow yourself to write about others or even consider them. This is about you. Write at least four things that you have done to contribute.

 

• Look at these points; embrace them, love them, accept them. Do not analyse, question or justify your actions. Now let it go.

 

• Spend some quiet time saying a thank you for whatever gifts the disappointment has brought or will bring.