Greetings from a state park in Michigan!
Disappointment sucks. People disappoint, jobs don’t come through, or what we thought would happen just doesn’t.
In some ways, disappointment is pretty straight forward: we set expectations, and they don’t get met. Unfortunately, what can easily happen is that instead of “just” being disappointment, it can infect of our sense of self esteem and self confidence. “Wow, he certainly didn’t turn out to be who I thought he was” becomes “I’ll never meet anyone. I must be so unattractive” and “I can’t believe I didn’t get that job after that good interview” becomes “I’ll never find anything. Why does this always happen to me?”
When those thoughts come up – just cut them.
Disappointment is the universe’s way of re-aligning your thinking to the way things actually are. Let me give you a quick example. Let’s say you’ve just landed your dream job for a company you’ve always wanted to work for, because their product is just so perfect. You finally get in, and after months of working there, you find yourself stressed to the max and totally unhappy. Turns out, this company produces a great product despite being poorly managed which creates high turnover which means you’re working 12 hour days just to keep us.
You could say “This is so disappointing! I’ll never find any job that makes me happy.”
Or, you could say “Turns out, despite the awesome product, this company is poorly run.”
“I’ll always be alone” could become “Turns out, he was a jerk – the type of guy who could totally walk away from a good relationship.”
Disappointment gives us the opportunity to take a step back, take a deep breath, take a fresh look, and realign ourselves with how things actually are. When we do that – we increase our sense of self confidence.
