Disappointment is a complicated emotion to deal with because every day can bring new circumstances to be disappointed over. Sometimes disappointments come at hurried speed (the well-known “when it rains it pours”). Sometimes disappointments are huge & life-altering. Then some are tiny, irritating, or just make you flinch. Meanwhile, hard times around the world increase our daily stressors & can heighten our reaction to negative news. Luckily, there are several Ways to Deal With Disappointment to improve our capability to cope & bounce back quickly.
Ways to Deal With Disappointment
1. Accept How Your Feelings
Disappointment hurts & that’s normal. Don’t try to avoid it or conceal it with a big smile. It works better not to be swept away by those enticing impulses. But instead, accept how you feel. To let it all in & allow it to hurt for a while. Because if you do, it will go faster & in the long run, be less painful to realize what has happened.
If, on the other hand, you reject how you honestly feel, those emotions can crawl up later & out of the blue, making you moody, pessimistic or aggressive.
2. Let It Out
One of the most effective Ways to Deal With Disappointment is to let it all out. Whether it’s disappointment or anger, you must feel it & let it out. A healthy way to accomplish emotional health is to reveal it to your friends, family, or even a therapist. You could also channel this type of complex emotion into a creative outlet. Try to write in a journal or do something physical like taking a long run or working out.
The point is to control your emotions & manage your negative thoughts by honestly feeling whatever you are feeling and letting it pass. Research has shown that emotional repression can thwart our personal growth. With the capability to feel emotions & actively express them, you can adapt to new & unknown situations.
3. Get New Perspective
When things go south, it’s easy to feel like it’s a catastrophe instead of considering the bigger picture. Discussing with loved ones about your disappointment can bring some much-required lucidity. When you get some outside perspective other than your own, you can start to see things for what they indeed are rather than how you feel & think about them.
4. Remember, You Are Not a Disappointment
Just because you may have faced a disappointment, experienced a setback, or made a mistake and disappointed someone else doesn’t mean that you are a disappointment yourself. This situation that you are in currently won’t last forever, even if it may feel that way now.
Try to recognize these truths:
- Just because you were disappointed today or you disappointed someone doesn’t mean that you can’t do better or things won’t be better next time.
- This unfortunate event does not categorize you as a disappointment unless you decide to see yourself that way).
- If you move forward & you take action, then you will move on & you will improve more.
5. Learn From It
If you want to know How to Deal With Disappointment, you must learn from it. Instead of getting carried away by pain & negative emotions that can come from disappointment, try to see it more as something learning opportunity & something that will help you grow in the future. Ask yourself these questions:
- What are the things I can learn from this?
- How can I adjust my route to avoid this type of disappointment in the future?
- What is one thing I can do in a different way the next time?
You may learn that you can likely handle better the next time you are in a similar situation. Or that you must strike a better balance between rest & work to avoid errors or to decide more rationally.
You may even realize that you must make a bigger change in your life & start spending less or no time with someone or something who/ which has disappointed you too many times in the past or always demoralized you despite your best efforts.
6. Remember, Disappointment May Come If You Are Stepping Out Of Comfort Zone
Who has never faced disappointment? Or never feels low about a setback or an error? The people who never really step outside of their comfort zone. Every successful people have had their share of disappointments & failures.
Setbacks & often feeling disappointed is a natural part of our life. This a sign that we are trying to grow & improve our situation. Keeping this fact in mind can help us to stay strong & to more easily manage our own errors & setbacks.
7. Refocus On What You Still Have
To get over the disappointment, shift your focus to what you still have in your life. People who care for you, your passions & the things you sometimes may take for granted, like a roof over your head & daily meals.
Practicing gratitude in this way can help us to put things into perspective & not let some temporary disappointment overwhelm us & derail us from our course.
8. Talk It Over With Someone Close
Getting an improved & broader outlook on what happened is a vital part of managing disappointment in a better way. One of the most powerful ways to do that is to disclose it & talk it over with someone close to you.
By letting out as your friend listens, you can release that inner weight, sort things out for yourself & admit what has happened instead of trying to hide it or ignore it. If the two of you discuss it, then you can see the circumstances through someone else’s eyes & from a different perspective.
Is Feeling Disappointed Good?
The answer is Yes & No. Not at the current moment. But the steps you take after you experience major disappointment can entirely transform the ultimate outcome & help you to make better decisions. Disappointment is less helpful as an emotion & far more helpful as a lesson. When you experience disappointment, it tells you that something was inappropriate. It could be the situation, the procedure, or your expectations.
In other words, looking at things in different ways is one of the best Ways to Deal With Disappointment. If you continue your actions in the face of disappointment, you can get a significant breakthrough.
FAQs
Q: What causes disappointments?
A: There can be several reasons behind it. Factors like failures in professional & personal life, Expectations of other people, places, things, Childhood experiences, and past traumas can cause it.
Q: Is disappointment normal?
A: It is a common human emotion & entirely normal. Not everyone can go strong forever.
Q: How long does it take to get over it?
A: It varies from person to person & their mental strength. Strong-willed people decide not to drown themselves in negative emotions for long. They employ effective Ways to Deal With Disappointment.
