It’s impossible to go through life without experiencing any number of disappointments. Right from the word go we feel the impact of not getting what we want (or think we want).
Not getting our wants, dreams and expectations met is a common form of loss that we live with on a daily basis so it is often not even acknowledged. The frequency of this kind of loss leads to the development of a number of beliefs that may have been meant to create safety by giving events in our lives meaning but in the end they only serve to keep us trapped.
Thoughts such as “I knew it wouldn’t work” or “I never get what I really want” or “I was stupid to think I could live my dream” are just a few examples of self-defeating thinking based on loss. It’s what we do instead of letting ourselves grieve the loss we are experiencing in the moment. Because we have so many instances of unmet expectations we can end up feeling quite overwhelmed by the accumulated disappointments which often leads to depression or simply giving up on life.
It need not be so. When we learn to pay attention to our inner world we start to recognize that the feelings that arise when we are disappointed by something that didn’t happen or was different from what we expected are actually there to help us, not harm us. Most of us have become so adept at not even realizing we had expectations or wants in any given situation that we don’t pick up on the cues. We wonder why we feel so crappy and unwilling to do anything.
Listening to our bodies helps us recognize the more subtle losses that accumulate so that they don’t have to take over or make us sick trying to get our attention. The willingness to be compassionately attentive and curious about what we are thinking or what happened to trigger our pain or unhappiness can go a long way in helping us learn to do what is natural, grieve our losses. When we don’t hold back the natural flow of emotions but are accepting and present instead we can, with kindness, acknowledge when something has not gone our way. Then we can make better choices as to what we will do next.
Listen, feel, acknowledge and choose consciously what your next step will be. You’ll be amazed how much time and energy it frees up.
