Episode 53: When Things Don't Go the Way You Hoped They Would

Disappointment is part of every life—a job you didn’t get, a relationship that ended, a dream that fell through. In this episode, I’ll show you how to allow the grief without adding extra layers of suffering, how to let gratitude soften the past, and how to choose hope for the future. If your heart feels heavy because things didn’t go the way you hoped they would, this conversation is for you.

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Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 53. When things don't go the way you hoped they would.

I'm Emily Ricks, and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way, so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.

Hey, how's it going? I got an email the other day asking if I had a podcast episode about overcoming heartbreak.

She shared a little bit about her situation, that she works at a school, and recently some changes were made that impact her a lot, and she's feeling really disappointed. She didn't want this to happen. She said she's feeling heartbroken and is trying to stay positive and keep her emotions under control, but that she's struggling.

You know, there are so many times when things just don't go the way we hoped they would. A pregnancy that fails, a marriage that ends, a friendship that drifts apart. Maybe you don't end up getting the job or the part or the callback or the invitation you were hoping for.

At my house, we participate in a lot of musicals, and I love to help my kids and other teenagers prepare their auditions and really go for the part they want, and sometimes they land that role and other times they don't. It's super disappointing when you work hard for something and you don't get it. Beyond a role in a musical, maybe you were really hoping for an apology or someone's approval of your decision and you didn't get it.

Maybe a health diagnosis or a financial setback or a tragic loss has really changed what you thought your life was going to look like. If you're like most people, your life is going to be full of disappointments and setbacks and loss. So how do you stay positive when you're feeling heartbroken? I want to speak to that today and give you a few tools for how you can choose to think about and handle feelings of disappointment when things don't go the way you hoped they would.

So the first thing I want to say is I want to encourage you to allow the grief, to open yourself up to it, acknowledge, I feel sad, I feel disappointed, I really wanted that thing and I didn't get it. We practice this during COVID a lot, right? That thing that I was really looking forward to, was super excited about, canceled, never going to happen. Like it got to a point where that happened over and over and over.

And sometimes we would joke like, oh, we're strengthening our disappointment muscles because we got good at feeling that disappointment. Sometimes people think having a positive mindset means you just feel happy all the time. And that's not how I think of it at all.

I think embracing and allowing grief brings beauty and meaning and depth into your life. I view all of those as positive things that you invite into your experience by leaning into grief. I want to be sad if someone I love passes away.

I want to be disappointed if I worked really hard for something and it doesn't go the way I wanted. I want to ache a little when my child is struggling. That's my privilege as a human to feel all of those emotions.

I believe that it deepens me. It's part of the joy of loving other people. So I actually welcome grief and disappointment and sadness as a beautiful part of my journey.

So if you think staying positive means not feeling grief and pushing it down and pretending not to be sad or saying it's not that big of a deal, or I shouldn't be struggling with this. Like you can think of it that way. Personally, I don't find that helpful or joyful in the end because I believe that grief shows me I have loved.

Disappointment shows me I have hoped. I want those things in my life. I've heard it said the only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life.

I'm not interested in that equation. That's not a life I want. I think sorrow is part of the beauty.

It's part of the joy of the whole experience of being a human. So that's an important angle for me. If you have an idea of wanting to stay positive, which I mean, I have that goal too.

I want to stay positive in my mindset, but I think it's important how you define that for yourself. So you don't end up faking it or pressing down grief, right? Like if you have a compass and it's leading you toward a rich, joyful life, that compass is going to point you straight into grief, not away from it. Really acknowledging and honoring your own feelings of sadness, pain, or disappointment.

That is positive. It's beautiful. It's important.

So that's the first thing I want to share. Allow the grief, welcome it, and feel it. That said, I also want to share two mental outlooks that I believe will not serve you when you feel heartbroken or disappointed.

The first one is trying to change the past. No matter how hard you try, you can't change something that has already happened. So any kind of thought like this shouldn't have happened.

I should have been a better mother. If I just not let them go on that trip, he wouldn't have been injured. I should have been able to prevent this.

I never should have trusted this person. If you marinate in these kinds of thoughts, you will feel hopeless and powerless because you're trying to change the past and you can't. And in this mindset, you'll block your ability to be able to process the real grief because now you're shoveling resentment and shame and what we call dirty pain on top of it.

