Everyone faces disappointment sooner or later. Often it is this that becomes the reason for rethinking guidelines and priorities, but it is always invariably accompanied by various negative moods. Even though disappointment itself makes it possible to see the true state of affairs, it remains something unpleasant, although on the other hand, inevitable. What to do if you are disappointed? How to avoid disappointment and what benefits can be derived from it? Any desirable form of dealing with disappointment requires knowledge of what disappointment is.
What is disappointment?
Disappointment is the awareness of the discrepancy between the expected and the actual, meaning by the expected something exclusively positive, and by the actual something negative.
Simply put, disappointment is the understanding that something ideal is not so ideal, but quite ordinary. The most common objects of disappointment are people and ideas. Among people, the most common targets of disappointment are authority figures and partners in romantic relationships . Authorities naturally inspire their own superiority, and awareness of their humanity and the ability to make mistakes leads to disappointment. At the same time, falling in love gives rise to an idealistic picture of the world around the relationship being created, which does not allow one to see the shortcomings at the beginning of the relationship, which usually shocks lovers over time.
Disappointment comes from expectations and created illusions around a certain person or idea, and such expectations come from the mind as well as the false ego. It is impossible to be disappointed in what we cannot call “mine.” You cannot be disappointed in someone else’s faith, in a foreign country or someone else’s leader, but disappointment occurs precisely because of “mine.” The mind, in turn, sees an idealistic object, be it an idea, a person, or anything else, as a source of pleasure. An ideal romantic relationship is a state of falling in love that is familiar to almost everyone. And this all comes from the mind, which builds illusions around someone and instills desires. But the end of “mine is ideal” is disappointment.
One man studied the history of his country from childhood and was immensely proud of the great victories and achievements of his Motherland. However, after a while, he began to discover that his country was not the very first in everything and was losing wars. This awareness gave rise to a natural reaction - disappointment. This illustrates how idealization leads to disappointment. In turn, disappointment can cause anger, disgust, contempt, hatred, malice, cruelty and other states that characterize consciousness in a state of suffering. Disappointment is definitely suffering, but the question of whether a person can benefit from it or not is individual for everyone.
So, disappointment is the destruction of idealism in relation to any object . Disappointment itself occurs due to the fact of expecting certain standards : actions, words, deeds or demonstrated qualities, as well as in the feeling of belonging to the object of potential disappointment.
How to overcome feelings of dissatisfaction
Sometimes in life it happens that you suddenly become so disappointed in people that you don’t know how to deal with it. But it would be worth making an attempt to find the answer to this question, why this incident occurred, why a person is obliged to satisfy your expectations
When making a thorough analysis of the situation from a different perspective, it is necessary to take into account the entire set of personal characteristics of a person. He fully justifies his behavior, because he does not know at all about your fantasies in his head, what ideal qualities you deigned to endow him with
It is quite natural to have different views on the world around us, as well as values and beliefs.
If your partner occasionally repeats not entirely correct actions, most likely, seeing this, you will be able to understand the essence of what is happening, your experiences and emotional state. It is your behavior that may cause him to react this way. Therefore, you don’t always need to blame the people around you, but first analyze your own actions and desires.
If you suddenly lose faith, without expecting it, then you should not immediately sulk, because your inner world begins to accumulate negative emotions. And their excessive accumulation entails inevitable psychological changes that you yourself will no longer be able to cope with.
Disappointment – benefit and harm. How to avoid it?
Disappointment leaves a certain imprint on a person’s consciousness and subsequent life perception - worldview. Thus, disappointment becomes one of the most important factors in the formation of a person’s personality and the reflection of his subjective inclinations. Belief in one or another material object foreshadows disappointment in it: relationships, individuals, ideas, groups of people or their associations. It is important for us to either avoid disappointment altogether, or to move through it in a way that gives us a new experience and makes us better.
