Welcome Disappointment

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Disappointment is not what you think it is. It's not something you want to avoid, it's not something that says you're doing something wrong, it's not something that indicates you're not good enough or you're not capable. Disappointment is actually in an emotion that ambitious women experience when they go after big things. It's an emotion that we actually want to have around because it tells us we're on the right track. In this podcast I want to help you learn to normalize and welcome disappointment while loving yourself through the process.

Topics in this episode:

  • A new way to think about disappointment

  • What disappoint is and what it is not

  • The worst thing to do when feeling disappointment

  • Why ambitious women want to experience disappointment

  • The importance of self-compassion during a season of disappointment

Show Notes:

  • Join the Ambitious and Balanced Working Mom Collective – This is a group coaching program for working moms looking to create the building blocks to work-life balance. The program teaches you a 5 step process, includes weekly group coaching and a private community of working moms all determined to create a balanced life. Find out more information here: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/collective

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Transcription


Intro

Disappointment is not what you think it is. It's not something you want to avoid, it's not something that says you're doing something wrong, it's not something that indicates you're not good enough or you're not capable. Disappointment is actually an emotion that ambitious women experience when they go after big things. It's an emotion that we actually want to have around because it tells us we're on the right track. In this podcast, I want to help you learn to normalize and welcome disappointment while loving yourself in the process. You're ready? Let's get to it.


Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Mom Podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you're looking to feel more confident, decisive and productive at both work and home, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Rebecca Olson. Let's get to it.


Disappointment is an icky feeling. It just doesn't feel very good in your body and because of that most of us spend a lot of energy avoiding it. But over the last few weeks, I have become a bit cozy with disappointment and I've learned a few things that I wanted to share here on this podcast.


A little back story, I've been a coach for about six years but have been doing it exclusively for the last four and 1/2. I've created a successful six-figure business, I have worked with hundreds of working moms over the past several years. In many ways, I have achieved what I set out to achieve in the beginning but at the start of 2021, I decided it was time to level up in my business. What I mean by that is I wanted to not just grow my business in a financial sense but I want to grow my impact. I want to reach more working moms. I want to solve the work-life balance challenge. So my vision has literally leveled up for the kind of business I want to have and the kind of coach I want to be and the kind of impact I want to have in this world.


If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’re going to have the same results.

So that meant that the way I go about doing business, acquiring clients, serving clients, all of that had to change. Because if I keep doing exactly what I've been doing I'm going to create the same results. I'm going to make the same amount of money, I'm going to work with the same amount of clients, my impact in this world will be the same. And don't get me wrong I feel a lot of pride over the work that I do in the business that I've created in the time that I've created it but I want more. That's what makes me ambitious. That's what makes me a go-getter. I always wanted to take things to the next level. So that means I have to do things in a different way. I have to set some reach goals, experiment with new ways of serving my clients, explore new ways of getting my message out into the world…lots and lots of new. Because if I want something new in my business, if I want to reach a goal I've never met before, I have to fundamentally do things in a new way.


So at the beginning of 2021, I set some big lofty goals, things I had never done before. I wanted to create a new signature program for working moms, I wanted to develop some new concepts and trainings, I wanted to start a podcast, I wanted to put more resources in the hands of working moms to help them create the balanced life that they deserve. I don't want working moms to feel that pull between work and home anymore, in fact, I think that pull is optional - I don't think we have to experience that, and I wanted to create a business that would teach and support working moms to have this experience. It’s a big vision. 


So over the last six months I've been creating a lot. I have been focusing on serving my clients at bigger and better levels. I have done trainings and launched new products…and yet I haven't met any of my goals. If you look at some of the data, you might just say I have failed. Over the last few weeks I have looked back over what I've created and yes there is a lot of pride and a lot of disappointment. 


Disappointment is a part of being human.

And so I want to focus this podcast on some of the lessons that I have learned from the disappointment. Because here's what I know to be true, disappointment is a part of being human. Life is not meant to always be rosy. There is an entire spectrum of emotion that we experience as humans for a really good reason because we're meant to feel and experience the emotions that are on the happy side of the spectrum and on the negative side. Otherwise, why do those emotions exist? And so I believe disappointment is an emotion that is actually very useful to us and as one that we want to welcome instead of avoid and because I've spent a lot of time recently experiencing disappointment, I want to break down for you some of the lessons I've learned.


Disappointment is just a feeling.

Let's start with what disappointment actually is, it is a feeling. It's literally a series of vibrations that our body experiences. The problem with disappointment comes when we interpret those vibrations. What our brain decides that feeling to mean is either something that allows us to welcome it in the future or to avoid it altogether. 


The most useful interpretation I have found for disappointment is: I didn’t reach the desired goal. That is it. Put a big period right there. I wanted something and I didn’t get it. In my case, I spent the last 6 months working toward some big changes in my business and they didn’t happen in the time I wanted them to. Or, you set out to stay calm and collected the next time your kid tantrums but you end up losing it on them, again. Or, you decide to create some strict boundaries around when you are going to log off from work and you can’t keep to them. Or you spend many long hours preparing for a presentation and you don’t land the client. 


All disappointment means is that you don't reach the desired goal.


