If you’re alive and reading this right now, there’s a good chance you have something very real to be disappointed about.
A crappy job. Relationship problems. Sickness. A political election. Or life in general is going nothing like you planned. Pick your poison.
“Disappointment loves sneaking up on you — like that weird one-eyed neighborhood cat who keeps showing up on your porch and peeing all over your decorative pillows.
So the question becomes — how do we deal with the disappointments in our lives?
And I write this having gone through my fair share. You don’t take the path of an entrepreneur without a lot of failures paving your way.
We can’t avoid disappointment. But when it comes your way will you crush the disappointment or let it crush you?
I say we crush it. But how? Here’s some ideas:
1. Think about the past disappointments in your life
I can almost hear you now —
“Great Paul, I’m feeling terrible about my life and now you want me to start thinking about some of my biggest disappointments. Swell. Why don’t you just tell me to eat raw chicken and then ride on a spin-a-wheel.”
While I don’t recommend eating raw chicken (although it would probably put your current disappointments in a different light), I do recommend thinking back to some of your past disappointments. And then think back to how things somehow worked out afterward, and maybe even for the better.
Typically when we think our life as we know it is over, our life keeps going.
For example, I remember a girl breaking up with me and feeling disappointed about it. Then a friend told me this wise advise —
“If you thought this girl was great and yet it wasn’t meant to be, think about how amazing the woman you are going to marry is going to be.”
And now eight years of marriage and three kids later, what my friend told me was a million times more true than he could’ve ever known.
“Sometimes what we see as a disappointment now is merely a blessing to be discovered later. (click to tweet that)
You never know how a “disappointment” will look in retrospect.
2. Stop tying your identity to the perceived outcome of your work
Sometimes we’re wrought with disappointment because we’re tying too much of who we are to what we do.
As I first wrote in my post “When your dream kicks the crap out of you,”
You are more than the visible outcome of your work.
And the outcome of your work might be more than what is currently visible.
Do good work. Put your dream out there. Do your best to help others.
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