How to Get Over Disappointment?

Disappointment is a killer. For all of us who have felt it know that it is a real tough emotion to deal with. Comes with tons of other heavy ones like anger, dejection, frustration, remorse, withdrawal, hopelessness, and more. Heartbreaking stuff and yet it is all around us. Sometimes several times a day, in small and big amounts.

The truth is that most times we feel the fringe emotions but fail to understand the core reason behind them. More often than not, it is “Disappointment.” The only way to get over and past it is to recognize, acknowledge and accept it or you may end up there for a long time, like me.

It happened sometime in March. I had typed out a full article on how to get over mistakes which took me several days and even more drafts to write. It was deeply personal as it reflected something untoward that happened at work. I was highly affected and was processing the difficult emotions as I wrote it.

In the meantime, my 10 yr old’s laptop was malfunctioning (or it was just easier to use mine with touch screen). So, virtual school was being done on mine.

As luck would have it, he closed all tabs, including the article, which incidentally was not saved because the auto-save function on wordpress was malfunctioning too.

Recently, I met Dilip, a friend and we were discussing my blog. I happened to mention this incident and that I had not written a blog piece in months. In my mind, these events were unrelated. It was not until he said “An artist cannot recreate a masterpiece!” that it struck me. Deep inside, I was still stuck in the disappointment and pain of the loss months ago.

I was heartbroken then as tons of my energy and emotions were washed away just like that and I was left feeling bereft.

I only just figured out that it was disappointment I felt, almost beyond redemption. With myself, with my son, with my laptop, with wordpress, with the entire situation. Hell! I was even disappointed with virtual school. I was pissed off and it was coming out on my writing by not writing! How twisted is that?

I tried to find every possible reason (read excuses) when people asked me why I had stopped writing. A new home, new circumstances, new environment, new people. All seemed valid. I even convinced myself that had nothing much to say. Those who know me will vehemently disagree and probably laugh out loud even at the mere suggestion. 🙂

So, here I am back on the saddle, writing about precisely why I stopped writing. It is inexplicably cathartic and rewarding at the same time. It seemed appropriate to address the elephant that had been in the room for far too long.

I began to think about how we deal with disappointments and came up with a 3 step process to help pave the way for us.

• Step 1: Recognize. Identify the signs. Watch out for resistance toward negative emotions and investigate the reasons behind them. Really think about it.
• Step 2: Acknowledge the hard feelings. It is tough to do. Allow yourself to feel it. We tend to escape the hurt by making excuses, like me!
• Step 3: Accept it that we are human. People and situations will disappoint us and we will disappoint them. It is impossible to avoid. It will not be much of a life if we are always running away from it. So, we learn to face it instead. We will run into some joy too along the way.

With that bite of wisdom from Dilip, and a hot shot of enthusiasm, The Thinking Captain is back on track! I will return regularly with lots more to say, even if I may be dealing with disappointments!

Until next time…@thethinkingcaptain