There will be times in your life that you will want to be disappointed. There will be times that you don’t want to “think” anything else to feel better. And maybe times that you shouldn’t even try.
On Thursday morning my husband sent me a text asking if I would go out with him Friday night. His practice was interviewing a potential surgeon at a restaurant downtown. My answer was “Yes, of course!” I love getting to know the people he works with better and visiting with their wives. I also love good food, and getting dressed up.
Friday came and he still had one more surgical case to go at 5:30 and dinner was at 7:00. There would be no dinner, no date night. He didn’t get home until 10:00 pm.
This isn’t an isolated incident. It is something we encounter on a regular basis and have for more than a decade. William Osler observed over 100 years ago that “medicine is a jealous mistress; she will be satisfied with no less.” There is certainly some truth to that!
And while I may be accustomed to the feeling of disappointment when the hospital calls and interrupts, or overthrows plans, that doesn’t mean I am immune to it.
When it comes to any feeling there are four things we can do with them: resist, react, avoid, or allow. The majority of us employ one of the first three as a way to cope with negative feelings we don’t want to feel. Allowing an emotion is a skill that we have to learn and practice, and then practice some more.
I wanted to be disappointed.
I didn’t want to disappoint myself.
There is a distinct difference between these two types of disappointment.
In the past my disappointment would lead to avoiding the feeling and then engaging in behaviors that created disappointment in myself. I would compound the emotional disappointment I was feeling by procrastinating things that would give me a sense of accomplishment and real joy, for things that would give me temporary relief and numb my senses. It looked like binge watching Netflix, or binge eating things I knew wouldn’t make me feel good in the morning. The result being I was disappointed in myself the next day when my clothes didn’t fit as well and the project still needed to be done.
What do you do when you are disappointed? Do you know?
In Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit, he proposes that “more than 40 percent of the actions people perform each day aren’t actual decisions but habits. They are the choices that all of us deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about but continue to do.” And these habits “can emerge outside our consciousness, or can be deliberately designed. They often occur without our permission, but can be reshaped by fiddling with their parts.”
The part of my habit that I wanted to fiddle with wasn’t my thoughts, and it wasn’t my feeling, it was the way I behaved while disappointed.
My old habit would give me momentary relief from my disappointment about a situation completely outside of my control, but it created a new disappointment that, in my opinion, was worse: disappointment in myself. That is something I have complete control over.
Here are the four questions I asked myself that evening and have incorporated into my practice as I learn to allow negative emotions:
- What do I want to do?
- Does it have a negative side effect?
- Does it serve my goals and desires?
- How do I want to feel in the morning?
I can be disappointed without disappointing myself.
I can feel negative emotions, without making choices that have negative consequences.
