Two ways of being with disappointment

How we respond to disappointment is often influenced by our upbringing and the beliefs we’ve internalised about how much control we have in life.  According to Manfred Kets de Vries, the way we choose to handle disappointment is strongly related to our developmental history — our relationship with our parents and other early, formative experiences. What I want to share here today, is two different ways of being in the world and how they affect how we deal with disappointment when others let us down.

The two ways of being in the world and in relationship with others is either being an underachiever (i.e., having low or no expectations), or being an overachiever (i.e., having unreasonably high expectations).

Some people seek to avoid disappointment by playing small, underachieving, and underperforming. In an unconscious act of self-preservation, they unconsciously set the bar low and avoid taking risks, to prevent themselves or others from being disappointed. Without always realising it, they have decided that the best strategy is not to have high expectations about anything. The logic here is, that if they don’t play too big, or tackle a goal that is too audacious, then they cannot be disappointment and therefore they are safe from feeling disappointed.

The end result of choosing to avoid all forms of disappointment is that you live a life where you are always hiding, checking out, or opting out, giving up, or playing small. It becomes a life of endless what-if questions. I wonder what would have happened if I took that job…? I wonder what would have happened if I moved to another city when I had the chance…? I wonder what would have happened if I had told him/her how I felt…?

The irony is that you still end up feeling disappointed. You feel disappointed with yourself, for never trying hard at anything; for never risking anything; for never allowing yourself the opportunity to see what you are really made of; or for settling for a life that is less than what you know deep down you are capable of living. So, you turn into a disappointment for yourself and others by living a mediocre and unfulfilled life.

By putting the responsibility for a joyful and fulfilled life firmly outside of your own hands, you become a mere bystander to your own life. You never take full ownership of your life and consequently find yourself envying and resenting others for doing the things you are too afraid to try and resenting others for having more, doing more, being more.

Now, I get it, putting yourself out there and taking risks can be scary. And there is always the fear of failure. And of course, if you are engaged in a fixed mindset, you will let your failures and disappointments define you. If you internalise a mistake or disappointment as evidence that you are a failure, you will shy away from trying things that are big and scary.

Those who engage in a growth mindset, do not let failure define them. They see failure and disappointment as a natural part of life. It’s inevitable that we will be disappointed at times. We are not always going to get everything right the first time. In fact, the harder the challenge, the more likely it is that it will take multiple tries before you actually succeed. It’s what you choose to say to yourself in those moments that determine whether you get up and try again, or quit cold turkey.

If you fear failure, you will hide behind mediocrity your whole life. Ironically, the path to success is strewn with failures and disappointments. They are an inevitable part of taking on a journey that stretches you beyond your current capabilities. Steve Chandler often says, “yes lives in the land of no”. Another way to look at this, is to appreciate that what you want or desire, often lies at the end of a long road of setbacks, upsets, rejections, and failures. The secret is to shake those off and to keep going, holding in your mind’s eye a vision of what you want to create. The sooner you can shake off your disappointments, the sooner you can move past them and continue your journey.

Now there is another way of being in the world to be aware of and these people deal with setbacks and disappointments by externalizing them outside of themselves, and consequently placing much of the blame for their disappointments on others.

Overachievers are on the other side of the spectrum. They try to deal with disappointment by setting the bar very high and overachieving. They end up trying to control every aspect of their lives and relationships.

Overachievers are often secretly aiming for perfection. And although they tell themselves that their expectations of perfection are appropriate and realistic, these presumptions turn out to be false. The bar is set far too high to ever make whatever they want to achieve attainable. They forget that perfectionism rarely begets perfection, or joy, or satisfaction. Instead, aiming for perfection often leads to disappointment. They might also receive feedback from those around them that they are too controlling, too rigid, too inflexible, or that nothing ever pleases them. The end result ironically, is that you then spend your life feeling disappointed with others, because you blame others for not living up to your expectations.

I absolutely fall into this second category of people who tried to deal with disappointments by over-achieving and aiming to control everything in my life. And of course, when people and circumstances met my expectations, I celebrated, thinking that it was thanks to my careful planning and execution. I took a lot of pride in always being in control of the situation.

