Episode 76 of the Here to Thrive podcast, and today I'm talking about managing disappointment. We all experience disappointment at some time or other in our lives, and having some ideas or some tips or tricks up your sleeve so that you can pull on them when you need them the most is always beneficial. So that's what I'm doing today. Even if you're not dealing with disappointment at the moment, this podcast will hopefully sow some seeds in your heart that you can call on the next time you do feel disappointed.
Specifically, I'm going to talk about the emotions that go along with disappointment, the idea of accepting what we're facing in life, how taking your hands off the controls a little bit. I like to call it how not to white-knuckle life, how releasing our need to control a little bit can really empower us when it comes to processing disappointment, and the power of meaning when we're facing the hard stuff in life. So stay tuned for that one. This felt like a kind of good time to ask you from the depths of my heart, if you've enjoyed the podcast, to please spare a couple of minutes from your life to leave a review in iTunes.
This is the type of thing that helps iTunes recognize that this podcast might be okay and potentially worth listening to, and helps it get seen by new people. It really does mean the world to me, and your feedback through there, sometimes when you're sitting behind a podcast microphone between you and I, it can feel like you're talking to no one. So your feedback means more than you probably even realize. I read the comments, and that's what makes my heart all warm and fuzzy.
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But let's now get on with the show. Welcome to Here to Thrive. I'm your host, Kate Snowwise. This is a podcast for people who are ready to step up and live a happier life.
It's for those of us who are dedicated to understanding ourselves and getting the best that we can out of this thing called life. It's a mix of psychology and modern spiritual thought, always with a focus on practical advice, so that you can take it back and apply it to your own life. I don't believe we're here to merely survive. I truly believe we're here to thrive.
So let's get going. So disappointment. We've all been there. We've all had that feeling of, oh, I really wanted that, and it didn't come off.
Disappointment is a huge emotion, and it can quickly really affect our judgment and interfere with our functioning. It can bring us down. Often when we don't get what we think we want, it can really also affect our self-confidence. I see that a lot in terms of breakups or not getting the job you want.
Often it leaves us feeling self-critical, like we're not good enough, unworthy, and amongst those other feelings of being angry, sad, and upset. It just sucks. Disappointment sucks. So today I'm going to share with you some of the mindset hacks that I hope will help you change the way you look at disappointment in your own life, because that's really where our power lies.
Ultimately, mindset means everything when we're talking about how we handle the rough bumps in our lives. Our minds are so powerful, and we have the ability to influence them. So that's where we go in. Dealing with disappointment.
You know, there's so many different situations you may be in where you feel disappointed. I've used these examples before, but it could be that you don't get the house you were hoping to get, that the job of your dreams doesn't work out, that the program you wanted to get into at school, you don't get accepted. It could be the guy that you thought you were going to marry breaking up with you. There are so many ways that our human hearts can end up having to process and deal with this emotion of disappointment.
So how do we get through it? The very first phase, I believe, is acknowledging your emotions so that you can process them. If we don't own it, if we don't recognize that we're actually experiencing disappointment, we can't process it. There is no point in pushing any of your emotions aside.
If you sweep them under the carpet, they just seep into your life in other ways. So avoiding your emotions doesn't make them miraculously disappear. I wish it did, but it doesn't. So there is a concept in neuropsychology, which Dan Segal, neuroscientist, he refers to it as name it to tame it.
And I have spoken about this before on the podcast, but really it is worth reiterating the idea of naming your emotions so that you can tame them. What happens when we can put language to our emotional experience is that we diffuse some of the charge that it creates. Some of the emotional charge is diffused by just layering in that level of kind of higher cognitive understanding. And that is what Dan Segal's research has actually found.
That almost like taking a fire hose to the craziness of big emotions. That's what's going on in our brains when we find the right language to name it. So if you find yourself feeling overcome by emotion, one of the most powerful things you can do is step back for a second and say, what is it that I'm feeling? What is this emotion?
You'd be surprised if you do that, that it may not always be as simple as you thought it was. And naming our emotions can take a little bit of a moment, but man, when you get to the bottom of what the actual emotional experience you're having is, the relief is truly there. It sounds so simple, but it's insanely powerful. So I want you to practice asking yourself those questions.
How am I feeling right now? Especially when you can perceive that you are having a strong emotional reaction. If you feel like you want to go deeper, I really do recommend journaling. Journaling has been found in psych research to really help people process and step back from their experience so that they can understand themselves that much better.
It really does deepen our self-awareness and massively helps with the processing of our emotions. So journaling is an awesome way to also work out what's going on and how am I feeling and why am I feeling like this? What is that the root cause? If you haven't downloaded your free journal prompts yet that I have on my website, you can go and get that thrive.how forward slash free and you will see that I have 21 journal prompts.
So if you're open to the idea of journaling, go get those. Give it a go. Coming back to that first phase, it really is about acknowledging your emotions so that you can process them. Name it to tame it.
Don't run away from your emotional experience. Be willing to investigate it and be curious. How am I feeling? Because that is what will ultimately help you process the emotion and let it go.
Ignoring it just means you store it. So the second phase of really dealing with disappointment is practicing acceptance. Just a few episodes back, specifically episode 69. Always an entertaining episode, right?
69. I remember chuckling at that when I was a kid. So episode 69 was don't fight what is. And that really comes back to this idea of practicing acceptance.
If you're in a situation where you're dealing with disappointment, practicing acceptance is your path to freedom. I know that sounds so much easier than it actually is. Like I get it. I totally hear you, which is why the first phase is all is about processing those emotions.
But when you can start to move to a space of acceptance, that's when you set yourself free from the pain of the suffering. Our pain doesn't come from what we're experiencing. And this is what I was talking about in episode 69. So if you want to recap and to dive a bit deeper, listen back to that.
