Using disappointment as a catalyst for inspiration

In life, disappointments are inevitable, because of the simple fact that we don’t control everything that happens in life. How you choose to deal with disappointments in your life, can become a defining moment for you.

In his thought-provoking article on Dealing with Disappointment, Manfred Kets de Vries postulates that expectations lie at the root of all heartache and disappointment. Think about it, would you be disappointment about something if you didn’t have any expectations about how it was supposed to be? Your disappointment stems from the fact that what you had imagined or hoped would happen, did not align with what transpired in reality. It’s like Brad Warner says, disappointment is what you feel “when your brain is trying to readjust itself to reality after discovering that things are not the way you thought they were”.

Some disappointments are insignificant in the larger view of your life. They are easily filtered out by asking yourself the question, “will this matter a year from now?” If the answer is no, simply let it go.

However, some disappointments can change the course of your life. They can become character defining moments. You see, it doesn’t matter that you feel disappointment. It only matters how you choose to deal with your disappointment as you take the next step forward.

Kets de Vries reasons that what makes disappointment such a complex and confusing feeling is that many of our desires are unconscious, sublimated, and frequently contradictory – i.e., we say we want one thing, but we actually want the opposite. And unless we slow it down, we won’t realise that that is what is going on for us.

Sometimes, you feel disappointment about a goal that was not reached or an outcome that was not achieved, and when you slow it down, you might notice how you sabotaged your own efforts at achieving the goal or creating the outcome you said you wanted. Usually when this happens, it’s because the cost of reaching the goal far exceeds the cost of simply staying complacent and not moving forward. You see, it’s not merely what we want that’s important; it’s also what we believe we would be giving up to achieve the goal that is important.

For example, I might subconsciously sabotage my own goal of making more money in my business, if I believe that earning more money will change me into a greedy and selfish person. My money story is getting in the way of me creating what I say I want. I might feel disappointed at not reaching the goal, but at the same time, a part of me might feel relieved that I’m still in my comfort zone, and I did not have to handle the identity crisis that may ensue when I do actually break through my own mental ceiling.

At other times you may even become disappointed when you do get what you want. This is what psychologists might call “wrecked by success.” If you unconsciously believe that your success is unjustified, you might actually feel disappointed when you succeed at your goal. And sometimes, you strive for a goal, because you believe it will give you something, or say something about who you are as a person, only to discover at the end, that reaching the goal did not give you the confidence, happiness, bliss, inner peace, etc. you were after.

In situations like these, it’s because you hold onto the false belief that something outside yourself might give you the joy and inner peace you are after on the inside. This is never true. We create our world from the inside out, not from the outside in. You must cultivate the sense of joy and inner peace inside yourself first. By doing that, you show up like that in your world, and consequently create what you want on the outside too.

If you work from the outside in, you will inevitably find yourself disappointed, simply because no outside goal can ever fill a void that originated on the inside. And you will continue to show up to your life in the same way you used to, even when you outside circumstances may have improved. Think of lotto players who win big and return to their previous levels of wealth or poverty shortly after winning the money that they thought would change their lives. Or those who lose a lot of weight only to regain it all back, and then some. What is going on here? See, if I don’t change my relationship with myself while I’m working on the outside stuff, I will return to my previous baseline, because it feels comfortable.

When someone embarks on a weight loss journey, they are concurrently confronted with changing how they see themselves. They are no longer that overweight person. They are now a skinny person. For some, that can be deeply destabilising. Suddenly, they don’t know how to be in the world, because they’ve never been the skinny person. So, they don’t know how to reconcile their new identity with their inner sense of who they think they are. So, even at their lowest weight, the person might still feel deeply disappointed when they reach their goal.

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 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. I discuss the developmental influences of how we deal with disappointment at length in my article When others disappoint us.

It is such an important aspect of how we show up to disappointments in our lives, that it’s worthy of a deeper discussion. What I will say here is that again it comes down to expectations – those we have of ourselves and those we have of others.

If you go through life with unexpressed expectations, you are setting yourself up to be disappointed. To navigate this successfully, you need to learn how to own your own wants and desires, and how to make requests of others whilst being unattached to the outcome. It’s a lot of work, and can be challenging, but not nearly as difficult and frustrating as spending a lifetime in disappointed regret and resentment. So, sometimes we want to endure short-term pain and discomfort for long-term gain, ease, and joy.

So, what do you do with disappointing situations then, you might ask? Well, disappointment is part of the human experience. You are allowed to have your disappointment. However, don’t let your disappointment define how things ultimately turn out.

