How to Combat Disappointment

Using pattern-interrupt

Disappointment caused me a lot of disappointment.

I had to manifest an intervention. I invented my own method to combat this monster that has been torturing me for ages.

The event that triggered it all was my bloated tummy, combined with my little fat pouch. I was on Day 25 of a yoga challenge, dry fasting once a week, doing core DAILY.

I had just got back from a spinning class.

I was feeling good.

Dinner was on the go, I had slipped into something sexy.

The guy I’m dating thought to comment on my bloated tummy and I took it way personally. It ended in a highly emotionally charged ordeal, thoughts flying all over the place in my mind.

The night of sex, dinner, and quality time I had planned turned into a disaster.

I can’t go into the right and the wrong of what happened [am I that insecure? was he being insensitive? did I attract it? does PMS count? Is it the full moon?] and you will soon find out why

The bottom line is that we disappoint ourselves when we fall ‘victim’ to the same things over and over.

In addition, we have expectations of others and end up disappointed when they don’t behave in the way we want.

I had enough of both of those.

What the self-help gurus say

1. Don’t have expectations.
2. Fix yourself first.
3. Express your needs.
4. It is more about them than it is about you.
5. It’s your point of attraction…

…all the above-mentioned are good things to explore and grow from, yet give it a few weeks and you are back to square one in my opinion.

There’s no real pattern interrupt. A pattern interrupt involves breaking an individual’s routine, habitual thought, or behavioral pattern so as to shake it up.

I really enjoy the teachings of Esther Hicks and it has helped me a lot, yet somehow I found myself back at the same point over and over again.

I want to cut to the chase because this exact tendency of going around in circles keeps us from growing up in life.

It is frustrating.

It is demotivating.

How I Combat Disappointment Now

The event:

1. If it is a personal trigger, we are guaranteed to have an emotional response. We don’t know until it happens, meaning that it is something we need to accept as a given.
2. Focus on the emotional response and your ability to cultivate a new skill as to how to deal with it. This is vital in shifting. The focus is purely on the skill of dealing with emotion. It takes away the power from the person, the event, and the whole concept of disappointment which has been tripping us up repetitively. It takes some practice if you are used to trying to find a resolution.
3. Apply a simple technique such as drinking cold water [this really helps me], breathing, or EFT tapping. Feel free to invent something entirely crazy and new.
4. Choose anything easy to focus on that is going to give you a sense of accomplishment, for example, you can focus on being a better listener. When the incident is in full swing you can focus on truly listening. That’s it. End of story. You are not listening to offer your opinion. You are not listening to make your point.

This is not a deep dive folks.

In other words, you are not trying to understand yourself, the other person, your value, life, and the human race in general.

You are merely trying to hone a positive new skill.

Why would you want to hone this kind of skill you might ask?

1. A positive skill means positive evolution. Worthy human goal achieved.
2. You do feel better. Feeling good is another worthy goal.

Yes, but what he/she did was not right Helen? Where’s the justice? You see, now we are treading on dangerous ground again, and may I remind you that up until now this was exactly the cause of your misery.

Every transaction that human beings have, somebody gains, somebody loses. — Sadhguru

Post-incident:

1. Become the fly on the wall.
2. Look at everything objectively, as if you are studying it to write up a paper. Look at the empowering choice you made to improve on how you handle emotionally charged events. Look at how good you felt with even the slightest improvement. Perhaps how you journaled afterward to further improve the skill.

Ok so what if it did not go all that well and you feel that you took a step back?

Applaud yourself for being aware of it in the first place. This in itself is positive. It means that you are going to adapt your skill strategy to do better next time. Perhaps you want to try a different skill next time.

Be light.

Be playful.

You might want to write down a page of positive affirmations, record it and listen to it as often as you can.

You see, already you feel better!

The pitfalls — take note, beware

These are the common pitfalls. Don’t fear them. Keep an eye on them.

1. Looking for validation from the other party.
2. Trying to find a solution.
3. Confrontation in order to prove a point.
4. Trying to establish control by playing the victim.
5. Deflection [projecting your own shortcomings on another].

Conclusion

What happens as a result of applying this method is that the underlying fear, belief, and ego come to the fore with clarity.

It will come as a thought or realization when you least expect it and you will be able to shift it there and then through awareness. As always it will have different layers depending on where we are in our evolution.

We are never going to have it all figured out.

Our work is never done.

I have found that sometimes we rinse and repeat common self-help tools to the point where they really don’t help us and it causes much frustration.

New thinking brings new experiences and this is how I remain excited by evolution…

Thanks for reading!

Thanks for reading!

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