Disappointment

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Coming back to me. [00:00:04] Speaker B: Hey, welcome back to grow tension, the father Daughter podcast, where we want to learn and grow and become everything that God has created us to be. But as we learn and grow, we want to share with you what we are learning. And today we are going to be doing a very interesting topic, but a hard one on disappointment. How are you doing today? [00:00:24] Speaker A: I'm doing well. [00:00:25] Speaker B: Good. I'm glad to be with you. [00:00:26] Speaker A: I'm glad to be here. We're looking out the second floor window. The sky is blue, the grass is green. The fountain's going in the pond. [00:00:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it's gorgeous. I'll try to insert a picture or video so you can see it if you're watching this on YouTube. But my son is graduating. He graduated high school. So we have the party on Saturday, and my husband's there, so we can't record there. So we're recording at the church, which is a little bit louder than our normal setting. So you might hear some background noises, but just roll with us because we're rolling with it today. [00:00:58] Speaker A: Yes, we are. [00:00:59] Speaker B: And I said I'm hanging out with you too much because I'm starting to sound like you. [00:01:02] Speaker A: Yeah, that could be bad because now. [00:01:03] Speaker B: My voice is going. So we're gonna just make it happen today, no matter what. It's actually our fourth time trying to film this podcast, if we're being honest. So, life. [00:01:14] Speaker A: Life. [00:01:15] Speaker B: You're moving Monday. [00:01:16] Speaker A: Monday. [00:01:17] Speaker B: It's gonna be awesome. You're gonna be nice and close to us, and we can't wait. Okay, so you did an amazing sermon on disappointment on this past Sunday. And so if you have not heard it, you might have just heard my grandbaby, the beautiful Selah. But if you haven't heard the pod or the sermon yet, I highly recommend going back. You can go to our Christchurch, Ohio YouTube page or our Christchurch, Ohio website, and it'd be the art of neighboring week two because we're talking about how do we be a good neighbor? And the idea of neighbor. Who is your neighbor? [00:01:53] Speaker A: The word placeon means my fellow human being. Whoever God puts in front of me is my neighbor. [00:02:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And so we're learning that sometimes disappointment can help make us treat people in the kind of way we don't want to treat them. And so to truly be a good neighbor, we got to learn how to handle our disappointment in healthy ways. And the problem is, disappointment can bring a lot of emotions with you. It can show up in different ways. What are some of. Some of the ways disappointment shows up in our emotions? [00:02:28] Speaker A: So often when we feel disappointed, we have a feeling of sadness, which is an appropriate feeling. It's fine to be sad that you are disappointed, but that sadness has to be processed so we can move on. [00:02:47] Speaker B: Right. [00:02:48] Speaker A: On the other hand, disappointment can also make us angry. [00:02:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:53] Speaker A: Now that anger can be damaging to us and to the people around us. [00:02:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And some of us, all our emotions come out as anger. [00:03:02] Speaker A: Sadly. Yeah, sadly. So I have to process that. I have to process that sense of disappointment so that my. I'm dealing with the disappointment in a healthy way and I'm not giving in to anger. Disappointment can also leave us confused. I'm confused. I didn't think it would be this way. I'm confused. I didn't think this person would ever do that. I'm confused. I didn't see this in my own self. And that has to be processed. Another dangerous emotion is resentment. People hold lifelong resentments because they never processed their disappointment. And the long term damage of disappointment can be depression. Disappointment can morph into depression, and then we're really robbing ourself of the best life. [00:04:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And so as we talk about disappointment, where you came up with this six step idea that helps us navigate our disappointment, how to process in healthier ways. But ultimately, the idea is not just to live in our disappointment, but to learn from it and become a better person because of it. [00:04:30] Speaker A: Yes. [00:04:31] Speaker B: Okay. So when you think. When I think about disappointment, I kind of have it in two different arenas of my life. Like, I think about things that I couldn't control. A death, a diagnosis, loss of a job, like some things that you just can't control. And then I think about disappointments that I've caused. Disappointments that I could control. [00:04:54] Speaker A: There are disappointments that are unavoidable. There are disappointments that are avoidable in the disappointments that aren't avoidable. I can't control what somebody else did or didn't do. I can't control the circumstances, but I can control how I process my own disappointment. [00:05:20] Speaker B: Yes. [00:05:21] Speaker A: So I'm moving on from I can't control this. And I'm moving back into the realm of. But I