The Magic Of Embracing Disappointment

Imagine spending a personal fortune on your dream home, kitchen or vacation. Now pretend the experience or result disappoints you. What do you do about it?

The answer is often predictable. We frantically search for some way to justify or reinterpret the experience. We look at it in a new way or tweak our memory of the experience.

This reinterpretation is the quickest way to reduce the tension and angst we feel. It’s a convenient method to cope with disappointment, but it’s not the most productive way to deal with it.

We’re in the tail end of an expensive home renovation. We came to the realization we did not like some of our kitchen cabinets. They looked nice from the outside but there were no drawers in the pantry, only shelves. It was the same story with the other cabinets. Where were we going to store our pots and pans? What about our spices? We spent all that money and now we have a brand new non-functional kitchen.

I searched for a resolution over the next several hours. By resolution, I mean some way to justify our terrible mistake so that I could put my mind at ease. My brain rolled up its sleeves, so to speak, and got to work.

I reasoned that shelves would be sufficient. We’d buy a drawer insert at Bed, Bath and Beyond. That would take care of our spices. Our previous cabinets only had shelves and we survived just fine. The tension eased as my mind worked through the mental gymnastics.

My wife didn’t give up so easily. She searched for a practical solution to our problem. The next morning she found out from our designer that there were specially designed inserts to convert some of the cabinets to drawers instead of shelves. It would cost us about $500. We both agreed it was worth it, and it solved our problem.

Disappointment is an unpleasant feeling. The kneejerk, reflexive response is to justify it or reason it away. This mental magic works well to relieve the tension. Had I succeeded, we would have had to live with it for the next fifteen years.

Lucky for me, my wife let the disappointment linger. This forced her to seek a solution. Perhaps we should learn to relish disappointment. Allow the tension to stick around. It creates a feeling of angst that forces us to find a practical solution. You can reason away any mistake and convince yourself of its insignificance. Pain is unpleasant but it drives us to take action.

What disappointment have you reasoned away recently? Maybe now is a good time to revisit it.

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