In my sessions with clients many have been asking, “How do I/we manage disappointment?” An underlying theme as of late. Disappointment is a term no one likes to talk about, so of course it is something I need to address. Unfortunately the reality of the human habit is we face disappointments everyday. From the moment we wake up hoping it’s Friday, but in reality it’s Monday, to the end of the day where we hoped to get to bed early but instead binge watched the latest series from Netflix, and now it’s 2am and you have to get up in five hours. Disappointments feel just plain unbearable! No one likes them; I know I sure don’t. It’s that feeling of being let down and defeated that's hard to manage.
So then what are we left with?
How are we to make sense of situations that may seem incomprehensible? Well, sometimes you just can’t, and sometimes things happen that we are powerless over, so in the end we must simply accept what has happened, or better yet we must take a stance of radical acceptance of the situation, so as to decrease the amount of suffering we may be enduring. The optimal words being ‘Radical Acceptance’.
And what is RADICAL ACCEPTANCE?
Simply put, radical acceptance is the acknowledgement and unconditional acceptance of “what is.” Radical acceptance states that we consciously acknowledge that we have done all that could be expected to change, control, or manage any given situation and presently there is nothing more that can be done and, in doing so, we accept that situation, place, thing or person as it is. This allows us to accept the reality of what is, not what should be.
So by standing strong in your conviction to accept what is, you basically stop the suffering any given situation is causing you. Because the truth of the matter is, you can stop suffering, this we can control. We may not always be able to control how hurtful a situation might be, but we can make the decision to how we manage it.
Situations in life may be hard to accept, and may cause some emotional pain but, again that pain is a byproduct of the human existence and try as we must, we can’t avoid painful feelings. We are not powerless over how much we toil and suffer over the pain of any given experience. By making radical acceptance a daily practice we are empowering ourselves to feel relief from any personal suffering.
Now just to clarify, what I am proposing here is not avoidance or denial. What I am presenting is a self management tool to help cope with situations that you feel out of control about. It also means you are taking ownership of yourself and making a decision to no longer suffer with situational stressors.
As with all things good and bad, disappointments are a part of this journey called life, and as uncomfortable as some disappointments are, they are a natural part of the human existence. We will all experience disappointments in our lifetime, that’s just the way it is. After all we are greeted by a slap on the rear by doctors welcoming us to the world. What is important to remember, and what I try to advise to others is, regardless of what we are feeling right now, these disappointments, and how we deal with them, will determine the merit of our resilience and the quality of our personal lives going forward.
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Warmly,
Ed