Dealing with Disappointment (And When Things Don’t Go Your Way)

to learn, connect and find comfort together. Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of A Really Good Cry. I hope that your week has been good. To be honest, I've been really struggling with feeling so tired lately, and I don't know whether it's the weather or it's just my body just struggling to really move into this season.

But I have heard that people get sick the most during seasonal transitions, so right now we're kind of going from autumn to winter, and I've been hearing what so many people getting coughs and calls, So I've really been trying to support my body and follow what Kieran the Incredible Gut Expects said in my recent podcast about improving your gut health. So I've been taking my jester of probiotics and my digestive bit is before my meals, and honestly,

so far, so good. Touch would I have been feeling pretty good. So this is your reminder to make sure that you are doing all the things that you need to stay healthy and well this season. So this week I actually did a panel and one of the questions I got asked was how do you deal with disappointment? And I was thinking about the question even after the panel about my relationship with disappointment and how much has actually changed over the years. I used to be someone

that got disappointed a lot. Either I would feel like someone wasn't doing as much as I was, that they weren't reciprocating in the way that I wanted them to, or rejection would feel really personal, or that something didn't quite happen the way that I had envisioned it the way that I'd planned it out to be, so I'd

be disappointed. Disappointed. Disappointment that's a place that I lived in for a really long time, and it began to change how I actually interacted with people in the world, and one day I just realized, like, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be a fit thing moaning myrtal over here. That's not me, or at least that's not who I want to be. I don't want to feel like the victim. I don't want to look at the world pessimistically. I don't want to

see people and expect them to disappoint me. I don't want to see the world through the eyes of constant sadness or frustration. And let's be real, it is such a common feeling. You order a pizza and it doesn't have enough cheese and you're like, oh, I'm so disappointed. You put trust in a partner or a friend and they don't follow through. You're disappointed. You watch Gilmore Girls again forgetting how it ended, and expect Rory and just

to get back together, but they didn't. Really disappointed. Actually, that part of my life was really sad. I was thinking about it for like a whole week. Why did they not get back together? Why did I think that they should have? And I created a whole reality in my mind where that happened, But it actually didn't, and I was extremely disappointed after that, and I had to say to myself with some serious tough love, babes, it

is a you thing. And yes, people do do stuff, People do things that you don't want them to, people do do things that are sometimes very horrible. And yes, things happen that you didn't expect or want, things don't go to plan, and your life maybe in complete shambles. But choosing to feel disappointment was a choice, not a given. It's not something that was given to you. It's something that you are choosing to feel from the things that

are given to you. And so here is a question to ask yourself, what if disappointment isn't something that happens to you, but it's something that you're creating. And I know that sometimes that can be really difficult to digest because there are a lot of things that feel unfair in this world. There are so many things that happen to us, even if we feel like we're good people. And so it's really not about diminishing or making something that's happened to you feel small or insignificant. It's not

that at all. But it's helping you to realize you have a choice to carry that with you day in day out, week after week. And so it's less about what they've done, being right or wrong. It's more about do you want to carry this? Do you want to take on this weight and this responsibility? Do you want to take on this constant sadness, this constant frustration through your life, and do you want to see the world

in that way? And sometimes this ends up being really difficult, Like I feel like this world of self help and growth and trying to be better people, it feels like, why is everything something I have to fix? Why can't it be their fault? And yes, it is a lot of responsibility, and it is difficult when the fingers pointed constantly back to you when you're thinking, actually, I didn't make myself upset. They did. But if you are trying to live in a victim mindset, you're listening to the

wrong podcast. Because here we have to own things and we make our lives better and we do the work required. And that is the hard part about trying to be better, that you can't keep blaming other people for the way that you feel, the way that you live through life, the way that you see the world, the way that you see your circumstances. So first things first is you have to take ownership not of the entire situation, but of how it's making you feel. And often it's not

the situations we're in or life that's the problem. It's the expectations that we are putting on them. Every single time I've struggled to deal with the hand that I've been out or felt like something was unfair, it wasn't because life was actually unfair. It was because my expectations

were clashing with reality. I had created this picture in my mind of how things should be a job, a relationship, an opportunity, or even how a version of myself should look, and when life didn't match that picture, it led to this feeling of disappointment. And so it wasn't even that life was necessarily painful, even though sometimes it is. But it was more that my attachment to how I thought life should be wasn't happening. And that's what disappointment is.

It is this gap between your expectation and your reality. It's this mismatch between this idea that you've created and what's happening in real time or real life. And so the wider that gap is the harder the fall ends up being. The more you create this vision of how this relationship should be, how this person should be treating you. The more you've created that before it's actually happened, the harder you're going to fall, and the worse it's going to feel when it doesn't. And I think we just

taught to romanticize everything. We romanticize every single thing. We romanticize a walk in the park, which actually can be really nice, but we also romanticize things that haven't happened yet, including relationships, including friendships, including success, including timelines, including outcomes. We assume that our effort guarantees a reward, and we assume that being good means that we will get good things. We assume that life owes us something based on the

work or the effort that we've put in. And the truth is, sometimes you will do every single thing right and it still won't work out. And if your peace only exists when things go your way, you will always be at war with reality. And so a big part of dealing with disappointment is actually being more present in the moment and seeing what life is actually giving you

rather than what you are constantly wanting for yourself. And that can be really difficult because, of course we have aspirations for what we want in life, and that is so okay. Of course we should have them, but we also need to be in touch with reality at the same time so that we don't constantly live in disappointment.

There's this thin line and this balance that we have to strike between having aspirations and having this desire to have something happen, but also realizing that we are committing to the process, not just the result. We're committing to what we're going to receive from the process and from the progress that we're making while we're trying to make this result happen. But if the result doesn't happen, we also have to be aware of what we've gained through

that journey, what we've gained through that process. And the problem is if we're constantly attached to a specific result, we're actually never going to enjoy life because the result ends up being such a small part of our life. The end product is usually a fleeting experience or a excitement that we get. It's not usually the longest part of life. The longest part of life is the process. Most of the time, it's the progress that we're making.

It's the steps in between, and so if we're not learning how to appreciate that and gain from that, then our bursts of happiness and joy are going to be very fleeting and very small when we reach those little milestones that we're creating for ourselves. I recently read an article that said that the way that we handle disappointment

actually starts early in our childhood conditioning. Now, I don't think that that means it's our parents' fault, but I think what it means is how we deal with disappointment from a young age naturally shapes how we deal with it in our adulthood, and becoming aware of that is

really important. So sometimes taking yourself back to how you reacted when you can remember you first being disappointment, maybe you didn't get the gift that you wanted as a kid, maybe something of taken away from me, maybe your mom said you can't go somewhere. How did you react in that moment, and how do the people around you react? And some people, after facing disappointment, they learn to protect

themselves by shrinking. They set the bar really low, They stop hoping too much, because if they don't expect anything, then they just can't be let down. But that ends up being a false piece. It's not a real peace. That's just self preservation disguised as acceptance, and it can lead to a mediocre, un fulfilled life because you're just

constantly protecting yourself. You're not allowing yourself to take chances, you're not allowing yourself to fall in love deeply, you're not allowing yourself to jump in to a job that you really want but you're too scared to just in case you get disappointment. And so a lot of us, based on our experiences in life, can actually end up protecting so much we actually don't give ourselves the opportunity to even make progress or to achieve those goals because

of our worry of that disappointment. So our fear actually holds us back. So we think we're protecting ourselves and creating the shield around us which avoids disappointment. But actually then you're not feeling the you're not feeling or fulfilling this potential of joy that you actually could have. But on the other hand, there are people who become overachievers. They chase perfection, telling themselves that they need to try harder, do more, be better, and I think that high expectations

equals higher standards. But perfectionism isn't always a strength. It actually is also a fear response, and ironically it creates the exact same outcome, disappointment. So both this underachiever mentality and this perfectionist mentality are doing the same thing. They're trying to control disappointment instead of learning to live with it, instead of learning how to deal with it, instead of

learning how to process it. And so the thing we all have to realize is disappointment is absolutely a natural human response. It's kind of a spin off emotion of grief if you think about it. It's grief over what could have been, or what someone could have been, or what a situation could have been. But what makes it destructive is what happens next. So feeling the emotion isn't wrong. It's about how we then receive that emotion, process it,

and move forward with our life. Some people turn it inward, it's my faul, I'm not good enough, and it can lead to a shame spiral or a self blame game. Others can turn it outward. This person let me down, they didn't care enough, they don't value me. As much as I value them, and that turns into bitterness and resentment. But the thing is both end up robbing you of your power, and I think to really deal with disappointment in a healthy way, you have to try and find

the middle ground. Not blame, not bitterness, but understanding. Understanding comes from dialing down the assumption and dialing up curiosity, compassion, and benefit of doubt, just like you'd want someone to do for you. So asking yourself what actually happened here? What was in my control and what wasn't was my expectation actually realistic? And that pause between emotion and interpretation

is literally everything. It's where you stop being a victim of disappointment and you start using it as your teacher. So I heard this story and I'm going to share it with you. It was a really great lesson in understanding disappointment a little bit better and giving you perspective on how to deal with it. So there's a man and he spends years and years building his business but it collapses overnight, and of course he is so devastated. But instead of calling it failure, he calls it tuition.

He says that this was the price I paid for the lesson I needed to learn. So it's just a great lesson or a great story to remind us to think of disappointment as our tuition or the fee that we pay for the wisdom and learning that you gain from it. And also I think we have to get our mind away from this idea that things not going our way or not going the way you wanted them to is a bad thing. It's something we have told

ourselves versus what's actually real. Who said that things are supposed to go the way that we want them to go. Sometimes what we want and what's good for us are very different things, and we assume that we know what's best for us, but often we actually don't. We also don't have this vision of what is even possible. Sometimes what we want for us is far smaller and undervalues who we actually are, and so we end up wasting months and months replaying what went wrong, even when in

reality you can't change it. You can't change what happened, and replaying can be a good thing if you're analyzing the situation to extract the lesson from it, But if you're replaying it without purpose, it becomes wallowing and it keeps you stuck in the pain cycle over and over again. So instead we can take that pain. You can sit in it for a little bit, but then you turn

it into data. You turn it into data about your beliefs, about your boundaries, about your judgment, and you use it to fuel and to inform you about future things so that you don't make the same mistake again. And I also want to add that this is not false positivity.

I'm not saying just be happy about everything and everything will be okay, because the fact is, if someone promised you something, a promotion, a partner said that they'll be there, and they weren't, these are not assumptions that you've made. You have clearly created these hopes from facts and trust in other people's words. So disappointed is a valid emotion, especially if word was given, or a pact was made,

or it's based on facts and truth. And sadly that disappointment is not in your control either, because how another person is acted towards you isn't in your control, which means it is valid. Of course it's valid, but it's still not something you can control or change. So the reframe and mindset still has to shift to avoid you taking on the pain or you suffering for longer than necessary. So let's make this a little bit more practical. How are we going to go through this? We feel disappointed?

What do we do now? The first thing is feeling it fully. The fact is anything suppressed or anything that stays with us will then impact the way that we live the rest of our lives. And we don't want that. We don't want this disappointment staying with us through other experiences, through other relationships, through the parts of our life. And sometimes you don't even realize it. And so in the moment you feel it fully, you don't feed it, but

you don't skip the emotion. That is where toxic positivity happens. And all you have to do is let it all out, write it out, feel it, name it, cry or talk to someone, really get out everything in your mind that you want about this issue. And that might mean for a week you have to write the same thing over and over again, until one day you wake up and you're like, you know what, it doesn't feel les painful.