Based on this, the first thing you shouldn’t do is negatively fixate your consciousness on the object of disappointment. You should not take revenge, hate, become embittered, or become an ill-wisher, because in essence, in this way we do not give the opportunity to open up to something new, fixing our attention on the negative experience of the past. One of the most important aspirations of a person is to become happy and various manifestations of hatred will not help us in this, and therefore we should abandon them as a heavy burden that we do not need. Expectations, which have become the only condition for the occurrence of disappointment, are precisely in our minds, and therefore is it worth blaming others for our own claims? This will not help anyone, but will only hinder everyone. Therefore, the first thing that is necessary in case of disappointment is to unfocus the consciousness and take it away from the object of disappointment, because it is this that makes it possible to free ourselves from the attachment that causes us suffering. Use this chance wisely.
Second, the right lessons must be learned from disappointment. If we have gone through disappointments in one partner, we will go through it again and again until we understand that our attempts to find an ideal are simply impossible, just like attempts to idealize our partner. Every person has shortcomings and we should accept this naturally, taking them into account in order to be able to properly build relationships with others, and not blame them for imperfections. From disappointments you can gain a tremendous amount of experience and opportunities for improvement, including the ability not to get stolen. It is in disappointment that we are able to learn patience, compassion, detachment, control of feelings and emotions. This is an important source of experience, albeit a painful one. Disappointment is more a reflection of ourselves, our own world and what we want and seek, rather than what is contained in others.
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Third, you should develop the right attitude towards expectations and possible disappointments. By expecting disappointment, we reduce the suffering from it, while at the same time leaving ourselves with the opportunity to learn the right experience. Of course, we have the right to expect other people to fulfill their duties and do what they say, but everything that is beyond this is just our speculation and we should not expect something that someone does not know about. We get disappointed because we want to experience happiness from a certain object, but without meeting such an opportunity, disappointment and suffering occur. To avoid this, it is necessary to correctly build an awareness of what should be expected from people and what should not be done. Fulfillment of given promises and contracts, as well as compliance with rules and norms of behavior from people should be expected. Trying to wait for something beyond these limits is a minefield, it may or may not explode, but it will not get any better.
So, disappointment becomes a tool for gaining experience, maturity, self-knowledge and the right attitude towards life and people, but at the same time, disappointment can really harm a person. An example of the negative impact of disappointments can be:
- withdrawing from the world to avoid potential disappointments
- transition from one extreme to another
- an attempt to justify one's own hatred with expectations
- cynicism, mistrust, suspicion, cruelty
- inability to perceive experience, stagnation in life
- fixation on the past and fear of the future, inertia in life
- cessation of useful activity in the area in which disappointment occurred
Disappointment manifests itself in different ways, but misunderstanding it leads to negative consequences. This is specific harm to human life, perception and even health. Therefore, you should correctly understand the reasons for your disappointments and what lessons you can learn from them. In fact, by realizing that we ourselves are to blame for our disappointment, we can truly feel freedom from injustice and misunderstanding of why this or that negative scenario happened to us. It also frees us from the need to experience constant negative emotions. All this, taken together, is needed more by ourselves than by those in whom we are disappointed. Yes, getting rid of this can be a difficult task, but without getting rid of claims towards others in our hearts, we will poison our own consciousness, knowing full well that nothing will change from our dissatisfaction.
How not to disappoint
Disappointment in people also has the other side of the coin - this is when people are disappointed in us. To prevent this from happening, there are simple tips on this matter:
- There is no need to deliberately charm
. When meeting someone and starting a new relationship, or when starting a job, we tend to embellish our own image, which we are still far from achieving. But it is not at all bad if a person brags a little about his good sides in front of people. But when you only have a little time, and you are not ready to charm people throughout your life, then you should not create an illusory image of yourself. There will come a time when you will get tired of playing, and your normal state may greatly dissuade someone. - Do not start relationships with people
whose main life line is “satisfaction-dissatisfaction.” This type of person quickly becomes fascinated by you, and this is nice, but here’s the catch: after that, they abruptly move on to the second stage. - Build relationships in a rational way
, get a partnership, help the other person look at things realistically, provided that you want to do this.