can't control this. [00:05:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:30] Speaker A: I can have very good life skills for processing disappointment in ways that actually make me a better person. [00:05:37] Speaker B: Okay, so what is your first step? [00:05:40] Speaker A: Alright. The first thing we have to do is we have to think honestly about what disappointed us and not just tell ourself a story. [00:05:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:50] Speaker A: So we have a tendency when we're disappointed, to tell ourself a story. It sounds something like this. This person said they would do it. They didn't do it. They just don't care. They're not trustworthy. Okay. I'm telling myself that story. That may not be the reason why they didn't do it at all. It's a story I'm telling myself. So I have to let go of the story, and I have to say, this is exactly what happened. And the more honest I am in telling myself what happened, then I'm going to start seeing other things. Like maybe I didn't communicate as well as I should. Maybe we had an unrealistic schedule. Maybe this person had family issues that they brought to work with them. All right. So I begin to deal with the disappointment by setting aside the story I'm telling myself and trying to think about what honestly and realistically happened. [00:06:57] Speaker B: Okay. I think when we. So I think we tell ourselves stories in every arena of life. It's not just about other people, but it's so the objectivity. Objectivity of looking at it, what really happened. [00:07:10] Speaker A: Yes. [00:07:11] Speaker B: But I want to talk about, we all look through a lens, and so if there is a lens that we're looking through and we're trying to be objective, what is. What is a very helpful lens to look through? Like, where would you start? [00:07:27] Speaker A: So, as we've talked about this, I wouldn't lead with my disappointment. I would lead with hope. [00:07:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:38] Speaker A: So this is what this looks like. At some time or another, parents are going to disappoint their kids, all right? But if that child turns that disappointment into an expectation, now, they always expect to be disappointed. It is damaging to the relationship. If a spouse disappoints their spouse and they allow that to become their expectation, then they're always going to look at their spouse and think, you always disappoint me, and you're probably going to disappoint me. Now, that is a ruinous lens. On the other hand, I can lead with hope. I can say we had a disappointing moment, but I hope for better in the future. We had a disappointing moment, but I hope that we'll both learn from it. We had a disappointment moment, but I know you're a good person, and I know you're worthy of my love and my kindness. So when I start to lead with disappointment, I just damage my relationships. But when I lead with hope, I bring fresh energy and fresh air to the relationship. [00:09:01] Speaker B: So Jacob and I would, early in our marriage, we would do things like, you always, you never, and we did not think the best of each other. We were not looking through the lens of hope, we were looking through the lens of our frustration, our disappointment, our leading with disappointment. Exactly. And so one of the most helpful things we did was we sat down and we said, we are going to give each other the benefit of the doubt, and we are always going to think what's best about each other, because I would make stories up in my head. You know, I'd have these conversations that never happened in reality, had happened only in my head. And then I was responding as if that was true. So I think that setting that healthy, the way I think about it, I'm going to lead with hope, and I'm going to give the people in my life the benefit of the doubt and think what's best about them. Okay, what's next? [00:09:54] Speaker A: All right, then next is when I'm rethinking what actually happened and I'm being honest and realistic, I'm going to recognize that there are some positive things in my life, and it's not all bad. Disappointment says to me, everything's bad. It's never going to be any better. But when I look at life honestly, there are some positive things, and I can begin to start saying, thank you, God, thank you. That this isn't, this isn't going to define me. Thank you. That this is one disappointment. But this person has been kind to me in these other ways. [00:10:39] Speaker B: Yeah. It's like we look. We see what we look for. [00:10:42] Speaker A: Yes. [00:10:42] Speaker B: And so if disappointment is what we're leading with, and you find it everywhere, if you're saying, okay, that was disappointing, I'm going to think about it in a healthy way, but now I'm going to process with the lens of hope and gratitude. It's a game changer. [00:10:59] Speaker A: Yes. [00:10:59] Speaker B: So how do you practice gratitude in your life? Like what are. [00:11:03] Speaker A: Well, we've talked about gratitude journals, but I want gratitude to be, I want to be more than something I do. When I said I want to live with. [00:11:15] Speaker B: Active. [00:11:16] Speaker A: Yes. [00:11:16] Speaker B: Active. Yeah. [00:11:17] Speaker A: So throughout my day, I want to be saying thank you to God. Okay. I also want to be saying thank