When your brain interprets disappointment this way it feels bad, but it also allows you to say “hmm…how can I do this differently next time.” You can pretty quickly jump to the next step without all those icky feelings lingering. I am inspired by many famous people who interpreted failure in this way which allowed them to push forward and keep going after the goals. Oprah was fired from her first television gig for being “too emotional”. Stephen King was rejected by 30 editors before his 4th novel became a bestseller. Walt Disney was fired from her job as a cartoon artist for lack of creativity. Michael Jordan didn’t make varsity the first time he went out for the team. The only reason any of these successful people were able to keep moving forward toward their goals is because disappointment didn’t mean anything except failure to reach the desired outcome. Not that it was impossible. Not that they weren’t made for it. Not that they were on the wrong path.


The most detrimental interpretation of disappointment is:

I didn’t reach the desired goal AND I should have. Whenever we say “should'' we are judging ourselves. In this case, we are judging ourselves to be not good enough or incapable or inadequate. Not meeting the goal becomes personal. Like it’s a personal attack on our abilities and who we are as a person. 


We yell at our kids and we think we are bad moms. 

We don’t meet the deadline and we think we aren’t good enough as employees. 

We miss the mark on a presentation and we think we aren’t capable or competent. 


Another detrimental interpretation of disappointment is: I made the wrong choice. You start questioning yourself to begin with. Like the disappointment shouldn’t be here and it is a sign that you are on the wrong path. If I was interpreting disappointment this way it would sound a lot like “Oh my gosh I made the wrong choices in my business, the content, the trainings and podcast isn't any good. I should have just kept doing what I was doing before.” heck no! I know that the work that I am doing and the content and value that I am putting out in the world is life-changing, I believe that so deep down despite the fact that I haven't met my goals.


Or I have a client that tends to interpret disappointment in this way, she tends to make disappointment mean that she's made the wrong choice and recently we have been coaching over a decision she had to make about her job. She was offered two different jobs and she got to pick between them, which of course is a great problem to have and after she decided she was feeling so disappointed because she was ultimately choosing between two really good options and she had to say no to one of them and that was disappointing but she interpreted that disappointment to mean that she had made the wrong choice and that she should have taken the other job. We spent a lot of time coaching on that and changing the interpretation of that disappointment so that it didn't mean she got it wrong.


So the way you interpret disappointment is very important, it’s either going to be useful to you or it's going to throw you into a negative spiral, immobilize you and hold you back.  


Another meaning that I like to ascribe to disappointment is: I'm going after something big. If it wasn't something big then it likely wouldn't disappoint me. I'm going after something big! I'm reaching for higher goals! I'm not settling and I'm pushing myself for more! Disappointment reminds me of character qualities that I love about myself and that makes me me. I never want to be somebody that settles. I never want to settle for the status quo. I never want to be someone that plays it safe. I want to experience the depth and the breadth of life and I know I have not achieved that already and so it's going to require me putting myself out there and having big goals and trying new things and failure will be expected which means so will disappointment. 


Changing the meaning of disappointment.

My vision that I set this year is to change the paradigm for how working moms experience balance, that's a big dream. That's a big vision. My goal is to help thousands and thousands of ambitious women learn how to create a balanced life so they can go out and change the world without ever sacrificing their family. I don't know anyone who is trying to tackle this problem in this way, so of course, I don't exactly know how I'm going to do it, I've never done it! But rather than being held back in fear because I don't know how I'm going to make this vision a reality, instead of allowing the disappointment of my first failures to mean that the goal is too lofty or I'm not good enough, instead it reminds me how I'm the perfect person for this. I'm designed to go after big things, to never settle, to keep moving forward, it's what makes me me and my guess is it's what makes you you.


Because being ambitious means you have high aspirations. You want things that feel unattainable. So experiencing disappointment actually can remind you that you’re on the right path and that you are the right person to be going after it. 


So, once you are at that point where disappointment becomes normal and welcome, what becomes most important is that you create a soft cushion for yourself to land on. Again disappointment feels bad. We actually don't want to change that because fundamentally it doesn't feel good and the more we resist that feeling the more we sit in judgment of it and avoid it and interpret it in ways that aren't very helpful to us. So the point isn't that we want to make disappointment feel better but we do want to give ourselves a giant dose of self-compassion when it happens. We need to have a soft cushion to land on. 


Inviting self-compassion.

I'm going to take this to a little bit of an extreme example because I think it will make it easier for your brain to understand what I mean by this. When someone you love dies and you are sad and grieving over that loss you allow yourself space to feel that. There is a lot of self-compassion. You aren't internally yelling at yourself saying that you shouldn't be feeling sad or that you should get over it or that you're a horrible person because you're upset about this, no, it's very normal to feel sad and grieve after you lose someone and so you allow yourself space to feel that. And that might look a little different for everyone, but for me it looks like lounging in my pajamas all day, treating myself to a cup of coffee, asking my husband for a little alone time to just sit and think or stare off into space, getting to bed early, a massage, an allowance to cry whenever I want, asking for what I need when someone asks how can they help. These are all little ways that we show our self-compassion and we love ourselves in the midst of feeling sad. Now what I want to offer to you is that it looks exactly the same when we feel disappointment.


For me, over the last few weeks, I have found myself putting my hand over my heart and taking several deep breaths whenever that wave of disappointment would flow over me. Whenever I would think about how I have not reached my goals or how I am not as far along as I wish I was I treat myself with kindness.


Conclusion

And the biggest result that has come from normalizing and welcoming disappointments and then cultivating self-compassion in the process has been how quickly I have moved on and have created new plans for reaching toward my business goals again. And you can sure as heck believe that I am not giving up. An ambitious and balanced life is possible for all working moms and I am creating a path for them.


Alright, that is all I have for you today, let's get on out there and keep reaching for higher goals welcoming disappointment and loving ourselves along the way. Let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson