Accepting disappointment

Accepting disappointment January 28, 2015

Nowhere is the power of acceptance more influential than in dealing with disappointment. When you get your hopes up, and are excited and enthusiastic about something, and then it doesn’t work out, the resulting disappointment can be devastating. Yet most of that devastation comes not from the situation itself, but from your own mind. Your disappointment can quickly turn what was once a very positive situation into an extremely negative experience. The way out of this is through acceptance of the disappointment, through letting go. Amazingly, when you accept the disappointment you can literally turn that disappointment around. You can quickly regain the positive enthusiasm and excitement when you realize that they were your creation, did not depend on outside events, and cannot be taken from you by things beyond your control.

When you’ve been disappointed, and you continue to agonize over that disappointment, all you’re doing is making it worse. As soon as you accept the disappointment, and accept that you can get along without whatever it was you wanted or previously had, a powerful transformation occurs. You get past the focus on lack and limitation, and free your mind to focus on the positive possibilities. Interestingly, as soon as you do not need something, it becomes much more available to you. So when you’ve been disappointed, there’s nothing to be gained by fighting against that disappointment and thus intensifying it. There is, in fact, everything to be gained by accepting the disappointment and moving quickly past it. Once you accept the disappointment, then the negative power of that disappointment ceases to have any affect on you.


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