you to the people I work with. I don't go home at the end of the day without thanking Marianne for the good work she does. All right. I want it to be a normal expression of my everyday life. [00:11:37] Speaker B: Yeah. I think it was Craig Rochelle. He said, if you think you thank someone enough, triple it. [00:11:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:43] Speaker B: Or if you've shown gratitude, triple it. Because normally it's, we think more, we're doing more than we actually are. So it's a good, a good little nugget. Okay, what's next on the list? [00:11:55] Speaker A: All right. Often, I'm gonna have a hard time doing this alone. So a third thing I can do is I can discuss my disappointment with a trusted friend, because they're gonna give me a different perspective. [00:12:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:10] Speaker A: They're gonna help me see what happened and how I am responding in hopefully a more healthy way. [00:12:19] Speaker B: Yeah. I've realized in my life that some people are safe and some people just aren't. And so I like that. You say a trusted friend. [00:12:28] Speaker A: Yes. [00:12:29] Speaker B: And what's your thoughts on a trusted friend? [00:12:31] Speaker A: All right. I have many acquaintances. I have a few friends. [00:12:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:36] Speaker A: Because friendships take investment. We have to invest more time, energy, effort in a healthy friendship than we do in acquaintance. Many people want other people to be their friends and make the investment, but they don't want to make the investment to be somebody else's friend, and that doesn't work. [00:12:59] Speaker B: Yeah. There's the old adage, you become like the people you're around the most. And when I think about that, I want to make sure that my trusted corps are the people I want to become like, because I also think there's a vulnerability in that step. Discussing some of the things that you're disappointed with in life can leave you vulnerable. And I want to take the advice from people that I trust, but also that I will allow to be honest with me because I have a tendency to be defensive. You may or may not know that about me. That's very human of all of us. But there's some people I have to just let down my guard. I have to be totally open, totally honest, so that when they speak truth, I'll receive it and not try to, you know, defend. [00:13:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:56] Speaker B: So I think there is something about who is your safe, trusted friend. Good. [00:14:02] Speaker A: Good. [00:14:03] Speaker B: Okay. When you think about the safe, trusted friend, you discuss it. So we think about it objectively. We lead with this idea of hope. And when I'm thinking about it, I don't want it just to be all disappointment. I want to find the moments of gratitude and beauty in life. Now I'm talking about it with a friend. It's all part of processing. [00:14:23] Speaker A: Yes. [00:14:24] Speaker B: And so what's the next stage of processing? [00:14:27] Speaker A: So now I have to start getting serious with myself and say, I am going to permit you time to work through this, but we're not staying here forever. [00:14:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:38] Speaker A: Okay. It's all right to be angry about this for 45 minutes, but it's not all right to be angry about this. [00:14:46] Speaker B: For 45 days or 45 years. Yeah. [00:14:50] Speaker A: So I start saying to myself, okay, you've given in to the negative side of this enough. Now we got to start moving toward the positive side. I'm going to start letting, I'm going to deal with. If I'm angry, I'm going to do some forgiveness things. If I'm confused, I'm going to pray for clarity. [00:15:19] Speaker B: If you're grieving, what about the grief? [00:15:21] Speaker A: If I'm grieving grief, we can give ourself a little longer. The loss process is longer than just the push and shove disappointments of everyday life. So every disappointment is different in its level, and so we give ourselves different amount of time. A little disappointment. I gotta give myself a short time. [00:15:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:57] Speaker A: Somebody cut in front of me when I'm driving. I gotta nip that in. [00:16:02] Speaker B: Yeah. It doesn't get to ruin your whole day. [00:16:04] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:16:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:06] Speaker A: So I say to myself, I'm not going to allow these negative things about this disappointment to become obsessive where I obsess over it again and again. And I start saying, okay, time's running out on this. I'm gonna be my own best friend and I'm gonna say no more of that. [00:16:36] Speaker B: Well, let me ask you, because I think a lot of times what happens is you have the initial hit of disappointment. And you said this in your sermon, you get the initial hit of disappointment, but then what happens is you, you play it over, and so you're disappointed, not just the initial hit, but then 30 times more, because we play it over. And I think that's a very human experience where, because we haven't processed it right, we replay. We replay, we replay. But how does that. Cause that's really what this is, too. How do you stop yourself? [00:17:09] Speaker A: Okay. One way to stop obsessing is, is to force yourself to think about it in a different way. [00:17:17] Speaker B: Okay. [00:17:18] Speaker A: Okay. So when I'm obsessing, I'm just thinking about it in the same way over and over. And it's almost always connected to the story I'm telling myself. [00:17:28] Speaker B: Yeah, all right. [00:17:29] Speaker A: I break out of obsessing when I start saying, okay, I'm moving from what happened to what can I learn from what happened? Now I'm not. I'm done. I'm forgiving the person who disappointed me. Now I'm saying, this can make me a better person. Now I'm gonna, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be thoughtful and reasonable about what I can learn from this disappointment. [00:17:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:59] Speaker A: All right. So, for example, somebody didn't do something at work they said they would do all right. I want to learn from that example. All right? Did I communicate well? Was it realistic? Okay. I might even have to say to myself, if there is a history of that, maybe I need to learn that this person isn't a trustworthy person. Okay. I move from just the disappointment. Now I'm saying this disappointment has the possibility of making me a better person, helping me to be more effective in the future. So what can I learn from this disappointment? So I have an active plan to do something different so that the possibility of being disappointed in the same way goes down. [00:18:56] Speaker B: Okay. So let's give them a tool to grab onto, then. So if I'm gonna think about it different, what would it. What would that look like? So you get in a fight with a friend. You've played it over and over and over. What's the tool, then, to think about it different? [00:19:14] Speaker A: All right. Now, okay, I'm gonna stop thinking about the story. You're telling the story, and I'm gonna say, what can you learn? So that next time something like this comes around, you're better prepared. Right? [00:19:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:35] Speaker A: Maybe I need to make myself a set of questions. Okay. Were my expectations right? Did I communicate in a healthy way? [00:19:49] Speaker B: You're really. What you're doing is you're taking your eye off the problem and you're turning it back onto yourself. [00:19:54] Speaker A: Yes. [00:19:54] Speaker B: So, like, you're having some self reflective time where you're being very honest with what can you learn and grow from that? [00:20:05] Speaker A: I can control that. In my disappointment, I cannot control. Yeah, the other person. [00:20:14] Speaker B: This is a hard thought, but I just feel like someone out there is listening and they need to know this. So let's say it is a disappointment you've carried for a long time. Maybe you don't have a relationship with that person anymore, or maybe they have passed away, but you're still carrying that disappointment of how you responded, how you reacted. And that's what you're playing over and over and over. Where do you feel like showing yourself? Grace falls in all of this, too. [00:20:46] Speaker A: Well, here is I shared this Sunday, but it's a little ritual I've done in my own life many times. I imagine myself somewhere very peaceful. I just imagine myself somewhere very peaceful. And then I see myself sitting with my palms in my hand, turned up like this. And then I say to God, I'm casting all my care upon you because you care for me in my inner self. I'm releasing the tension of this disappointment. I'm releasing the anxiety of this disappointment. I'm releasing the anger of this disappointment. I'm casting all this upon you because you care for me, and it doesn't take a long time, but I always find my spirit is different after I've done that than before I do it. [00:21:55] Speaker B: I love that. I'm working on a sermon for our next cc midweek, and I'm trying to figure out failure because you hear a lot about it, but people talk very. They don't get real detailed about failure. So I feel like, you know, you're supposed to fail. It's all part of life. You're going to fail. And then it's like, get up and move quickly, but you never get the details of, like, how. How do you recover from failure? And I heard a really interesting sermon about the idea that at the core of not being able to change or at the core of a lot of our failures is it's a spiritual issue, and we are living inside of the rights and the wrongs of religiosity instead of living in the grace of God. And I love this idea of sitting, imagining yourself almost in the presence of God, giving it to him, because we do. We have a partner in life. [00:22:54] Speaker A: Yes, we do. [00:22:55] Speaker B: And I love the idea of sitting in his grace, giving it over to him, letting him do life with you in that aspect. Okay. We have one more or two. [00:23:09] Speaker A: Well, I have a couple ideas I want to share, and the one is, disappointments are more often similar to disappointments we've had in our past and less often random. So we have a history of disappointment. [00:23:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:30] Speaker A: So let's just say when you were a child, your mother or your father, they treated you in a way that you felt like they were disappointed