And when people inevitably would not meet my expectations – because they could not read my mind and did not agree to meeting my expectations – I would feel angry, disappointed, resentful. I would blame others for not showing up, or not doing their part, or not being more understanding and supportive.

What I did not see for a very long time, was that what I had created was merely an illusion of control since I don’t have control over the outcome. Ever. I just thought I did. And I spent many years of my life feeling angry and disappointed at people and by things not going the way I had wanted them to go. People and experiences could never live up to my expectations.

What’s worse is that I could not live up to my own expectations. I simply could not reach perfection no matter how hard I tried. And I’m going to be honest with you, it’s bloody exhausting to live this way. You can never ease up on the pressure, lest you fall into laziness or complacency. And of course, it takes tremendous mental energy to always try to think on behalf of everyone else around you, and to manage not only your own but other people’s lives too.

And I would tell myself that if I dropped the ball on something, no-one would pick it up, because no-one was as capable as I was. It wasn’t until I did my coach training three years ago that I realised how I was not holding the people in my life as naturally resourceful, creative, and whole. I was not giving them the grace of their own journey and I had the audacity to think that I knew what would be best for others.

What I also neglected to notice at the time, was how much more joyful I tended to be when I went into situations without any expectations. If I attended a function, event, or party without my usual pre-conceived expectations of how I wanted things to go, I tended to have a lot more fun, and I tended to really appreciate the experience, since there was nothing to compare the experience with.

You see, when you don’t walk around with pre-conceived ideas in your head about how things are “supposed to be”, you invite the element of surprise in. You allow the moment to simply unfold as it is, instead of pushing against reality and insisting it’s supposed to go the way you had planned and anticipated in your own head, because let’s face it, reality very rarely lives up to our mental expectations. And it’s not supposed to.

Through deep inner work and lots of coaching around this, I started to see how my desire for control stemmed from a deep-seated fear that I was inadequate. That I was not enough. I could not handle the unpredictability of life. I feared that I would be caught off guard and I would not know how to meet life head-on. I could not go into situations without expectations or the desire to control the situation, because I was afraid of reality. I was afraid that I would not be able to deal with whatever life brought me in that moment if I had not planned for and anticipated every possible outcome. My self-esteem was in tatters as I did not consider myself worthy and I also did not believe in my own self-efficacy.

Not only did I have to learn to trust that others could and would hold their own and follow through on their own commitments, I also had to work on trusting myself in being able to show up to life and meet it head on. I needed to manage the duality of both letting others claim their own authority over their own lives, and claiming mine back for myself.

As I learned to trust myself more. As I experimented in my own life with not being attached to the outcome and giving myself permission to be human, my compassion for others increased too. Letting up on the pressure on myself, surprisingly meant that I could also hold more space for others. I no longer needed others to meet my expectations.

Along the way, I also learned the critical distinction between expectations and agreements from Steve Chandler. Chandler shares that expectations are often unspoken and aligned with the outcome you envision. And because people cannot read your mind, they don’t know what you expect of them. Additionally – and this is he hard part – you can never really control anyone. People will only follow through on things if they have voluntarily AGREED to them, not because you expect or demand of them to follow through.

Even in situations where someone manipulates or forces another person to do what they want, they never get the result they were after, because humans are funny that way. No-one likes to be controlled. We all really detest it – even the meekest among us. And we will find ways to sabotage or resist even if we must resort to passive aggressive tactics to demonstrate our resistance.

Just because you have expectations of others, does not mean that they must meet those expectations. Every person has the freedom to choose their own reactions and actions. And sometimes, what you expect, does not feel doable or reasonable to the other person.

So, here is the other part of the inner work around learning to trust more. You must be open to another person’s “no” too. You see, you get to make requests for what you want, but the other person also gets to have a say. They can agree to your request, or they might decline the request and you must be ok with either. That’s true unattachment to the outcome. If there is a part of you that is attached to wanting the person to agree to your request, then you are still trying to control them or the situation and then you are still not truly free.

What I’ve also seen over many years of teaching and training, is that we create our own self-fulfilling prophecies. When I see someone as incapable or incompetent, I show up with that attitude and mindset to the relationship and I will hold them like that in my heart and mind. Even if I never say to someone that I don’t trust that they are capable, they will sense it from the energy I bring into the relationship, and whether they buy into this belief, or whether they don’t really value my opinion of them, they will still end up fulfilling the prophecy, because they will either under-perform, because that is what I expect of them, or they will under-perform because they could care less about pleasing me.