Trying to change the past is one way to orient to things when you feel disappointed. And a lot of people do it, but I say it's never useful. It doesn't serve you to focus on that.

It creates additional unnecessary suffering in a challenging situation. And it's a fight you can never win. Trying to change the past is an argument with reality.

Byron Katie says, when I argue with reality, I lose, but only 100% of the time. So here's the antidote. If you find yourself thinking these kinds of thoughts and trying to cope by changing the past, you can bring yourself back to the truth and just say, this is reality.

It happened. I can't change it. It isn't what I hoped.

It isn't what I wanted. I can acknowledge that and grieve it. And then when I'm ready, I'm going to move forward and keep living my life.

So trying to change the past isn't useful. It can't be done. The other mental outlook that's optional that I believe won't serve you when you're facing disappointment is if you make negative sweeping conclusions about the future, conclusions that you can't prove, but you choose to believe anyway, based on how you feel right now.

Thoughts like I'll never be able to trust anyone again, or I'll never feel truly happy again. Maybe you think the best years of my life are behind me. I'm always going to be alone.

Nothing's ever going to change for me, or I'll never get another chance like this. Do you see how these beliefs add dirty pain as an additional layer of unnecessary suffering to that base layer of grief and disappointment? If you find yourself going there and it's normal to have these thoughts, you can bring yourself back to sanity by asking, can you absolutely know that that's true? Can you look in a crystal ball and confirm that you're right about that? It feels true, but that doesn't mean it is right. The truth is you can't know the future, just like you can't change the past.

So what I believe is most helpful when you feel overlooked or disappointed, or have experienced any kind of a loss is to focus on staying in the present with your pain, lean into it, honor it, and acknowledge it. This sounds backwards to some people because they want to stay positive. So they try to steer clear of pain, but actually the base layer of pain is very positive.

It's painful, but it's beautiful. I say it's necessary and important. Now, if your brain wants to go to the past and it will want to, you can guide it to thoughts of gratitude.

Gratitude doesn't try to change the past. Gratitude isn't an argument with reality. So gratitude for the past when you're grieving can sound like, I'm so thankful for the memories I have, for the goodness of the chapter of my life that has now ended.

That was so beautiful. And it hurts to let it go because I loved it so much, but I'm so thankful for what I got, even if it wasn't as long as I hoped or expected. Gratitude for the past when you feel overlooked could sound like, I'm so thankful for how hard I worked.

I learned so much and I didn't get that opportunity and I really wanted it, but I'm so glad for who I became as I gave it my all. You can think about the past without hopelessly trying to change it. If your brain wants to go to the future, and it will want to, if your brain really wants to make sweeping conclusions about what will or won't happen in the future, you can let it, but give your brain some gentle guidance.

Okay. We can't know the future. We can't know what will happen, but we can believe whatever we choose to.

So if we're going to make a blanket statement, might as well pick one that feels inspiring instead of depressing. Okay, brain, let's cultivate a faith and an openness about the future. Instead of I'll never be happy again, which we can't prove, we could choose to think God will use this for good.

I know he will. And I can't actually prove that either, but I like how I feel when I believe that. And that's called faith.

Believing in things that I can't see, but hoping that they're going to be true. So you can choose to believe that beauty will come from these ashes. You can choose to believe that pain is a form of beauty in the grand design now, and in the future, you can choose to believe that going through this loss will give you perspective and wisdom and empathy and strength that you actually wouldn't be able to gain any other way.

We can't know the future, but we can shape it by how we choose to think. That's what I choose to believe anyway. So when things don't go the way you hoped they would, you don't need to pretend it doesn't hurt in an attempt to stay positive.

You don't have to plaster a smile over it or talk yourself out of the sadness. One of the most beautiful things you can do is allow the grief. Let it remind you of how much you loved, how much you hoped, how deeply you cared.

But also notice when your mind wants to pile on the extra layers of this shouldn't have happened or the future is ruined, you don't have to choose that part. Instead, you can choose to stay here in the present moment with your pain, and you can also fill your heart with gratitude for the past, and you can choose hope and openness for the future. You can choose to believe even in the middle of the loss that God is still at work, and you, my friend, were created to feel it all, and you're going to get through it.

I believe that with all my heart. Thanks so much for joining me today. I'll talk to you next week.