“Don’t let today’s disappointments cast a shadow on tomorrow’s dreams.” ~Unknown
For me, disappointment is one of life’s most uncomfortable feelings. It’s complex, containing a subset of other emotions like anger, hurt, sadness, and probably many others too subtle to identify.
Sometimes, those emotions by themselves are easier to deal with, but disappointment can leave me at a loose end.
I might not be sure whether I should feel angry, or just impatiently wish that I would hurry up and get over it. Disappointment can hover at the front of your mind and niggle at the back, bringing you a grey perspective on life, even if you’re trying to forget about it.
Here are 4 steps I've recently identified in my own process for genuinely getting past disappointment:
1. Let it out.
One of the hardest things to do in a world where everything is immediate—we are all under external pressure, and time is a scarce resource—is to just let yourself experience a feeling.
Even at the most difficulties times, such as grieving, on average we only allow ourselves 1 to 2 weeks off or work, and then we mostly expect to get back into normality again.
Human beings are not very good at allowing the experiencing of emotions in full without trying to speed up the process. The only time we have this ability in its purest sense is when we are young children who have yet to be told or taught what is socially acceptable.
Children will tantrum and cry and scream, or laugh until it runs out and they are genuinely ready to move on.
I’m not suggesting we lock ourselves away for weeks at a time whenever we have been disappointed, but to be aware of any sense of obligation to “just get over it.”
Allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling without any agenda of speeding up the process. Whatever you are feeling is OK. Take some time to just sit with your emotion and experience it without moving to fix or change it.
Genuinely experiencing emotions, no matter how painful, is one of the beauties of life. Don’t shy away from these moments. Be present in them.
2. Get some perspective.
The wonderful thing about letting it out is that you have given yourself that time. You have said to yourself, “I care about you. I want to allow you to feel what you need to feel and I do not wish to push you or cajole you.”
You have treated yourself like a friend and allowed yourself the space you needed to experience your feelings of disappointment.
Once you’ve done that, it becomes much easier to get some perspective. After you give yourself space to feel, you’re able to give the situation or individuals involved more room to breathe.
Perhaps the person who you feel disappointed by doesn’t even realize they’ve done something to upset you. Maybe they’re stressed out and don’t have the emotional bandwidth to think about it because they aren’t allowing themselves time to experience their emotions.
Giving yourself space to be as you are prepares you to allow the same to other people.
Having a broader perspective than your own view on a particular situation is always helpful. The critical point here is that you have to mean it. Rushing onto gaining perspective before you’ve allowed yourself to be with how you feel will be artificial and will not last.
3. Know your own heart.
Disappointment can ripple through to the core of who you are. If you don’t know what your core values are, you may not have a framework to support you when you experience negative emotions.
For example, one of my core values is open-heartedness. I wish to keep an open heart and be ready to share love and kindness with others, irrespective of how they might behave.
I would like to always try to choose to act with love and kindness towards others, rather than with negativity.
When someone disappoints me and I feel like closing and withdrawing, I remember this core value, then pause and make a choice.
I wish to be an open-hearted person. These negative feelings are feelings, and they will pass. Do I choose to remain open-hearted, or do I choose to follow the easier instinct and close off?
More often than not, I choose to be in line with my values over the automatic response to the situation. It doesn’t happen every single time, but most.
Knowing your own heart and your values gives you the freedom of choice. You can choose to be driven by what happens to you, or you can choose to live in line with your principles.
The latter has helped me to overcome disappointments and negative situations in a healthy way. The challenge of disappointment allows me to practice living closer to my values, and stops me from being swallowed up by it.
4. Practice acceptance.
As human beings, even though we know that some things are bound to happen, we’re not always willing to accept them.
Every time I am disappointed, I feel overwhelmed by my emotions. I’m inclined to withdraw and blame others, wanting to wallow in my disappointment. Each time, I have to accept that I will feel these things again.
I have to accept that I will continue to be disappointed—that it is a part of life, part of being human. I also have to accept that I will probably continue to struggle to accept this fact, at various points throughout the rest of my life!
This step is a lifelong challenge and fundamental to dealing with disappointment. I will be disappointed, I will disappoint, you will be disappointed, and you will disappoint. Life will be disappointing—but it will pass.
Practice acceptance and we may suffer less as it is happening and notice the good things in life more.
Disappointment is a part of life, but all parts of life can help us grow. We can be present and aware even in the midst of negative emotions and therefore life more fully.
Why Do Buddhists Avoid Attachment?
