How to get over life’s disappointments

Whenever we feel disappointed – because of a certain result, because of our behavior or that of another person… – it is because we had previously created certain expectations that were far from reality. Let me give you an example with my own story.

When I was five or six years old, my father gave me a book. It was my first book, a real book, full of text. It was not a comic or an illustrated album. I had just learned to read and I remember perfectly what my reaction was: a huge disappointment! Why a book? As if I were an adult… I didn’t want a book! I wanted a toy!

I didn’t dare say anything to him so as not to hurt his feelings, but I guess the disappointment was read on my face. I still remember the title of the book: Oui-Oui et la voiture jauneby Bibliothèque Rose (Oui-Oui is a character created by children’s writer Enid Blyton).

I read it with disgust. But oh miracle! I liked it a lot and since then I haven’t stopped reading. Reading has become one of the activities to which I spend the most time and which gives me the most pleasures. And writing books is now my second profession, along with being a doctor.

Why are we disappointed?

My disappointment, real as it was, was deceptive; painful at first, it gave way to a passion that still lasts me today, many years later.

Disappointment is that movement of surprise and sadness that hits us when we do not get what we expected and trusted would happen.

Some situations can disappoint us: a party less joyous than expected, the defeat of our soccer team, rainy weather, the result of the elections…

Read Also: Diet for rheumatism: 7 foods that relieve pain

Someone can also disappoint us: a friend who betrays our trust, a child who does not perform at school, a spouse who is not receptive during an intimate evening because he is too preoccupied with work…

Disappointment only comes when, previously, we have waited or loved, when we have gone through a positive wait. It is like a fall, a painful return to a reality far removed from our expectations.

What we do not want or do not care about, does not disappoint us. So our enemies never let us down, because we don’t expect anything from them.

Thus, to avoid disappointment, we can try not to expect anything. But that supreme detachment does not seem very joyful or attractive to us.

We prefer to live with hopes that are sometimes followed by disappointments, instead of neutralizing all our illusions in order not to experience any kind of disappointment. And we are right, well there is another way to live with it.

How to live disappointment

Many of the patients who come to my office are disappointed. But his problem is disappointment? Or rather an inadequate way of living it?

There really are sick disappointments: are those that we ruminate continuously, that push us to withdraw from the world and distance ourselves, that follow this reasoning: “I have been disappointed too many times; every time I have given my trust, in friendship, in love, every time I have waited… So I have decided not to commit myself anymore and not expect anything”.

As a therapist, I believe that this attitude breeds the most miserable people in the world. We cannot live without expectations or hopesand this is so because they make us as happy as the achievement of our goals and, sometimes, even more.

Read Also: Phrases about criticizing and judging others

I remember a well-known phrase that says: “The best moment in love is when we go up the stairs.” And this is so because half of our happiness is waiting and the other half, in the present moment. So that, instead of shying away from the feeling of disappointment, let us make better use of it.

The path of acceptance

Disappointment is a double penalty: we are disappointed in the situation – a rain that does not stop and irritates us – and also our attitude – grunting against the rain is useless, but we grunt even so.

However, it is well known that you have to accept life as it is. He said Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor: “Is that cucumber bitter? Chuck it. Are there brambles in the way? Avoid them. That’s enough. Don’t add: ‘Why does this exist in the world?’”

And as another philosopher reminds us, Andre Comte-Sponville:

“Disappointment is part of our humanity. So we must accept it too and stop hoping that we will never be disappointed again.

So, disappointment leads us to reflect on acceptance, that elixir to live in reality and not in a succession of illusions and disappointments. Accepting is not resigning or submitting, it is not giving up waiting or acting.

Accepting is taking note of what is already there: embrace the world as it is, instead of exhorting it to be as it should be. It is also accepting disappointment, calmly acknowledging that we expected something different.

Simply tell ourselves: “Well, things are like that”, and stop complaining to then turn back to reality and see what we can do: disappointment leads smoothly and progressively to action.