Feeling disappointed? Me, too.
I don’t easily feel disappointed, tbh. It’s not my go-to state of mind when things don’t go my way. Most of the time I just accept that in life, no matter how meticulously you plan, everything could just go down the drain. As my friend in college always told me, “Shit happens and life’s a bitch.” But recently disappointment just came over me. Fast. Overwhelmingly. So much so that I just curled up in a ball and cried. Have you ever experienced that??
After that dramatic episode, I took time to acknowledge my feelings and in the end I asked myself the billion-dollar question –WHY. Why am I disappointed? In the process of answering this question, I remembered this quote, “Dabrowski argued that fear and anxiety and sadness are not necessarily always undesirable or unhelpful states of mind; rather, they are often representative of the necessary pain of psychological growth. And to deny that pain is to deny our own potential. Just as one must suffer physical pain to build stronger bone and muscle, one must suffer emotional pain to develop greater emotional resilience, a stronger sense of self, increased compassion, and a generally happier life.”*
💡My disappointment at that moment was a necessary pain of psychological growth. Something that I held so much value for just got rejected, and that has now led me to the perfect opportunity to reevaluate such value and try to understand why it’s not working at the moment. With a few deep breaths and a ton of self gentleness, I managed to regulate my emotions and came back to my senses. My learning is this: Disappointment need not be the beginning of a downward spiral. Disappointment is part of a learning process.
P.S. On a lighter note, no PH stop for Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour. That's disappointing, yes, but that's not the topic here. *cries in all too well 10 minute version taylor's version*
*Manson, Mark. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Mark Manson Collection) (p. 154). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
#opportunity #learning #emotionalintelligence #emotionalregulation #growth #pain