 

Kets de Vries also discusses the different styles of coping with disappointment which ranges from falling into a pit of depression and darkness, to rising above circumstances and turning disappointments into opportunities for growth and learning. Ultimately, what it comes down to is, will you become a victim of your circumstances and let your disappointments define you? Or will you rise above your circumstances and own your disappointments in a way that serves you? Both are a choice. You get to decide.

I see no point in discussing the victim mindset, since choosing to let your disappointments derail your progress and define you, will not serve you. I’m an advocate for ownership, growth, and learning. However unpleasant disappointments may be, there is always something to learn.

To handle disappointments from a place of ownership, we first need to slow down and understand what happened. Some disappointments are predictable and avoidable. They require some planning or action from our side. And when you fail to act in a way that would avoid the disappointment, the deeper and more important question to ask yourself is, what am I avoiding dealing with or what am I resisting here?

Other disappointments are unavoidable and beyond your control. You could do everything right and still not get the result you were hoping for, because life doesn’t have to conform to your expectations. If you believe that life is supposed to be a certain way, then perhaps it’s time to investigate your beliefs around that.

When it comes to situations that our out of your control, you want to own your disappointment and recalibrate as quickly as possible, to avoid wasting time and energy on something that is out of your control and that cannot and will not be changed through sheer will power.

Sometimes it’s helpful to assess whether your expectations are reasonable. If you identify with being an overachiever, there is a good chance that you are setting the bar too high and unconsciously setting yourself up for disappointment. How could you lower the bar? Even if only mentally.

If you are an underachiever, it might be helpful to recognise and accept that there is no way to avoid failure and disappointments in life. They are part of your contract with life. Trying to avoid failure, is like trying to avoid breathing or getting hungry or tired. As a human being, dealing with disappointment is part of the human experience, just like sleeping, eating, and breathing are part of the experience of being human. So, instead of checking out of your life to avoid failing or disappointment, why not welcome the experience for what it is meant to teach you, and open yourself up to the character growth that will inevitably follow.

It might also be helpful to re-evaluate your own perceptions if you find yourself feeling disappointed often. Are you perhaps inviting disappointment into your life? Are there ways that you could be showing up differently to your life and relationships that will shift things for you? Are you really clear on your deeply held expectations of yourself? How high is that bar in your mind? Are you open to receiving feedback from others on how you are showing up? Are you listening deeply to what is being shared? Are you creating clear agreements with others or simply operating from unspoken expectations?

Despite any disappointing experiences coming your way, your challenge will be to not let bitterness take root. Keep in mind that although disappointment is inevitable, being discouraged is always a choice.

I will give you a tangible example from my own life. I had looked forward to going home for the holidays with much excitement and anticipation. If I was honest with myself, I would admit to already creating expectations in my mind about how I expected life to behave. And then our trip got cancelled and we had to face the disappointment that we will not be having the Christmas that we had hoped for.

I have one of two choices here. I can wallow in my disappointment and turn it into a drama. I can let bitterness take root in the crevasses of my mind and I can unconsciously ruin any chance of having a beautiful Christmas with my family, by ruminating on my disappointment and by being angry at life for not conforming to my expectations.

Or, I can take inspiration from my disappointment and make a conscious decision about the kind of Christmas I want to create. You see, I can either take on a victim mentality here and sulk about reality. Or, I can take ownership of my own joy and choose to create a magical Christmas by meeting life head-on and embracing what is here in my lie right now, instead of what I imagined was going to be here.

By choosing to stay in the moment and to embrace the opportunity that is available in the disappointment, I open myself up to deeper experiences of joy in my life and I am also saying through how I’m showing up in my world, that I will not let this disappointment define me. I still get to decide what I want to experience, even when life is giving me something different than what I asked for. And who knows, perhaps this disappointment is a beautiful gift in my life. Only time will tell.

I’m choosing ownership. I’m choosing joy. I’m choosing inspiration. I’m choosing to create magic and to embrace where I am in my life right now. That does not mean that I don’t set clear intentions for another trip at a later date. It doesn’t mean I give up on seeing my family. However, it does mean that I embrace life instead of resisting it. It means I surrender to the flow of life, instead of pushing against it and causing upset in my life, because life refuses to bend to my will. It means I accept finite disappointment whilst holding on to infinite hope.

What will you choose this holiday season?

References:

1. Breytenbach, C. (2021). Two ways of being with disappointment. Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/two_ways_of_being_with_disappointment/
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