Often our expectations don’t align with real life. The result is disappointment.
Remember when you were a kid and lined up for an hour to go on a ride at a theme park or when you lined up to meet someone you looked up to or even that restaurant you really wanted to eat at or movie you heard great things about.
It’s likely that you will have felt some level of disappointment with the end result as the experience that you had built up in your head was so much better than real life.
Disappointment is a normal part of life and everyone will experience it to some extent in their life.
In 2020 we canceled too many things.
Too many birthday celebrations were virtual or drive-by.
Too many holidays and other occasions were quiet, or done over zoom.
In other words, 2020 was a year marked by life’s disappointments.
2021 hasn’t been much better.
Hell August 4th this year was a huge disappointment.
In Victoria we went from having zero new COVID cases and expecting to get back towards COVID normal, to instead barely more than 24 hour later being back in lockdown.
It’s now 57 days later and yesterday we had over 1,400 new cases and our only real way out is vaccination. Talk about disappointing.
Personally I’d also sold a business not long before this and was looking forward to the little bit of free time that this would mean.
Yes, I’ve had plenty of free time rattling around my 5km radius for the allotted time, but it’s not really the same.
It’s not fun to be disappointed, but equally you should not let it linger.
While it’s absolutely OK to take some time in your disappointment, try not to focus on your negative emotions for too long.
Spending too much time and energy on your disappointment will have a detrimental impact on your mood and mental health.
Ask yourself, ‘Will this matter one year from now? A week? One month?’ A lot of the time asking this question will bring you back to reality.
Far too many people, when faced with disappointment, tend to attribute negative life events to their personal failings. They resort to obsessional self-blaming, as they feel ashamed or humiliated of not measuring up to the image of themselves they have in their own head.
As a result, they direct their anger inward, to themselves.
It may prompt them to say that they deserved it, that they were not good enough.
Other people, will direct their anger outward toward others, to people who didn’t fulfill their expectations. It will contribute to feelings of spite and bitterness.
Unfortunately, both emotional reactions keep the person stuck in a spiral of disappointment and often this disappointment can turn into a lingering sadness — a feeling of loss, of being let down.
So what are the alternatives?
You can also view the disappointment as something you can learn from. You can consider whether there is something you could do differently next time.
When we catch ourselves thinking negatively, we should redirect our energy and focus on positive solutions.
You may need to do a bit of positive self talk or some meditation or some journaling. You may need to kick the negative people around you to the curb for a while and just surround yourself with positive people.
A big one for me is to look after your physical health.
Whenever I have had something stressful happen or a big disappointment I’ve always tried to prioritise my physical health as it has a big positive effect on my mental wellbeing.
I generally do some level of exercise every day (literally 7 days a week) not because I’m some vain bastard (you should see my hair and facial hair at the moment) but because it honestly it just makes me feel better.
It’s a way I cope with life and the inevitable stress and disappointment in it.
It’s much healthier than the red wine and dim sim method I probably used 10 years ago.
The point is that experiencing disappointment is often outside your control, but the way you deal with it