The truth is that when we have expectations of others, it’s because we either don’t think they are capable, or we don’t appreciate their individuality, because we simply see them as “puppets” in our world. The moment you only think about how someone should meet YOUR expectations, you are actively denying that they are an individual separate from you, who perhaps has a different view of reality, different dreams and expectations, and who is just as capable as anyone of making decisions in their own life.

Think about how you feel when someone doesn’t believe in you or underestimates you. Or how you feel when someone pressures you into doing something. You might do it, but it will not be with a full heart, it will be with resentment and bitterness. You might choose to procrastinate on getting the task done. You might under-deliver, or make mistakes, or flake out, because deep down, you don’t care, and you feel resentful toward the person for expecting this of you in the first place.

I’m reminded of what Stephen Covey used to say about this. He said you can buy people’s hands and heads, but their hearts you can never buy. Their heart is offered voluntarily, and only if they deeply resonate with the cause and have agreed to it. That is essentially the difference between leading with fear and control, and leading with love. When you lead from love, you inspire, you engage people’s hearts and they follow your cause, not for you, but for themselves. They take action, because it feels meaningful to THEM; not because they are trying to please you.

In the words of Simon Sinek, people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And that’s important, because if their why aligns with yours, half the battle is won. They already believe in the cause. Their hearts are in it. And what you want to do then, is to invite their genius, their natural curiosity and creativity to drive the process. You will be amazed at what people are capable of when they feel trusted and when they take full ownership of the outcome.

That is the only reason why we engage passionately with anything or give all our heart and soul to it, it’s because it resonates with our core authentic self, and we feel called to take up the cause. No other reason. Any other reason sees us only partly engaged, or simply going through the motions, or doing the bare minimum simply to get through to the other side.

Now think about when someone holds you as naturally resourceful, creative, and whole; when someone believes you are capable of far more than you give yourself credit for. Or when they hold you to a higher standard than you hold yourself. That’s a very different space to come from. That is the space of inspiration and creativity; the space of heart and of showing up fully, because someone sees you for who you really are.

I’ve seen this time and again with students, tutors, fellow educators, the teams I’ve led, and now with the clients I work with. When people are held to a higher standard, when they are called to bring forth their own insights, curiosity, creativity. When they are accepted as they are, and invited to be real and to bring their own ideas. When they get to play the game on their terms, fully aligned with what matters to them, they surprise you. They show up. They take up more space. They innovate. They thrive. And they always exceed my expectations, because I never really know what someone else is capable of until I hold space for them to show up fully.

So, the bottom-line is, if you want someone to align with your cause, first find out what makes them come alive. Find out how they see the world. Find out how their intentions and beliefs are aligned or misaligned with yours. And invite them to tell you what they would be willing to agree to. And if you truly see another person, and you see what’s possible for them, you would share that with them, instead of simply telling them about your expectations of them without their buy-in.

Conclusion

In conclusion, these two ways of being in the world represent the extreme ways of being with and dealing with failure, setback, and disappointment. You might notice within yourself that you lean one way or the other. As with most things in life, balance is key. My encouragement is to be willing to be outside of your comfort zone. Be willing to take on challenges that stretch you and scare you. Be willing to learn from disappointments and to see them as part of your journey.

And, whilst tackling the big projects in your life, also have some self-compassion. Allow yourself to just let go of some of the pressure for perfection. Ultimately, no goal is worth achieving if it is accompanied by tremendous tension, pressure, unease, frustration, and self-loathing. You want to make the journey of reaching for goals and creating what you want in your life, joyful. There will be disappointments along the way. But they don’t have to define you or determine the final outcome.

References:

1. Breytenbach, C. (2021). Using disappointment as a catalyst for inspiration. Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/using_disappointment-_as_a_catalyst_for_inspiration/
2. Kets de Vries, M. F. R. (2018). Dealing with Disappointment. Harvard Business Review, August 2018. Available online at: https://hbr.org/2018/08/dealing-with-disappointment