Dealing With Disappointment

In this blog I'm going to talk about how I've personally dealt with disappointment and some tips and tricks to help you deal with let downs and disappointments.

Dealing with disappointment is never easy, you get that horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach and it feels like the world is going to end. You have that horrible little voice in your head going over and over all the things that have gone wrong and that's all you can focus on. It sucks. it really does. It's something we will all have in our lifetime, and something we'll have to deal with a lot. The dealing with it though is never easy or straight forward. 

You can be disappointed in a lot of things or you could have that feeling of disappointment projected on you by someone else. I can never quite work out which is worse, feeling the disappointment or knowing someone else feels that disappointment towards you. "I'm not angry with you at all, I'm just disappointed" is possibly one of the worst phrases someone can say to you, for some weird reason it just cuts you really deep and makes you feel so awful. It takes you back to being naughty in school and the teacher telling you she was disappointed and feeling so horrible and sick. This is a hard one really because you have to change someone's opinion of you. I think you just have to try and prove that you know you made a mistake or attempt to make amends with the person who is disappointed in you, that is, if you think it's worth proving them wrong, you may not feel that it is worth it at all.

I think the worst disappointment is when someone who you thought was a close friend or someone who you thought you knew really well completely betrays you or does something that you never imagined they would do. This is such a hard one because if you're really close to them or they're your partner, there is so many feelings there, as well as a load of history that you have to either put behind you or move on from. I think it's so important that you decided with these types of disappointments if you can forgive the person completely or not. If you think you can, then you can't bring up what they did every time you have an argument but if you really feel like you can't forgive them then you have to let them go. It's not fair being friends with someone or being in a relationship if you can't forgive them for something they've done.

If you're disappointed in yourself that's a whole different ball game. It's important to be able to forgive yourself and reflect on the decisions that made you feel the way you do. I think being reflective here is something that is key for almost forgiving yourself and helping you to understand what went wrong. By understanding what happened and why it did, it enables you to not do it again or make sure that  it can't happen again. If you're upset about a grade, reflect on if you did everything you possibly could, did you revise hard enough, did you follow the assessment criteria, did you put enough effort in? It's not about finding blame or over thinking, it's all about looking at where you could improve and do better next time. It's so important not to be too critical of yourself or beat yourself up if something hasn't turned out the way you expected it to. Not everything in life always goes to plan, it is, however, important to be able to see what went wrong and move on from it. 

The main problem here is being able to accept that there is nothing you can do to change what happened or how someone else is feeling at that specific moment in time, but instead realising that it's not the end of the world and being able to pick yourself up and rectify the situation. It's looking at it and thinking, yeah that sucked and I'm going to do my damn dear hardest to ensure it doesn't happen again. You're allowed to be upset with yourself and be annoyed, but don't let that swap you or define you are a person. You are more than a mistake you have made.

Stay awesome.