Life is a cruel mistress.
It tends to give us moments of joy that we hope never end. At the same time, it tears us apart with moments of agony, pain, and suffering.
The response to the former is obvious. We are happy, ecstatic, and enjoy the moments of joy.
But our response to the latter is what determines the overall flavor of our life as mostly life is filled with disappointments mostly. Seldom is the case when what we want happens the way we want.
Better be prepared for it. If we don’t then our emotions are going to take us for a ride.
There are numerous ways to handle disappointments. The strategy that works for other people might not work for you.
My personal method to deal with it is that I detach myself from the event. This strategy works because we don’t allow ourselves to be reactionary. We are able to look at ourselves and the situation we are in objectively. This gives us time to act. That time delay allows us to craft our response.
Usually, when we face such situations we tend to become angry. The first response is always a knee-jerk response and is seldom the ideal one. Avoid it at all costs.
Habitual advice like count to 10 etc. also works along the same lines.
This is my strategy, however, you might have another. There are lots of effective ones out there
Here’s what Jim Rohn says about handling disappointments:
Let’s face it … people and events are going to continue to both hurt and disappoint you. Among the people will be those you most love, as well as those you least know. Seldom is it their intent to purposely hurt you, but rather, a variety of situations mostly beyond your control will cause them to act, speak, or think in ways which can have an adverse effect upon you, your present feelings and emotions, and the way your life upholds. It has been this way through six thousand years of recorded history, and your hurt or grief is not the first time a human has been deeply hurt by the inappropriate actions of another.
The only way to avoid being touched by life––the good as well as the bad––is to withdraw from society, and even then you will disappoint yourself, and your imagining about what is going on out there will haunt you and hurt you. Knowing this, there is but one solution that will support you when people and events hurt you, and that is to learn to work harder on your personal growth than anything else. Since you cannot control the weather, or the traffic, or the one you love, or your neighbors, or your boss, then you must learn to control you … the one whose response to the difficulties of life really counts.
Jim Rohn
Learn to control yourself instead of your situations.
This is one of the best strategies to handle disappointments. We are the ones who we can control so exercise that control on yourself.
We can’t predict life, we can never assume that it’s all going to be sunshine and rainbows. Life is muddy. Learn to move through it. You can do it agitated, angry or being content.
I write daily here on my blog. There is no limit to the word count. I am not focusing on any topic here. I want to build a daily writing habit. This is Day 31 of the Daily Writing Challenge in 2022.