“For every success you experience in life, you must overcome 100 disappointments.”
Jay Block
- You have to experience it if for your life to be worthwhile
- You must accept it as a necessary part of life
- You can’t avoid it
- You don’t have to fall in love with it
The “it” I am referring to is disappointment. If you want to achieve anything meaningful or significant in your life there are 5 steps you must be prepared to follow:
- You must have a strong, compelling desire to achieve something that is important to you
- You must be fully committed to achieving it; meaning quitting isn’t an option
- You must be disciplined; meaning you must do what you don’t want to do in pursuit of what you want
- You must be persistently resourceful, creative, and innovative
- You must be able to handle the slew of disappointments that will try to derail your success
I suspect that if you are reading this, you are one of those people who has high hopes, compelling dreams, and ambitious expectations. I would surmise that you are a person who refuses to settle for less and would never lower the bar of striving to discover your true potential.
One of the main reasons most people give up on their highest hopes, abandon their grandest dreams, and settle for their lowest expectations – or nothing – is that they haven’t mastered the ability to manage their disappointments!
Check out MY favorite practice I call Supercharge Your Job Campaign. Even if you are not currently looking for a job I KNOW this simple practice will be an invaluable tool to teach you how to manage disappointment. It is my gift to you… simply provide your email 
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One of Life’s Most Uncomfortable and Frustrating Emotions
Disappointment is a highly complex state of mind that can ultimately lead to other potentially harmful feelings like anger, hurt, sadness, and self-doubt… a feeling that “I am a loser.”
- In the midst of pursuing exciting goals and objectives, disappointment is always an adversary you can count on to show up and entice you to give up. Small or larger-than-life disappointments fuel discouragement, and discouragement fuels a life of underachievement.
- In the midst of pursuing exciting goals and objectives, disappointment always strives to play the starring role in the theater of your mind, while attempting to steal your heart – hoping you will chose failure over triumph, darkness over light, and unhappiness over joy.
Disappointment versus Regret
Personally, I would prefer to go through life having to endure thousands of disappointments rather than one regret. Disappointment is the feeling of dissatisfaction that follows the failure of expectations or the attempt to achieve a worthy goal. On the other hand, regret tends to differ from disappointment in that regret suggests a person never tried to achieve anything of substance at all – due to fear of responsibility, failure, rejection, resistance, or ridicule.
How sad it must be for those people to spend their final days regretting that they never gave life their best shot; regretting that they allowed fear and discomfort to be lifelong barriers to knowing their true potential; and regretting the fact that they always played it safe and never took the necessary risks required to achieve the success they so desperately yearned for deep inside.
Yes, it is disappointing when, at the end of our lives, we realize that we came up short of our expectations, dreams, and goals. But for every person who makes it to the Olympics, to Hollywood, to Beverly Hills, to Broadway, or to professional sports, how many people tried and didn’t make it? Tens of thousands! But when all is said and done, those that didn’t make it knew they gave life their very best effort – and enjoyed the effort in pursuit of the elusive objective.
Disappointment: The Catalyst for All Success
On the other hand, disappointment is the catalyst for all success. Ah, there it is… the double-edged sword. If you don’t risk disappointment, you can’t achieve anything significant in life. How we manage disappointment determines the eventual outcome – how quickly and enjoyably we achieve success or best accept what can’t be achieved. Like most of you, I have experienced so many disappointments in life, I could probably write an entire book on them.
In my opinion, the greatest disappointment of all is not giving life your best effort. You see, in reality, disappointment is simply a way to measure a result. You try something, get a result, learn from the result and, if it’s not the result you were seeking, you try another way, and then another way, and then another way.
An effective technique to manage and deal with disappointment is to change the meaning of disappointment. Rather than perceiving your disappointments as failures or blows to your ego, view it as a result that needs tweaking, reworking, or perhaps a whole new approach. I would rather try something 100 times and fail than to know I never tried at all. If I never tried, I would never have a chance to succeed. Not trying guarantees failure! And when you link greater pain to giving up and settling for less in life than you would to experiencing disappointments as a result of trying to achieve something you want, disappointment isn’t so traumatic.
Remember, disappointment is only a way to measure a result so you can try another strategy to achieve your goals.
My Honest Feelings about Disappointment
Before I share with you 7 tips on how to better manage disappointment, many people have asked me how well I manage it. I have a consistent stream of disappointments primarily because I always set lofty goals and high expectations of myself. I don’t pursue disappointment – it always finds me. I don’t go to bed at night praying for a host of disappointments to come my way when I wake up. Yes, I get as frustrated as anyone. Yes, I experience fear. And yes, there are times my head says, “Let’s quit – it’s so much easier.” But my heart leads my life and says, “Turn frustration into a friend, manage fear by becoming courageous, and quitting is just too painful. I’ll take disappointment over quitting anytime!
So here are some strategies that will work for you if disappointment becomes an incapacitating enemy when you pursue your dreams, ambitions, goals, and objectives. If you are one who is prepared never to settle for less than your best effort… just follow these 7 tips.
7 Tips of How to Turn Disappointment into Success
- Change your thinking and your belief about disappointment. Embrace disappointment and know it is merely a way to measure a result. If something doesn’t work out and you are disappointed, just ask yourself, ‘What must I do differently? What must I change? What can I learn from this so I get it right the next time, even if it takes 100 next times?”
- Don’t do anything harmful, stupid, or irrational when you experience disappointment. As simple as this may be, honor your attempt. Be proud that you tried. Know you chose disappointment over regret and that you are still in the game; that you didn’t quit and become a spectator of life!
- When you are disappointed don’t make any quick decisions. Allow yourself some time to get over it, to think about it, and to return to the activity with a renewed positive attitude. Have faith and trust that this result, though disappointing, will lead to eventual success. Faith and trust play important roles in all success.
- Don’t be an “exblamer.” Exblamers are those people who either find excuses for their disappointments or blame others for them. Take personal responsibility and know you are facing a character–building situation and, in the end, character is the true genesis for all achievement. When disappointment affects your life, address it with dignity and class!
- Seek out the advice of others. Often times, an objective perspective is necessary to resolve an issue that is leading to disappointments. No one makes it alone. So know that the quality of people you surround yourself with will have a direct result on 1) the number of disappointments you have and 2) how best to take advantage of the disappointments you experience.
- Don’t give up. This is the only life you have on this planet, so far as I know. How many years and decades have researches been disappointed in finding cures for all kinds of diseases? The brain hasn’t found the answers yet, but the heart demands that the brain keeps trying. Understand that your work and your efforts will be rewarded when you persevere and are resolved to achieve all that you want. I do believe that, “It is better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all.”
- Manage your focus. Focus on gratitude. Most people are conditioned to focus on (or pay attention to) the few things that are not going right in their lives (their disappointments) and ignore all the things that they have to be grateful for. The next time you are disappointed and your emotions begin to get the better of you – look in a mirror. What do you see? An angry face? A sad face? Tears? But what if you looked in the mirror and saw nothing – because you lost your eyesight? How would your disappointments stack up to being blind? When you are grateful for all that you have, and take for granted – like your eyesight – in pursuit of all that you want, disappointments will become your ally rather than your enemy.
If you do these things it is my guarantee you can overcome any setback while looking for a job.