How to deal with disappointment

“One’s best success comes after their greatest disappointments.” - Henry Ward Beecher

When was the last time you faced disappointment from a certain outcome that did not meet your expectations?

It could be any event in your life, from a big set-back to a small mishap. Perhaps your meeting at work did not go as well as you anticipated. Your new job was not what you expected. Maybe someone you like did not reciprocate your feelings. Maybe your relationship did not work out the way you hope it would.

How did it feel? Did you feel like a certain sense of numbness and void inside of you? Were you despondent and dejected? Did it feel like it was the end of the world?

Disappointments are dissatisfactions that arise when your expectations are not met by outcomes. In short, a) you had an expectation b) things did not unfold against the expectation.

Every day, people deal with disappointments. Depending on how big the disappointment is and how you choose to deal with it, the feeling of disappointment may dissipate after a short while or hang over your life for an extended period of time. If not handled properly, disappointments can lead to depression and eventually apathy.

Disappointments can be good

Contrary to what people may think, disappointments are actually positive phenomena, for two main reasons.

1. Passion towards a cause

Disappointment is the reflection of your passion towards something, be it a certain goal, dream, desire or outcome. Wherever there is a cause, there will be an effect – in this case, the passion is the cause and disappointment is the effect. If you don’t care about something, you wouldn’t be feeling disappointed, would you? The very presence of disappointment suggests that this is something you care about so much that you would feel bad over it. The higher your disappointment, the stronger your passion for this is.

As Martin Luther King Jr puts it very adeptly, “There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.” This deep love is what drives you towards your goals, dreams and desires. This deep love will be what fuels you in life, bringing you to places you have never been before. This deep love is what makes life worth living. Remember that disappointment is always a better emotional state than apathy or neutrality where the individual feels indifferent towards anything. I would much rather be feeling a negative emotion any day than feeling absolutely nothing. The ability to feel is what sets us apart from non-living beings. To feel nothing is to be an android, a robot, a machine.

2. Represents an opportunity for progress

Disappointment also signals an opportunity for progress and growth. If you are disappointed in an outcome, it means there is actually a certain error in your framework of thought which need to be resolved.

Whenever you are disappointed, it means you have certain mental illusions about reality which you need to address. On the flip side, if your perceptions of reality are always right, you will never feel disappointed at all. By correcting your illusions and getting a more accurate picture of the reality, you are equipped with more knowledge. This knowledge is a source of power; power for you to act towards your goals.

Think of disappointment as a troubleshooting tool which helps you iron out the kinks in your perception of reality. By using the knowledge from your previous experience, you can act more accurately towards your desires. The more you deal with disappointment and learn from it, the closer you will get towards your goals and dreams.

In the next part, we will examine the 3 destructive approaches people adopt when faced with disappointments and why you should not adopt them.

How do you normally deal with your disappointments? Do you block them out of your life? Do you sleep them off and hope that you will feel better when you wake up? Do you tap into them as a source of energy for your future goals?

Dealing with Disappointments In Destructive Manners

Many people are caught like fish out of water when they are faced with disappointment. Because they are not taught on how to deal with it, they end up adopting various destructive approaches instead.

1. Avoidance by numbing yourself with other activities

Some people try to drown out or tune out of their disappointment by engaging in anything that takes their mind off the subject. They may partake in activities such as partying, hanging out, sleeping. They push themselves into going through the motions of daily life so they can just operate in auto-pilot mode without thinking. Some turn to addictions such as retail therapy, playing games, emotional eating, sex or even stimulants such as alcohol and drugs. These people seek solace in whatever that is within their radius, in their effort to avoid being alone with their disappointment. Rebound relationships are commonly formed for this reason, where the person tries to get over the previous relationship without having to deal with it directly.

While these give a temporal uplift in the short-run, they do not resolve the issue. Soon after, they face another situation which leads to disappointment again. Instead of properly resolving the problem, their immediate reaction is to turn to the same set of activities and actions to drown out the emotions. This eventually continues in a downward spiral.

2. Denying your goals and dreams

In the longer term, some block out their dreams and goals in life, pretending they don’t exist. They develop dual personality halves – on the outside, they erect a wall which serves as a form of defense mechanism; on the inside, they hide their real self and desires underneath. They condition themselves into not setting any expectations, since disappointment will not occur where there are no expectations.

For example, people who have been scarred by negative relationships tend to develop barriers to love. On the outside, they appear aloof and cool; however on the inside they long to find their special someone. Because they fear getting hurt, they deny their desire for relationships and refuse to let people into their lives. At some point in the future, this denial catches up with them and it creates a backlash. Have you ever met such people before? They look like they don’t care, but you know on the inside, they really do care. As they block out their desires, they in turn make themselves more miserable in the long-run instead.

3. Giving up on your goals and dreams

There is another group of people who give up on their goals and dreams. While they still long for their goals, these people resign to a fate where they will never reach them. They become depressed and self-depreciative, devaluing their own self worth and thinking they are not meant to achieve anything. They spend more effort everyday trying to convince themselves and people around them that they will never ever achieve their goals, as opposed to acting on them.

What Happens When You Deal With Disappointments Destructively

If you have ever dealt with disappointments in the above manner, you are not properly dealing with them.

Whenever you try to drown out your disappointment, deny your goals and dreams or even give up on them, you are really just rejecting who you are on the inside. You are denying your desires, your wants, your goals, your dreams, your visions, your real self – everything. These desires originated from somewhere inside of you, for a reason – and that reason is not for them to be denied. To quote Esther and Jerry Hicks from the book Ask And It Is Given, “If you have the ability to imagine it, or even to think about it, this Universe has the ability and the resources to deliver it fully unto you.”

When you try to deny your real desires, you are just hollowing yourself from inside out. You can try to pretend everything is fine and lead your everyday life, but you cannot fool your sub consciousness. Every day, living feels like an empty act. Over time, you will find yourself sinking from a state of disappointment and dissatisfaction to a state of apathy. You start living everyday in a lifeless, zombie-like manner, with no passion or zest. You feel like you are just swiveled up on the inside; everything through your lens just seems barren and empty.

The good news is, it doesn’t have to be this way at all. You are not alone in your disappointment. Everyone has faced disappointment at some point – your friends, family, teachers, managers, co-workers, etc. I have faced disappointments before as well, from all different areas of my life. It is not a phenomenon exclusive to you. As much as disappointment is an emotion triggered without your conscious undertaking, you can proactively deal with it in a conscious manner. As long as you learn how you address your disappointments properly and pick up from here, you can lead life the way it is meant to be led – in alignment with your passions and inner desires.