When it comes to life, one thing is almost certain: disappointment. Whenever we want something we also open ourselves up to the feelings that arise when we don’t get it, and those feelings can be hard to deal with. However, there are plenty of ways to lessen the blow of disappointment that doesn’t involve giving up entirely. That’s why we’ve put together a list of 16 tiny tricks that make you immune to disappointment so you can better deal with this challenging emotion.
1. Practice gratitude.
I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of buzz about gratitude and what it can do for your perspective, but I’m here to say the hype is 100% deserved. Having gratitude and framing our lives with it can change your outlook. When dealing with disappointment, we focus primarily on what we don’t have or what didn’t happen. What if we flip this and focus on what did happen and what we got from the experience? For example, you may not have gotten the promotion, but you still have a job and were able to improve your portfolio. Finding things to appreciate, even in a bad situation, can mean that we diminish the negative feelings associated with disappointment and replace them with joy, and that’s a good substitution.
2. Keep your expectations grounded.
When you approach a task, are you doing so with hopes of perfection or aiming too high? Though it’s good to challenge ourselves, we have to balance our ambition with grounded expectations. If you try, you must know there is a chance you won’t succeed. Accepting this fact, even when pushing the limits of what we can do, can mean we face less disappointment. Knowing your limits and being reasonable with expectations means we won’t be caught off guard when things don’t pan out. When we try new things, we should strive to feel pride for attempting instead of shame for failing to nail it on the first try.
3. Remain flexible.
If disappointment is leaping off a building and hitting the pavement, flexibility is the ability to slow our fall to try to make a safe landing. It’s not uncommon to get so locked in on a goal that we don’t look for other paths or ways to pivot to ensure success. Ignoring this option can mean you will be more disappointed if things don’t work out. Remaining flexible means we exhaust all of our options, and even if we fail, we can still walk away knowing we have given it our all. That sense of completion and knowing we did our best can lessen feelings of disappointment.
4. Learn from your experience.
Reflecting on your experiences is a great practice. It allows us to learn, grow, refine our process, and gain emotional closure all in one fell swoop. Experience is the greatest teacher, and it has a lot to teach us in terms of disappointment. Accepting trial and error as part of the process and learning from our mistakes can mean we are more likely to be successful, and it also helps us ground our expectations. Additionally, focusing on this growth-oriented mindset will mean you won’t be as disappointed since you’ll focus more on your progression.
5. Focus on what you can control.
Focusing on external factors outside our control is a recipe for disappointment. However, when we focus on what we can control or personally contribute to a situation, the scope of things we worry about gets narrower. We can’t be disappointed when we fail to win if we know that the game’s outcome isn’t directly dependent on us. Instead, try focusing on whether or not you did your best, made good decisions, and performed to the best of your ability. You may still feel disappointed in yourself for how you performed, but now you have a direct route to improvement instead of a frustration you can’t fix. Long-term, this will yield far less disappointing situations.
6. Be kind to yourself.
Nobody is perfect, and no one is immune to feeling down on themselves from time to time. This is why being kind to yourself and showing compassion during difficult times is so important. When dealing with disappointment, it makes no sense to beat yourself up or be cruel to yourself for feeling a normal emotion. Focusing on accepting, healing, understanding, and normalizing that feeling may be a much healthier approach. If you can see disappointment for what it is, feel it, and release it instead of allowing it to ruin your day, you gain immunity to the worst of its side effects.
7. Manage your reactions.
Lashing out, shutting down, or quitting when you feel disappointed may be tempting. Many of us are triggered by the feelings of inadequacy that this brings up, but it’s important to learn to manage your reaction to this feeling. When we react to big feelings, we give them more power over us. This can turn something as simple as feeling down on yourself into a much bigger issue that you internalize, bothering you for years. In these moments, it’s wise to take a step back from these feelings and take some deep breaths to regulate. Doing this can improve our outlook and prevent feelings from going deeper than they need to.