Frustration in trying to enjoy
Disappointment reveals our selfish motives, because when we give ourselves completely and without expectations to something, we are not able to be disappointed in it. The one who expects the fruits of labor will be disappointed, while the one who is dedicated to his work will continue to act with enthusiasm even when everything goes against him. It is this way of action that leads to success in realizing oneself in one’s business. Quick and high-quality success is obviously impossible; it is either quick, but in fact useless, or it requires extreme dedication to the task. People usually get disappointed precisely because they think that they wanted “everything at once.”
Disappointment comes to us precisely in those areas of activity from which we expect a return in the form of celebrity, money, honor or anything else. The investment of effort does not pay off according to our expectations - disappointment comes, followed by abandonment of activities. But this approach sounds more like childish behavior than the behavior of someone who will achieve success. The most important rule of development is that correct repetition leads to skill, which, in turn, leads to success.
And if you repeat the blows often , Even though the ax is small , it will cut down mighty oak .
William Shakespeare. Henry VI
Thus, disappointment must be replaced by patience and a refusal to try to enjoy the fruits of labor prematurely. There are many stories about how such attempts led to a sad end, for example, the story of how a young peasant, seeing that the barn was full of grain, refused to sow the land, but autumn came, followed by winter, the grain ran out and he had to starve, left without grain at all. Therefore, you should reap the fruits of your labor in a timely manner when the right time comes. But this time never comes at the very beginning or even in the middle of labor.
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It becomes possible to avoid disappointment in work if we act selflessly. Not for your own pleasure, but for the sake of higher concepts: helping others, fulfilling your duty and purpose, improving your life or realizing your talents. This will save us from disappointment by enabling us to act with enthusiasm despite external circumstances.
Whereas if we want to enjoy immediately, only suffering . Driven by greed and the desire to get rich quickly, people fall into the trap of a fraudster or soon begin to break the law, which leads to a natural result. Therefore, the motive of our activity should not be attempts at material pleasure, but the achievement of happiness through improvement and correct life.
Material desire certainly produces the greatest suffering, and freedom from such desire produces the greatest happiness.
Srimad-Bhagavatam. 11.8.44
The birth of relationship addiction occurs in childhood
Each woman initially creates for herself a certain framework within which the ideal life partner, the love between her and a man, should fit.
It is important to note the following fact:
Growing up, everyone strives to make up for the lack of love received in childhood. Everyone has their own ideas about love that they follow.
A child up to seven years old observes adults, which helps him form certain beliefs about life and people’s relationships. Everything that develops in the child’s subconscious at this age continues to influence the development of a person’s future life.
The problem of lack of love arises from two extremes: in childhood, parents either paid too little attention to the child, or were unable to share warm feelings among themselves, and the baby in this case became the main object of receiving love. At the same time, parents constantly felt dissatisfaction from reciprocal love.
This hunger for the most important feeling on earth gives rise to addiction in a child. Having matured, he will experience various types of dependence, expressed not only in the desire to receive love
This includes excessive gluttony, shopaholism, smoking and alcoholism. The second scenario is to avoid those weaknesses that a person feels subconsciously. For example, if he is afraid of being disappointed in love, although he lacks it, he will avoid long-term serious relationships.
The consequences of disappointment and freedom from it
Freedom from disappointment makes it possible to live truly freely. Without fearing, on the one hand, all sorts of collapses, and on the other, looking at things as they are. Disappointment itself frees us from our illusions and for this we should be grateful to it. Through disappointment we contemplate the true state of affairs, and it is this vision that allows us to act as correctly as possible in the current circumstances.
The stronger our expectations, the more painful the reality will be. Right action comes from a realistic perception, so we should give up all illusions about other people, ideas or anything else. Freedom from disappointment means that a person can see everything in the right light, and this indicates the ability to correctly perceive the world and act in a way that will avoid suffering and lead to happiness. This is precisely the goal of any person’s activity - to become happy.
A common way to get rid of potential disappointment is to curb your mind and stop perceiving it from the point of view of various material objects, concepts and categories. The truth is that every living entity is an eternal soul, which is not part of the material world. Our senses can experience pleasure, but only the soul can experience happiness. Trying to find happiness through pleasure thus becomes pointless. If we understand our spiritual nature, we have knowledge of how to become and be happy. But ignorance forces us to follow paths that are not meant for happiness. Just as my fingers cannot taste food, so the material side of a person: his mind, mind and body, cannot feel happiness on their own. These instruments are given to man for performing correct activities, and not for trying to enjoy the material world. Fingers feel happiness when the stomach is full of food, so we should use our life for right activities.
Why women are disappointed in men
Disappointment is not a feeling that comes instantly. For a long time, discontent, bitterness from disappointed hopes and resentment accumulate in a woman. After some time, when emotions overflow the cup of patience, a breakdown occurs, resulting in an ugly scandal, often leading to feelings of anger and even hatred.
Psychologists say that the following factors lead to disappointment in a loved one:
- Verbiage. He was always generous with compliments and promises, assuring that their life would be full of happiness and fun. The woman in love was ready to follow him to the ends of the earth. And after the wedding, it turned out that she would not see a vacation in the Maldives, because the most he was ready to give her was an inflatable pool on his garden plot. As a result, his idle talk led to resentment, bitterness and cooling of the relationship.
- Weakness. Almost every family periodically experiences difficulties associated with a lack of money. Previously, you were sure that no difficulties would break you, because your loved one assured you that he was ready to do anything if only you were happy and smiling. However, time has shown that everything is not so rosy and it is easier for him to sit down and revel in self-pity than to pull himself together and find a way out of the current situation.
- Marital infidelity. She loved him madly, was ready to do anything for him, and he betrayed her by cheating on her with another woman. The hitherto beloved husband began to stay late at work, hide in the shower with his smartphone, and talk himself out of going on weekends together due to his workload. At first she endures, believes that this is temporary and that everything will soon return to normal, but over time, doubts begin to overcome her. And then she finds out that he has another woman. Anger, resentment, despair - all this leads to disappointment and breakup of relationships.
- Indifference. At first there were huge bouquets, cute souvenirs and romantic evenings. And then everyday life reduced all the romance to nothing. Everyday worries, being stuck at work, the birth of a baby, and then the husband began to move away. At first he simply became less emotional, then he began to criticize the food and order in the house, and then he began to treat his wife like a servant, pointing out how she should behave and what to do. It is at this moment that she realizes that he never really loved her.
- Assault. He was always gentle and affectionate, caring for her whenever she caught a cold. He said that she was the most valuable treasure one could wish for. And now he doesn’t consider it shameful to beat her sometimes so that she remembers who’s boss. After another “educational” session, he asks for forgiveness and promises that he will never hit again. She believes because she loves and gives another chance. But then everything repeats itself again and again and again.
- Infantility. A cheerful, sweet guy, with a lot of plans for life, conquered her and made her believe in her dream. But after the wedding, it turned out that he was not only not courageous, but also a mama’s boy, incapable of making decisions and actions. For him, the norm is to shift responsibility to his wife; he is ready to be led in relationships and is generally not ready to serve as the head of the family.
Important Psychologists strongly recommend that women maintain critical thinking, even if emotions and feelings of love overshadow reason. The ability to sensibly assess the situation will allow you to protect yourself from possible disappointment in your loved one.
True goal
The correct course of action is to understand yourself, your purpose, what you should do and what you should not do. To know your spiritual beginning, your place in life and the correct perception of yourself and the world. The true goal is to act from the position of your real nature - spiritual. Operating from a spiritual perspective means interacting at the soul level. But on a spiritual level, we can only interact with God, since He is always in our heart. Thus, any material goal is not only meaningless if it is not associated with true understanding, but is also a source of various sufferings and disappointments.