It doesn't come from what we're experiencing. It doesn't come from the situations that we find ourselves in. It comes, our pain comes from us fighting what is. When we don't like what we're going through, we cause ourselves suffering by wishing things were different.
It's wanting things to be not as they are that hurts our human hearts. That's what causes us emotional pain. If we can accept what we are facing, if we can accept our situation, there is a lot less emotional suffering. The more we do fight what is, the more we slow down our forward momentum.
And it hurts us more. So when I'm talking about acceptance, I'm saying accept the things that you cannot change. Now, if you can change it, by all means, go out there and change it. But be honest about what you can't.
And don't put yourself through unnecessary torture. I've given these mantras before on the podcast, but it's one of those things that I just think is worth repeating, perhaps till it's like ingrained inside of your brain, and that they will be there when you need them most. These are mantras that have helped me get through pain before. My favorite, nothing that is truly meant for me will ever miss me.
Nothing that is truly meant for me will ever miss me. And another one I heard recently, and I think it was actually in my workshop series. I'm going to say it was one of the women in there. Shout out to you if it was one of you beautiful women.
But rejection is protection. Oh my gosh, how good is that? And I know it's one that is often associated with God. And we're going to talk about that in a second.
But the other version is rejection is God's protection. And I want to go deeper there. Give your disappointment over to something that is bigger than yourself. Now, if you are religious or deeply spiritual, this might naturally be giving it over to God for you.
I conceptualize myself as more of a spiritual person. And I was saying just this week to a group of the women I'm coaching, I feel like the more I deepen my inner knowing, the less I know to be true. But I'm okay with recognizing that there is a mystery to life. I don't know if I have a great label for that, but I realize that there is something magical about the world that we live in and that I don't have all the answers.
Now, I'm a bit of a control freak. So for me, this conjures up ideas of surrender and recognizing that I don't have to white knuckle life, that sometimes I can relinquish control and move into that space of trust or faith that all is in right order. Psychological research also talks about the power of spirituality and protecting our well-being. When we can move into the space of trusting in something bigger than ourselves, it is very comforting for our psychological makeup.
So when you feel like you're at the end of your own rope, coming back to faith, however you conceptualize that, is a really powerful place to be. One of my favorite quotes, if you've been listening for a while, you will have heard it. And I'm going to paraphrase here, I'm just going to give you the gist, but it is from Steve Jobs about connecting dots. It goes something like this.
You can't connect the dots looking forward. You have to connect them looking backwards, but your dots will connect. In the meantime, you have to have faith that they will. That's so true of our lives.
Can you look back in your own life and see how your dots connect? The things that at the time you couldn't make sense of, how they begin to make sense. My life is full of examples of that now. And I'm 35, so there's a little bit of living under my belt, but I can't even imagine how many more dots I will notice as I get further into my life.
That brings me really nicely to the next point, which is when you're facing disappointment, look for the meaning in it. I want to be really clear here that this one is likely going to be hard when you are still in the midst of disappointment or in the immediate aftermath. Following back to the point I just made, often looking for meaning requires some space so that you can get perspective. So don't feel like you immediately need to be looking for the meaning in your disappointment while you're still living in the midst of your disappointment.
But it can be nice to know that one day you will be able to make sense of things. This idea of looking for meaning in your story really goes back to the conversation I had with Emily Esfahani-Smith, where we spoke about storytelling being one of the crucial components of finding meaning in our lives. That was episode 64. And the conversation with Emily around storytelling really resonated with me.
In terms of giving you a quick summary, Emily talks about storytelling being about looking back on our lives and making sense of them. That's how we find meaning, by looking back at our stories, our life stories, and looking for the meaning. She specifically spoke about the power of a redemptive story rather than a victim story. So a redemptive story is when you can look back at your own story.
And even when you've experienced something really crappy, you can look for how you grew from it. I think that's really related closely to the idea of post-traumatic growth, which has been studied more recently in psychology, and we're learning more and more about it. But it's the idea that oftentimes it is the biggest and most dramatic struggles of our lives that set us up for the greatest and most powerful growth of our lives. I'm sure that doesn't surprise most of you.
We kind of know it to be true. It doesn't have to be that way. But if you're dealing with huge disappointment or huge pain or big emotions, it can be a really reassuring thought to know that sometimes our greatest growth comes from our deepest disappointment and pain. So trust that one day you will be able to look back and look for the story.
Look for your own beautiful growth out of what you might be living through right now. If you want to continue the conversation, I have a closed Facebook group that I don't mention very often in here, but more and more of you seem to be finding it. So I'm going to share it. It's called Here to Thrive.
Surprise, surprise. Just so you know, it was actually named Here to Thrive, my Facebook group, before I even had a podcast. But it's a fun space. So if you want to continue the conversation, if you want to be in the inner circle, come and join the Here to Thrive Facebook group.
You should be able to find it by going to the link thrive.how forward slash Facebook and knock on the door. Send me a I want to join request. I will let you in. Next week, I'm talking to Andrea Owen.
I'm really excited about this because she's just released this new book, which is called How to Stop Feeling Like Shit, who doesn't want to read that book? Great title. Andrea is a life coach and also a podcast host, and she's just a straight talking gal, and I appreciate it. So next week, we're going to be talking about How to Stop Feeling Like Shit.
If you want to hear more, subscribe now so that you don't miss it. And I just want to say a big thank you for letting me into your world. This podcast is one of my greatest joys, and it is so lovely to see the impact it is making on so many people. So thank you for being here, and I hope you continue to join me.
I'll see you next Friday. Till then, keep thriving.