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Earlier this month, my long-anticipated summer vacation was canceled. Not only was I disappointed, but so were my two kids who had been looking forward to the trip for months. In the grand scheme, a canceled vacation isn’t a big deal. But in the moment, it is a huge bummer.
Disappointments of this scale are what much of life is made of. Especially at work, things often don’t turn out how you’d planned. Maybe you made an avoidable or embarrassing mistake, had a misunderstanding with a colleague, or didn’t get a job or promotion.
But just because life is full of disappointments doesn’t mean they get any easier to handle. The next time something doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would, here’s some advice for turning lemons into lemonade (or at the very least, moving on).
Let yourself wallow (a little)
I felt awful that my trip was canceled. Even though I knew it could have been worse in so many ways, it was still a big let down. A friend once said something that’s stuck with me: “It’s not the worst thing that’s happening in the world, but it’s the worst thing that’s happening to you.”
When you are dealing with disappointment, people often try to get you to look on the bright side, in an effort to help. But you can’t see anything positive if you don’t allow yourself to feel your feelings first. So let yourself feel bad for a little while. Acknowledge how you feel and find someone who will let you express your disappointment without trying to put a positive spin on it.
Put the disappointment into perspective
After you’ve let yourself feel bad, you want to start putting the disappointment into perspective. You might feel really awful about not getting the promotion you thought you were qualified for. It’s easy to spiral into thoughts that you’re in a dead-end job, or that your boss doesn’t value you. But separating fact from fiction by writing things down can help.
“We often weave stories around knockbacks and increase their significance in our minds,” says leadership coach and author Julie Smith. She suggests writing down everything that’s running through your head. What actually happened? What exactly was said? Those are the facts. But predictions of the future and those pessimistic stories you tell yourself about what’s going to happen are likely fiction.
Smith points out that there’s often a lot of gray area in life’s disappointments. Most situations aren’t completely good or bad. Your project may not have been approved, but you can learn more about what’s important to the executive team. And instead of missing out on our vacation, I ended up having a nice staycation and making some great memories with my kids.
Reframe your thinking (aka, lie to yourself a little)
“Disappointment is a response to getting something less than you had hoped for or expected,” says Kate Sweeny, a professor of psychology at the University of California. “Employees passed over for a position will be far more disappointed if they believed they were a shoo-in than if they knew the promotion was a long shot.”
Experiencing disappointment means you’re living. Especially at work, if you make a mistake or get passed over for an opportunity, it means you’re trying. It might help to reframe your feelings about disappointment to be that it’s an expected part of pursuing a big goal.
If that doesn’t work, another way to look at disappointment is through what researchers call “retroactive pessimism,” or rewriting history to turn a sure thing into a long shot. So try telling yourself that the unfortunate outcome was inevitable. “It may not entirely remove the sting of bad news,” says Sweeny, “but this strategy can mitigate the additional blow of feeling caught off guard.”
Don’t let disappointment get in the way of your goals
When you try and fail, it can be tempting to give up. Anger, sadness, guilt, embarrassment, and disappointment all feel awful and can make you want to avoid situations that could make you feel that way again. But shrinking your goals to avoid future disappointment won’t make you happy either, writes contributor Deborah Grayson Riegel. It’s disappointing when a superstar employee leaves, but it doesn’t mean you should hire someone less ambitious in the hope that they’ll stick around.
“When we set a low bar for ourselves as a way to feel safe and even victorious when we achieve those small objectives, we deprive ourselves, our companies, and the world of our excellence and brilliance,” writes Riegel. That’s why I’ve already started planning my next vacation.