8. Get support.
When you feel disappointed, it can be helpful to consider others’ perspectives to help you overcome your negative feelings. Going to your support network and talking about your disappointment not only lifts the burden off of you but also allows you to deal collaboratively with the emotion. They might be able to ground you or help you boost your self-esteem when you’re feeling stressed. Knowing that someone is in your corner who believes in you can make disappointment seem less hopeless. Remember, there is no shame in needing help to overcome your emotions; disappointment is no exception.
9. Brainstorm alternatives.
When one door closes, make sure you have a few others open. You can avoid disappointment over an outcome if another potentially positive outcome is waiting in the wings. Always have a backup plan, and know you have an out if your prospects aren’t looking promising. Knowing you have options that you are equally excited about or serve you can mean you never have to face the loss associated with not getting what you want most. Though this option still leaves room for disappointment to crop up, it also gives it fewer opportunities to consume you.
10. Practice detachment.
Buddhists believe that attachment is the root of all suffering. When we want things, become attached to outcomes, and crave worldly comforts, we open ourselves up to disappointment, greed, and emptiness. Though this is a particularly extreme ideal, there are ways we can take a more minimal approach and apply it to our lives. Detaching ourselves from expectations and not being overly emotionally invested in specific outcomes can be the difference between devastation and inconvenience. When we emotionally invest in an outcome, we get our feelings involved in complex and meaningful ways. However, avoiding this kind of attachment can uncomplicate many potentially emotional situations.
11. Set boundaries.
Since disappointment is primarily about expectations, setting expectations in the form of boundaries can be helpful. Setting clear boundaries in your personal and professional obligations can mean there is no space for unexpected or undesirable outcomes. This starts with familiarizing yourself with what you need in situations to feel safe and fulfilled. Once you’ve decided what that looks like, expressing that clearly to those around you can set the tone for interactions and situations that arise in the future.
12. Celebrate small victories.
Breaking down your bigger goals into smaller stepping stones may be a valuable tool in discouraging disappointment. By making smaller, more attainable goals, you can achieve them more readily and build trust in yourself. This trust in yourself is invaluable when facing tough times, as it makes seeing your path to success as delayed instead of canceled. Additionally, taking the time to appreciate each step forward means the times when you stumble or lose a bit of momentum will not affect you as intensely.
13. Embrace acceptance.
Acceptance involves acknowledging and embracing reality as it is, even when it’s not what you had hoped for. Though it may not be the dream outcome, staying rooted in the present and allowing yourself to make peace with an outcome can lessen the effect of disappointment. This concept can be difficult to master and often involves minimizing our emotional attachments and looking outside of ourselves. Conceptually, acceptance is not about good or bad; it is simply what is, and that may be comforting to you.
14. Focus on the good.
Optimism, like gratitude, has the power to change your outlook and make you more resistant to negative emotions such as disappointment. Optimism has countless benefits; it makes you more resilient, happier overall, and more likely to challenge yourself. If you can look on the bright side of a bad issue, you can trick your brain into ignoring some of the negativity that might arise from it. We’re not prescribing blind optimism, as it’s still important to acknowledge things that upset us. Nonetheless, we believe it’s worth trying to find the silver lining in disappointing situations.
15. Prioritize self-care.
When you feel good, you do good. Part of this is real-deal self-care and taking inventory of your emotional state. You have to do the work with yourself and seek to cultivate a mature and emotionally intelligent perspective on life. Working through issues with low self-esteem and addressing our fears and weaknesses is one way to lessen the effect of disappointment on us. Disappointment is a challenging emotion to overcome. However, if you are willing to nurture yourself and practice self-regulation, your next brush with it might not be as bad.
16. Reframe your perspective.
Disappointment is not always entirely bad. Sometimes, it just depends on how you look at it. You can look at it as a chance to learn, an opportunity to try again, or a sign that the opportunity isn’t for you. Reframing how we see disappointment is a way to mitigate the harm it can do us. By making sure we don’t equate less successful attempts as bad, we take the thorns off of disappointment. Focusing on gratitude for the opportunity to try and the potential benefits can mean less room for negative feelings to take hold.
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