It is worth acting to improve your life, fulfill your duty and destiny, purify yourself, but all this only serves to build the foundation for the possibility of a higher kind of activity - devotional service to God. There is nothing higher than God; the only reasonable and logical conclusion in a person’s life is a conclusion that points to the achievement of a higher goal. The highest goal is God, there is no doubt about it. God cannot be reached either through austerities or meditation, or through the acquisition of knowledge, or through various pious activities. God can be realized only by His mercy, and this mercy can be earned by engaging in devotional service to Him. Therefore, a reasonable person, understanding his true nature, will be interested in achieving the highest goal, which can give a feeling of boundless happiness.
Disappointment is the destruction of our idealistic hopes and illusions. It comes on its own when reality opens up to a person who has many expectations. There is only one way to stop being disappointed - not to expect pleasure from various objects, and also not to identify yourself with them. But even from disappointments you can learn many important lessons, which will both allow you to understand yourself and look at the world differently, and will allow you to turn inside yourself, to your heart, which will be the first step towards a truly important goal.
Five stages on the path from charm to maturity
Psychologists say that a person feels disappointed for as long as it takes to reorient the psyche and consciousness. Moreover, such experience is a mandatory step on the path to maturity.
How the completed process of disillusionment occurs:
First stage: charm.
When a person is CHARMED, it is as if he falls under the spell of: an idea, a hobby, another person, a profession, a new place of work. A very pleasant and necessary state, but also very short-lived.
Stage two: disappointment.
This is a process of disenchantment, when illusions collapse. The main symptoms of the second stage: loss of hope, indignation, attempts to drown out the pain with bad habits (alcoholism, drug addiction), denial. At this stage, people either “break down” or analyze the reasons for their condition. Sometimes they go to a psychotherapist for an answer.
Third stage: recovery.
Those who managed to pull themselves together and get out of a dangerous turn reach this stage. Recovery provides inspiration for creativity and frees up strength for new relationships.
Fourth stage: maturity.
During this period, a person is at the peak of his capabilities. He becomes the Master, not the Victim: he builds comfortable relationships with others, stops complaining, and feels gratitude for any opportunities.
Fifth stage: satisfaction.
This is the satisfaction of being able to pull yourself together and enter a new stage of life. This is the pleasure that an old problem has been solved and no longer bothers you. In general, people who reach this stage become kinder. Perhaps it comes from wisdom.
This is such an interesting transformation. But to pass it, you will have to work on yourself.
Important Steps on the Path to Healing
The feeling of disappointment is devastating and instills uncertainty. It leads to many negative consequences, from loss of trust to awareness of the meaninglessness of life as such.
A person feels depressed, helpless, abandoned, unnecessary. He loses hope and faith and becomes a pessimist.
The fact that a loved one turns out to be different is regarded as betrayal and deception.
You forgave, believed, hoped, but nothing changed - and finally, your eyes were opened. Remember four important things:
1. Firstly, disappointment in one person, even very strong and painful, cannot affect your entire life.
Fight your anger, resist the surging depression, but don’t let yourself be drowned.
Crying and worrying are allowed; for some, tears help to let go of the situation.
Chat with friends, look for new hobbies, dance, hit a punching bag - any means are good when you need a distraction.
2. Secondly, revenge is the worst way out of the situation. Pain for pain, an eye for an eye - this is all unproductive nonsense that will only worsen your internal conflict.
3. Third, disappointment can be useful and sobering. It gives a lesson in life psychology.
Next time, you will not blindly trust the first impression; you will be more careful in opening your heart. Or maybe you decide to get rid of illusions forever and learn to evaluate people realistically?
4. Fourthly, you most likely noticed for a long time that something was wrong with this person. You had doubts, suspicions, but you tried to ignore them.
There were a million prerequisites for his final bad act, which became a critical point. Therefore, this is also your fault.
This is normal, we prefer not to notice what is unpleasant to us. Like little children believing in Santa Claus, we hope for a miracle: maybe it just seemed like it?
But now you have to admit that the chosen one is far from ideal, has a hundred minuses and unacceptable qualities.
Getting sober is unpleasant, you'll get a bad hangover, and you don't have to fight it alone.
