A Life without Disappointments
How often have you been let down because someone canceled a plan on you? Or you had expected your partner to understand your feelings but got ignored? Or you were waiting for a workplace promotion which never came? We have all been there!
Our life is full of desires and wants. Sadly with all this comes an inevitable possibility of disappointment. In this article, we will discuss some very practical approaches to living a life without disappointment and the reasoning behind them.
Process v/s Results
In this world of deadlines and objectives, we often tend to give a lot of importance to the results. Sure, results are a very important metric in measuring the progress and outcome of a task, but more often than not result-oriented thinking leads to a lot of expectations and pressure, which if unfulfilled leads to disappointment.
We do need to set a direction in life and find where we want to eventually end up. But the important thing to realize is to not tie our expectations to the results, rather stick to the framework or the direction of where you want to go and focus on the process. I like to call these process-oriented goals. Process-oriented goals focus on the process of reaching the goals rather than the actual results and thus have lesser expectations tied to them.
For example, say you are a software developer and want to start work on a project. Coming up with the project idea and setting some timelines is great since it defines the direction and where you want to reach. But instead of saying “I will complete this task within 2 weeks”, it is better to say “I will commit 4 hours a day to this and give my full focus and try to complete the task”.
This slight shift in the thinking process can really alleviate you from getting disappointed for missing a deadline. Rather it makes you content if you are honestly able to fulfill the commitment. You are focusing on the process rather than the result in this case. You are giving weight to your honesty and commitment rather than your skills to complete the work. When you let go of the outcome and put more of your attention on your action, you would expect less from yourself. This will take a lot of pressure off and save you from disappointment.
Do not expect
Now, this is as straight advice as it gets. It’s simple: Do not expect from others for anything! We tend to build expectations from people especially from close relations like your partner or your family. We expect them to behave a certain way and reciprocate at times. Although these expectations are very natural, they are all potential candidates for disappointment.
Let’s just face it, we humans are very imperfect. We miss out on deadlines, we tend to break promises, we often forget what needed to be taken care of, and so on. Having expectations for people to keep true to all these leads to a lot of anguish when they just don’t do it.
We need to learn to let people be in their natural state and forgive them for their imperfection, cause we ourselves slip up at times and might have even hurt others unknowingly! We cannot control anyone’s behavior, we can only control how we treat them and how we treat ourselves. So be nice to yourself and forgive others. This can lead to a more content life with lesser disappointments.
Why so serious
We humans tend to get too caught up and engrossed in all the different activities of our life. Our mind is like a room that is cluttered with different things strewn around. We work so hard all our lives, many times just to get an outcome thinking it will eventually make us happy, without questioning what we will actually get out of all that.
Our mind is always so clever to never let us indulge in the possibility that we will die someday, indulge in the possibility that all the work we actually do and all the achievements and accolades we so proudly collect along the way are going to go away the moment our life ends. It is like playing a video game with so much dedication believing that completing all levels will really mean something in the end.
The sad reality is that all this rush, the pressure, and the fight to reach somewhere does not really amount to anything. Even if we come to this realization, it is often too late and we have already spent countless years of life in pursuit of some goals. But if we change our perspective and flip this over its own head, we can start to see that this can be the most liberating reality.
We can argue that since nothing really matters, we are free to live our life the way we want. Since nothing really matters, we can be free from the web of expectations from ourselves to reach somewhere or do the next big thing. Instead, we can focus on living a life of most fulfillment! We can live with some kind of realization in our mind that since whatever we do does not actually amount to something, failing is very much alright.
We can alleviate ourselves from the web of expectations and the disappointments that follow them. We can literally take the game of life much less seriously and start to play from a new perspective- not worrying about completing all the levels and collecting all the hidden treasures, but to just enjoy the game itself. The very motive of the game is to enjoy it since simply completing the game actually has no fun.
This concept of taking your life more lightly and being in the moment to enjoy it does not mean you won’t do anything or won’t try to work towards a bigger purpose or set a direction for your life. It simply means to detach yourself from the outcome and expectations and simply enjoy the process and all the experiences. In fact, you now work with an attitude of working on your goals simply for the joy and experience of trying it out. Even the difficult times can seem more enjoyable with this approach.