"Attachment" May Not Mean What You Think It Means
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You may have heard that Buddhists are supposed to be free of attachments. That sounds a bit grim. Does that mean we Buddhists have to abandon our friends and loved ones?
Thankfully, no, it doesn't. In Buddhism, "attachment" doesn't mean what you might think it means.
What Is Attachment?
In order for there to be attachment, you need two things -- the attacher, and the thing to which the attacher is attached. In other words, "attachment" requires self-reference, and it requires seeing the object of attachment as separate from oneself.
The Buddha taught that seeing oneself and everything else this way is a delusion. Further, it is a delusion that is the deepest cause of our unhappiness. It is because we mistakenly see ourselves as separate from everything else that we "attach."
Zen teacher John Daido Loori said,
"[A]ccording to the Buddhist point of view, nonattachment is exactly the opposite of separation. You need two things in order to have attachment: the thing you’re attaching to, and the person who’s attaching. In nonattachment, on the other hand, there’s unity. There’s unity because there’s nothing to attach to. If you have unified with the whole universe, there’s nothing outside of you, so the notion of attachment becomes absurd. Who will attach to what?"
Because we think we have intrinsic existence within our skin, and what's outside our skin is "everything else," that we go through life grabbing for one thing after another to make us feel safe, or to make us happy.
The Pursuit of Happiness
Because people don't take the time to understand Buddhism before they form opinions about it, much criticism of Buddhism misses the point. For example, in an interview, "positive" psychologist Jonathan Haidt claimed the Buddha taught that happiness requires disassociation from things in the external world. And Haidt disagrees with this: "Some things are worth striving for, and happiness comes in part from outside of yourself, if you know where to look.”
We "pursue" happiness because we think it comes outside of ourselves. But it's also because we think things are outside of ourselves that we are stressed about them and worry about them. Whatever can be found can also be lost.
There's nothing wrong with striving to accomplish something, or making friends, or loving your spouse and children. The Buddha himself, after all, spent his life after his enlightenment associating with people, and teaching them. Non-attachment does not require extreme asceticism or shunning human contact. Non-attachment comes from the wisdom that nothing is truly separate.
Yes, some Buddhists enter monastic life to concentrate on Buddhist practice without distraction. But monastics do not isolate themselves from human contact. The sangha itself is a human society in which people support each others' practice.
The Four Noble Truths
Understanding the Buddha's teachings about attachment begins with the Four Noble Truths. Very briefly, life is stressful (dukkha) and the cause of this stress is craving, or thirst.
The Buddha taught that this craving grows from ignorance of the self. Because we see ourselves as something separate from everything else, we go through life grabbing one thing after another to ease our stress. We attach not only to physical things, but also to ideas and opinions about ourselves and the world around us. But physical things can be lost, and we get frustrated when the world doesn't conform to our ideas and opinions.
There is a way to get off the hamster wheel of chasing happiness. By practicing the Eightfold Path, we can realize the true nature of self-and-other, and put an end to craving. The Buddha also taught us that this realization releases our fears of death and enables deep compassion and loving kindness for others.
"Realize" is an important word. In Buddhism, just believing in some doctrine of no-separation is pointless. To become transformative, the truth of the Buddha's teachings must be intimately experienced and realized for oneself. For this reason, Buddhism is more of a discipline than it is a belief system.
Pleasure and Pain
The Buddha said, "When the thirty six pleasure-bound streams of craving are strong in a man, then numerous desire-based thoughts pull the deluded man along." People go through life running toward what they desire and away from what they dislike.
In other words, we're being jerked around by attraction and aversion.
Most of the time, we don't see little personal freedom we really have. Our culture tells us that it's good to acquire things like material possession and fame, so there's nothing wrong with desiring and pursuing them. We don't see how much of our lives are eaten up in a vain pursuit of things we think will make us happy. And when we acquire those things, we don't stay happy for long before we start chasing something else.
And how much of our lives are eaten up with anxiety over the things we think we have to have to make us happy? Worrying about something you've lost is attachment. Disappointment is attachment. What we think will make us happy can also make us miserable.
No Separation
Seeing through the delusion of separation means we no longer give "external things" the power to make us miserable. The ideal is equanimity, free from the compulsion to chase what we want and run from what we don't want.
Realizing non-attachment is not easy. It's not a matter of going to a weekend retreat and being released from anxiety the rest of your life. Buddhism is a life practice, not a quick fix. Ironically, it's a practice that requires giving up ideas about goals and rewards, or escaping to a better place.
Buddhism teaches that the better place is right here, and the reward is already yours. Realizing this is non-attachment.
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