How to handle disappointment the right way?

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How to handle disappointment the right way?

Practical Steps for Moving Forward

November 29, 2024

Table of Contents:

Introduction

1. Understanding Disappointment

2.Allow Yourself to Feel the Disappointment

3. Reflect on the situation

4. Reframe your Perspective

5. Create an Action Plan Moving Forward

6. Build Resilience Against Future Disappointments

Conclusion

Introduction

If you are human, you will face disappointment at some point in your life. I know I have experienced my fair share of disappointments and as long as I am alive, I know disappointment will come again. It is a universal emotion that we all face. Whether it is disappointment in our kids, our spouse, our career or with our personal goals. If we all face disappointments, then how can we handle them and find the lesson that will take us out of disappointment and into personal growth?

In this post, I will share with you practical strategies for dealing with disappointment and finding a progressive way forward. After reading this blog, you should be able to confidently answer these two questions: How to deal with disappointment? What to do when you feel disappointed?

1. Understanding Disappointment

Why does disappointment hurt?

Disappointment by definition is sadness that occurs when something you wanted to happen does not happen. When we are disappointed it triggers a long list of emotions including: frustration, sadness, self-doubt, regression etc.

Disappointment is hurtful for a simple reason. What you expected and what you received are not aligned. The hurt that disappointment creates can be felt in the pit of your stomach. The outcome that you attached your feelings to did not happen. So it hurts! Sometimes really bad!

Is disappointment normal?

The good news is that disappointment is a normal event. It is all part of the training of life. It is there to help you grow as a person. So how can you dissect your disappointment and find growth?

2. Allow Yourself to Feel the Disappointment

As painful as disappointment can be, you still need to deal with it. Here's how:

Acknowledge your emotions

It is one thing to be disappointed but one of the worst things you can do is suppress what you are feeling. Acknowledge how you feel. You are important, so therefore, your feelings and emotions are also important.

The Power of Naming Emotions

The first step is to acknowledge your emotions, the next step is to name your emotions. Here are some questions to help you identify and name the emotion associated with your disappointment.

What is the first emotion I feel when I think about my particular disappointment?
Have I felt this emotion before with other disappointments?
What am I feeling overall( list all the emotions attached to your disappointment) for example, anger, sadness, discouragement etc.

Avoid Immediate Judgments

When we are faced with disappointment, one of the first things that we tend to do is blame ourselves. We become way too critical of our mistakes and want to immediately start the self-criticism process. If you view disappointment this way or tend to start the blame game, then you will miss out on the lesson. What is this disappointment or your disappointments teaching you?

3. Reflect on the situation

If you view disappointment as a teaching tool, then you will always be able to avoid them in the future. Here are three ways for you to reflect on your disappointments and learn the lesson every time.

Identity expectations and assumptions

Disappointments don't just happen. Usually there are a series of actions or things along the way that lead to you being disappointed. Here are some questions you should ask yourself to identify expectations and assumptions:

Did I set my expectations too high?
Did my goal align with my values?
Did I create SMART goals? Were they specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely?
Did I take actionable steps to fulfill my goals or to-do list?
Did I put in the work?

Evaluate the Outcome Objectively

Another aspect of reflection is objectivity. Maybe the thing you are so disappointed about is not all bad. Examine your disappointment through these questions:

Did I gain new insights into myself?
Did I grow in areas that I was lacking in before?
Did I find the good in my disappointment? If so, what was it?

Find Any Silver Lining

It might be difficult to see anything good in your situation even if you have asked yourself the questions above. But I highly encourage you to take on a positive disposition around your disappointment. Try and find something good that came out of your situation, even if it is a small thing. If you adopt a silver lining type of mentality around your fumble, then you will always feel more encouraged even in hard situations

4. Reframe your Perspective

If you are struggling with how your life is turning out or if you feel as if what you expected is not what you are getting,then it is time to shift gears. You might not be able to change your current situation but here are ways you can change your perspective and set yourself up for a better version of yourself.

Separate yourself

Too often, people allow their failures to define who they are as a person. They use failure as a measuring stick for how they treat themselves or those around them. Your failures should not define you. You have to believe that your situation might be bad but you are not a bad person. Beating yourself up creates limiting beliefs that only act to shape your thoughts and actions. Learn how to overcome limiting beliefs in my previous blog post: Overcoming Limiting Beliefs: How to Unlock Your True Potential

Embrace a Growth Mindset

People with a growth mindset see things differently than those who don't have a growth mindset. They see mistakes and disappointment as an opportunity to learn new things about themselves. Here is how you know if you have a growth mindset:

You are self-aware
You enjoy learning new things
You embrace change as a vehicle for growth
You invest in yourself and others
You are goal oriented

Practice Gratitude

Gratitude is such an underrated part of the human experience. We tend to complain more than we are thankful. You are probably asking yourself: How do I practice gratitude when I am already feeling down? Practicing gratitude is really important in handling disappointments. In my post, The Power Of Gratitude: How to Transform Your Life With a Simple Shift, I go into great detail about how powerful and necessary gratitude is. I also include some key benefits of practising gratitude, one of which is increased positivity.

