We are constantly facing the issue of disappointment. I see it all around me. I experience it personally. At my work in the College, I hear from peers who are disappointed in students, disappointed in the Administration, disappointed in me as the Faculty Association President. I also hear from faculty who are disappointed in other faculty members. We are close to final exams and from students, I hear about disappointment in their grade or in a professor or just in their overall experience in the class.
At home, disappointment can reign as one person wonder why another hasn’t cleaned up or upset that someone ate the last of some favorite food. Often it’s a more generalize disappointment as in “why did you do that”….or not do something.
We definitely hear about disappointment in our civic society. We’ve had two Presidents for the past almost 16 years from two different political parties and about 70% of the country has been remained disappointed throughout the entire time. We are so disappointed in Congress that I think if a Constitutional Amendment was made to eliminate the legislative branch were proposed…it would pass easily (which would be bad). We’re disappointed in the state of Indiana, the state of California, the state of Wisconsin, the state of New York….I mean, except for maybe North Dakota or Idaho, every state has someone deeply disappointed in them.
I wonder, however, if what we are experiencing isn’t disappointment at all, but rather misplaced expectations. In one sense, what we are saying is that all the time, we see all around us people experiencing their expectations not being met. In a wonderful post on marriage, blogger Julie Nelson made this deep point, based on the writing of the book Fighting for Your Marriage by authors Howard Markman, Scott Stanley, and Susan Blumberg. They said, “A major clue to understanding your own expectations is disappointment. When you’re disappointed, some expectation hasn’t been met. When you’re disappointed, stop and ask yourself what you expected.”
Yep…there it is! As Nelson wrote, “How we manage our disappointment will determine our happiness or unhappiness.” I love that and will add it to my collection of powerful life quotes. Do you see the strength in it? “When you’re disappointed, stop and ask yourself what you expected.”
Most of us do a poor job of managing our expectations. I do. I wrote about it in regards to my trip to Austria four years ago. What happens is that we create an image, a narrative in our own mind about what we think is going to happen, what we believe must happen. Before long, this storyline becomes our reality and as events unfold, the moment these two don’t match, we begin to have this deep sense of discomfort. Depending on the situation, that discomfort begins to become more bitter before eventually ending in the dreaded disappointment.
A person disappointed becomes a person unhappy. An unhappy person can often become someone who cannot be pleased by the other. Before long, this disappointed person can become judgmental, critical and bitter.
Look, I know people do disappoint. We’ve all experience true disappointment, fairly let down by someone or an event. However, make sure when you face that disappointment, you “stop and ask yourself what you expected.” It’s really the best recipe to live well!