You know what, it doesn't feel like I even thought about it this morning, And slowly it will leave you. The more that you are able to get out of your system, the less it will follow you around, and the less power it has over you. And I think when you speak something, when you write it, when you let it go, the more you see it, the less power actually has over you because you're not keeping it within you and you're not allowing it to control the way that you are moving through life. The next part

is auditain your expectations. So what does that mean for each disappointmenten you write two columns what actually happened and what I expected to happen. Was the expectation fair? Was it communicated? Was it in your control? And so once you figure out what the disconnect was between the two, the expectation and the reality, that's what you know you shouldn't get carried away with the next time you're in that same position. The third part is you have to

stop outsourcing your peace. Disappointment hits hardest when your happiness depends on other people or uncontrollable outcomes, and so trying to shift your metric from did I get what I wanted? To did I show up how I wanted? This one thing completely changed me as a human. One way that it really made a difference in my life was I have always really liked giving to friends and family in

many different ways. My mom always used to get protective of me because many times as a child, i'd plan things, i'd spend time energy on someone, and often it wasn't reciprocated, and so my mom very lovingly would always say, well, she wasn't say in this way, but essentially she'd be saying, girl, you're doing too much. Do less. And I say, back to that, but I really love doing those things, and I really don't care whether they reciprocate or not. And for a while, I kept coming back to what my

mom said to me. When I would do something and it wasn't reciprocated, I would get disappointed. And then I realized that I was capping myself or stopping myself from showing up how I wanted to, how I naturally am inclined to be because I think I should be a specific way, because I think I should expect something from other people. So I started just showing up how I wanted to, rather than thinking about what I'm getting or not getting them, and trying to do things based on

a calculation. And honestly, that has made such a difference to how I've chosen to live my life and even more importantly, how happy I am every single day because I know I show up in a way that I want to, rather than doing it based on what others are doing for me. Next up, try to communicate honestly. If someone disappointed, you tell them, but clearly and calmly and without blame. I felt her when this happened. Is really different from you always let me down. Those two sentences.

You may be feeling the same way, but the way that you've communicated them will really determine how the other person responds and how that conversation is going to go. And so healthy communication prevents resentment from festering, and sometimes seeing their perspective, seeing it from their point of view, not through your pain filters or triggers, can actually make you realize that you've totally misjudged the situation. Have definitely

been there. Even in conversations with Jay, I've always I've ended up assuming things or thinking he meant something when he said this thing, and actually he didn't mean any of it, and I made it up in my head, and when he explained it to me completely change the way that I felt. And so having that communication, whether it's a friend of friend's family, even work colleagues. I think it's really important choosing your response. So what are

you going to do? So you can either sit in this disappointment or you can digest it and let it flow through you. If you feel it's just ruminating and it keeps coming up in your mind and your heart, write a letter to yourself if you're disappointed towards you, or write a letter to the person or thing that it's because of. Get words down on paper and just let it go and release it. Sometimes it's not even about letting them know, it's just about it getting out

of you. You might need to do that for days before it fully leaves you, but just know that it will if you try hard enough, and if you really want to let go of it, it will definitely leave. So I really hope that these words help you to deal with the past, present, and future disappointment. And please remember that acceptance isn't giving up. Accepting something and moving on from it. Does not mean that it's okay what that person did or what happened or what that situation was.

It's honestly just saying that this is what it is, and I trust that I can handle it. And every single disappointment carries this piece of feedback, a signal about who you are, what you value, and what you still need to heal. And if you ignore it, you end

up repeating it. But if you face it, you get to evolve from it and use it to inform you about how you should be dealing with things in the future, and also a great way to protect yourself in the future, because as soon as you process something and you analyze it, you'll realize that the way that you've reacted has come from somewhere, and so it creates a way for you to make informed decisions and protect yourself based on information

rather than assumption. But yeah, I really hope that this is helpful and I would love to hear your feedback. I know disappointment is something that we probably could feel every single day if we wanted to, if we chose the let it affect us in that way, and so sometimes it can get really overwhelming. But send me a DM. I'd love to hear your stories, and I hope you have such a wonderful week. Tending you so much love, M