Where your Disappointments Come From

From time to time we all go through a phase of disappointments.

But we don’t always go through the process of finding out where our disappointments come from.

It’s easy to put the blame on the people who disappoint us. What’s not easy is looking inside ourselves for the answer.

We avoid doing that because it’s scary. We don’t want to consider the possibility of finding out that it might be us who should take the blame, not others.

But before we play the pointless game of blaming, let’s first look at what a disappointment is in a nutshell.

Disappointment is an effect to a cause. It’s a reaction to an action or in some cases, it comes from a lack of an action.

Now, do you remember the last time you felt disappointed? Remember what caused it?

Were you expecting a specific outcome but it didn’t go your way?

I bet you had some imaginary expectation from someone who didn’t meet it. I say imaginary because chances are the details of that expectation was only in your head and not in theirs.

The last time you went through a phase of disappointments you were expecting the people around you to take certain actions the way you imagined.

The thing is, people are not in your head and if you keep your expectations in your head, you will set yourself up for more disappointments.

Does this mean you should stop all your expectations immediately?

No, you don’t have to. But there are things you can do to minimize the disappointments caused by your expectations.

The most effective way to do that is by turning down the volume on your expectation nob.

When you lower your expectations from others, you end up lowering your disappointments. And that’s really the key to happiness. You’re welcome.

This doesn’t mean you should never have any expectation from anyone. It just means you need to be in control of them and not let your happiness get tied to it.

You need to accept that people are all different and they view the world around them from different lenses that are made of their experiences.

When you have lower expectations, you leave room for people to exceed them.

Now people have a chance to deliver more than expected which will lead to making you happier.

The other way to minimize your disappointments is by being super clear about your expectations. Make sure it’s understood by them the way you have it in your mind.

So next time instead of being upset that you’re disappointed, you can look for the expectation behind. Ask yourself to find out if your expectation from the outcome was communicated in a clear way.

Lack of clarity is another issue that causes disappointments but let’s leave that for a future post.

So in a nutshell, expectations are bad, MKAY? They are bad because expectations lead to disappointments and when we are disappointed, we feel sad. And nobody wants to feel sad when they can feel happy.

I wrote this piece as part of a 90-day challenge I took on to get better at this type of writing. To learn more about me you can visit my website here.