Related content: Gratitude Works

5. Create an Action Plan Moving Forward

The worst thing you can do when you are disappointed is to get stuck where you are. Replaying your mistakes in your head over and over again is not very productive. Here's how you know if you are stuck:

You bring up your mistakes on a daily basis
You beat yourself up daily over your mistakes
You refuse to talk about anything else but your failures
You refuse to create future plans or goals that move you away from healing
You practice negative self-talk all the time
You won't forgive yourself

Instead of doing the above work on how you can create an action plan to help you move forward. Here are three areas of focus when creating your action plan:

Set Realistic Expectations

Oftentimes, the goals that you have set for yourself are not very realistic. Hence creating disappointment and failure. Earlier, I mentioned creating SMART goals. They are essential to helping you move away from disappointment and move closer to success. Take the time to reassess your goals and see if they meet the SMART goal test. Here is a simple worksheet that you can use to help you create goals that will set you up for success- Click Here.

Here are some key questions to ask yourself when reassessing your goals, these will help you to create new goals and also tweak the goals that you currently have:

What do I want to accomplish?
What do I want to achieve?
What problem do I want to solve?
Where do I see myself in 3, 6, 12 months?
Which one of my values am I honoring with this goal?
Which value or values will be compromised with this goal?
How will I know if I have achieved my goal? What is the realistic measuring stick?
What are my commitment factors? What actions will I commit to in order to achieve my goals?

Break down Future Goals

I cannot underscore the importance of baby steps when it pertains to goals. A lot of times our goals can overwhelm us. Just because they were unrealistic in the first place. I am hoping that if you follow the SMART goals process above, they will become more realistic.

But,you must also create a way for you to sustain them. Just like time management, goals create an opportunity to practise what I call the sum of parts. I believe that anything can and should be broken down into equal parts. The idea is that doing something for 10 or 15 minutes is more manageable than trying to do something for 1 hour.

Dissect your goals and create smaller mini goals within that goal. For example, if your goal was to save $1000 for the month of January. Instead of focusing on that large number of $1000. Break down this goal into smaller amounts. Focusing on what you have to do daily or weekly to achieve this goal. See below my illustration of this:

As you can see, if you break down your goal of saving $1000 into smaller, more manageable actions, it won't seem as intimidating.

Seek Support if Needed

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you still feel stuck. I recommend getting help or outside support. This could mean talking to friends and family. It could mean getting a mentor, someone who has experienced the same kind of disappointments that you are going through and can be there to help you through it.

Another place you might have to explore in helping you is a counselor or therapist. Someone who is trained to help you get through it all. As a life coach, I recognize that some issues run deeper than my area of expertise, especially if someone is having suicidal thoughts. If you are reading this and you are having thoughts of suicide, please get help immediately.

Important Phone numbers if you are suicidal, put them in your phone and reach out:

Canada: 1-833-456-4566 or dial 988 to be routed

USA: 1-800-784-2433 or 1-800-273-8255 or dial 988 to be routed

6. Build Resilience Against Future Disappointments

Resilience is like a muscle. In order to make it stronger, you have to do things to exercise it. You have to build it up. What can you do to guard yourself against future disappointments? And believe me, they will come so you need to get ready. Here are three ways to help you build up your resilience:

Practice Self-Compassion

If every time you fall down, you beat yourself up. Then this just serves to drag you down even further. What if you gave yourself some grace? You probably extend grace to others all the time or you are compassionate to others. Time to be compassionate to yourself. What does self-compassion look like?

It means forgiving yourself for mistakes
It means allowing yourself the grace to heal
It means speaking to yourself with kind words. Words that affirm your existence positively.

Focus on What you Can Control

Identify areas in your life that you can control. Areas of effort. Focus on those things instead of the areas of your life you cannot control. Are you trying to lose weight? Can you control what time you wake up to go for a run? Or control the kinds of food that you eat? If the outcome is that you don't lose as much weight as you thought you would, at least you put in the effort to try and generate the outcome that you wanted. Sometimes, we focus too much on the things that we cannot control and lose sight of the things that we can control.

Learn to Embrace the Unknown

There are times when you will just have to learn to accept the uncertainty of life. To embrace the unknown. Especially when things are out of your control. Learn to be adaptable and stable in all your ways. This will allow you to handle disappointments as they will naturally come into your life. The key is to embrace growth instead of defeat.

Conclusion

A life without disappointments does not exist. They are normal and yes they hurt but how you view them going forward will be instrumental in how you cope with them. Don't hide from disappointment, instead allow yourself to feel what you need to feel toward them. Then look at them as a learning opportunity. An opportunity to grow and make the necessary changes to your goals and actionable steps.

Nothing will be perfect, so it is important to focus on the things that you can control perfectly without beating yourself up.

Practice resilience, which includes being kinder to yourself and allowing yourself to go at a pace that encourages baby steps.

You got this and you are not alone.

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