Dealing with Disappointment | How to handle disappointment?

It doesn’t matter if you have been successful or unsuccessful in the past, but you might have already experienced it, some time. There’s always failure and disappointment. And there’s always loss too. The important secret is learning from the loss and realizing that none of those holes are vacuums.
“Don’t cry over the spilt milk” is the phrase often heard. But disappointment won’t let us escape thinking over it and feeling sorry. It just creeps into our head, out of nowhere, though you keep on prompting, “It’s okay”. Now that it has already crept in, take steps for not letting it bother you much. In this process, you will even learn making it a tool for positive thinking too. But remember, drugs, and food are not alternatives to beat disappointment.

Tips to keep you going

When things don’t turn out the way you hoped, it may seem like the end of the world. Here are some things you can do to keep disappointment from getting you down.

Stop. Calm Down. Give yourself some time to just sit with disappointment and experience it without concealing it to accept and acknowledge. Things might not seem nearly so bad tomorrow. To let this happen, sit alone. Don’t let anyone disturb you. Just observe your thoughts. Don’t contradict or say anything like, “That’s where you did wrong. Why didn’t you shout?” etc. So, don’t encourage any intersecting thought. Just recollect whatever happened, slowly. Settle with a peaceful mind and learn to accept the things as they are. Remember that everything is not in your hands and you can’t control the motion for the whole universe. Slowly, try to accept the things as they are and as they happened. Understand what is disappointing you. Don’t camouflage your thoughts or analysis with something else. Accept your faults.

Ask yourself:

• What have I got to gain by continuing dwell on this?
• Does this really worth getting angry or upset about?

Try getting out your feelings in a nicer way that doesn’t hurt you or anybody else. Share your feelings with your parents or a good friend. Think the ways on what you can learn from the experience and how better can you do it next time. Identify and focus on the good things you learn. Lastly, forgive yourself after determining how you should think the next time.

Assess Clearly

Assess your role in personal disappointments. Don’t judge yourself. Failing at something never means that you are a failure, but it has something else to say. It refers to the way you tried. Disappointment is not an emotion which you alone face. Everyone experiences disappointment. Walt Disney, Michel Jordan etc. has faced disappointments and learned from their disappointments and has moved forward in a different direction. To help yourself out of this, try to help others who are disappointed. Listen and respond appropriately. Listening to the ones in disappointment is always a better solution. Having someone to share your disappointment without hesitations is a blessing. Your response should be appropriate. Don’t make their situation your own. You can’t fix the entire things by say something positive. Offer help you can do, suggest possible actions or ideas on what steps to take next. This would at least give them an idea on what actually has to be done, instead of just grieving in disappointment.

To get out of disappointment

Try to remember different instances of your past, when you felt disappointed or upset with yourself. For each one, write about what you did or could have done. This helps you to feel better. Ask a family member, a close friend or a neighbor to tell you about a time when he or she felt disappointed because something important didn’t turn out very well. Ask them how did they handle it and how could it have been handled differently? Listen to them patiently without making any pre-assumptions or statements. You never know what made them think so or what their point could be in doing so. Just know that everyone has a way of dealing it.
For example, it is mostly observed that girls, who faced sexual assault, remain complied during the act and cannot respond immediately. After coming out of the scene, they regret a lot. They feel much disappointed for not shouting or protesting or for not recollecting and using the defensive moves they had practiced earlier. But after understanding that it is a neurological condition that makes them so, the severity of their disappointment gets reduced.

Keep a Friend

Ask a friend or a family member to be your special “positive perspective friend” when things go wrong or you’re upset. This helps a lot. Explain that the main purpose of a positive perspective friend is to help you see the brighter side of things and not to take things more seriously than they deserve. In the same way, you should also stand for them. This is the main essence of life, being one for another. When both of you support each other, none of you would feel guilty for taking help and both of you will be obliged and open for help. Such a healthy relationship will be like a refresh button for life.

Try to observe how people or characters handle the disappointment differently in their ways, while reading stories, novels, autobiographies, articles or watching TV shows or movies etc. Discuss what you’ve observed with friends or family members. Such a discussion enables you to view the problems in a third person perspective. This won’t let you sink into disappointment every time you face some obstacle. Remember the experiences you had or heard and think of people you know or have heard about who made the best of a bad situation. Know how they have coped up with positive attitude towards the situation and what difference did it make.

Keep Your Calm

Don’t let yourself feel like a complete failure because something didn’t turn out well. Develop positive attitude and not giving up or feeling like a failure because of one experience. If something or some relationship didn’t work well, there could be numerous reasons some of which can be seen and some other that are hidden; some could be obvious from little mistakes or varying ego levels while other could be due to the circumstances. One should patiently analyze all the possible consequences that led to the failure. But for that, one needs a calm mind. Waves can only create ripples, while still water can let the mud settle down and make the water clear to drink. Wavery mind will create many thoughts, while calm mind can analyze clearly.

When you are disappointed try to recall the other times when things went badly but turned out to be okay. Tell yourself that everything is going to be fine, at the end of the day. Always remember that things can be bought but relationships cannot be. So don’t let the relationships ruin over petty issues. If at all, something happened or spoken have led to the disappointment, remember again that, “Words can hurt; Words can heal” fill your words with love and care to bring make things better.
In case you feel stuck, please don’t hesitate to seek the help of an expert. Carrying the guilt or disappointment for long can hurt your mental being very badly, killing your inner peace and making you unstable. Help yourself out of this by booking an appointment with your psychological counselor today.