with you. And they. They didn't. They didn't really like you. They didn't appreciate you. [00:23:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:57] Speaker A: All right. That feeling of not being valued, the disappointment that was with that, that'll show up again and again in your life. [00:24:08] Speaker B: What do you think? It's because that's what you're looking for or that's what, you know, like, why is that? [00:24:19] Speaker A: I think part. I think the deepest part of it is because that's where you get wounded. [00:24:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:25] Speaker A: That is. Disappointings can be wounding. [00:24:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:29] Speaker A: And if that disappointment doesn't get healed, then it gets pushed on in the same way. All right. Now I'm a junior high kid, and. [00:24:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:39] Speaker A: She doesn't like me. [00:24:40] Speaker B: And rejection. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:24:43] Speaker A: It's pushing on that very same thing. [00:24:45] Speaker B: And that's the nerve that you feel. I see. [00:24:49] Speaker A: So we get this history of disappointment and processing. Disappointment can be part of the healing that breaks that history. The wound that isn't healed will show up again and again and again. The wound that gets healed is no longer as sensitive, and I'm going to be disappointed less in that area. [00:25:19] Speaker B: Well, maybe we should do a podcast on that. I feel like that might be really helpful for people is how do you dig into healing that wound? Like, how do you walk alongside with God and dig in a little bit deeper? I also think the idea of expectations would be a really cool podcast for people of, like, how do you have healthy expectations? Because we all have expectations in life. [00:25:47] Speaker A: Yes. [00:25:48] Speaker B: Okay. Can you give me one more good idea on disappointment? [00:25:52] Speaker A: The last idea is, at some point, healthy people let it go. At some point, the final act in dealing with a disappointment is I consciously say, I'm letting this go. I'm not going to let this be an issue anymore. I am forgiving the person that disappointed me. I'm acknowledging what I need to acknowledge. I've got a better plan for the future, but I'm saying I'm done with this now. And then we let it go. [00:26:28] Speaker B: Okay, so let's say, and if it. [00:26:30] Speaker A: Comes back, I say to myself, you let that go. [00:26:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I've let that go. I like that. Okay. Let's say it's something like, you used the idea of a parent disappointing you, but what if it's like, a child that disappoints you and, like, you're responsible for the health of that relationship because you're the mom or you're the dad, and maybe it's something of your values that's driving it. How do you. How do you let it go? What's like a healthy way of letting it go when it's values driven? [00:27:01] Speaker A: So I personally believe that God gave me the wife, children, grandchildren, and baby sealer that he did because he wants something more out of me for them. God wants something more out of me for my family than every other person. And I want to be. I want to be ahead of the game when it comes to forgiving and letting go. I don't want to carry resentment around. Okay. I don't want to start treating people around me. I don't want to lead in my relationship with people around me on my disappointment. I don't want them to always feel like I disappoint you, I disappoint you. That is, they'll ruin relationships. On the other hand, it is okay to say we had a disappointing experience together, but we love each other and we're committed to each other and even if we can't agree, we're going to be kind and loving and help each other out. [00:28:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:24] Speaker A: The older your children get, the more you have to love them without their compliance. [00:28:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:33] Speaker A: Do you see? [00:28:34] Speaker B: I do. [00:28:36] Speaker A: When they're younger, you can go to your room. You can't. Whatever. All right. The older our children get, the more we have to learn to love them without their compliance. Okay. We disagree about this, but I love you more than I care about you agreeing with me, so I'm gonna love you as much in our disagreement as I do in our agreement. [00:29:07] Speaker B: That's good. [00:29:08] Speaker A: You're never gonna feel from me that because you don't agree with me. I'm disappointed, and I'm gonna treat you. I'm gonna make you pay for my disappointment. [00:29:19] Speaker B: Right. Right. I love that. That's really good. I think, too, like, when it comes to the parent role, like, you are always the mom, you're always the dad, and so you always have to be the initiator of health. So if you are a mom and dad, go initiate health and love and goodness. All right, well, I love you. Thank you so much for doing this with us. We'll have a couple of notes on our page so that you can refer to those. If you like this or you found this helpful, please share. Please like and invite a friend to listen. We hope you have a beautiful day, and we will see you next time.