instantly transforming disappointment into stay tuned
this is Damon Cart from NLP Gym transforming disappointment into
fulfillment if you haven't already please click subscribe to this youtube
channel so you can get these videos on a regular basis is it possible to
transform disappointment into fulfillment instantly yes it is
this is easier than what it seems like but before we get into how to do
that we first have to define what disappointment is or maybe not
define it but how does it even happen when you've been
disappointed in life or when you've been disappointed in certain circumstances or
because of certain outcomes why did that even happen the reason why we get
disappointed is because we have unmet expectations if we expect to get a raise
and we don't get that raise we're immediately disappointed if we ask
someone out and we expect them to say yes but they say no we're going to be
disappointed so anytime you have an expectation and it goes unmet you will
be disappointed by that if you don't expect to get a raise and you don't get
a raise you're not disappointed if you don't expect someone to say yes when you
ask them out and they don't say yes then you're not disappointed when you get a
raise and you weren't expecting it, it's a pleasant
surprise we often say it's a pleasant surprise well why is that because our
expectations were exceeded so when our expectations are exceeded in a good way
then we experience this sort of pleasure this pleasurable surprise we
weren't thinking about it so it just happened so it feels really good
when that happens so what's the solution to that should we just lower our
expectations so low or even get rid of expectation altogether so that
everything seems like a pleasant surprise
no because when you do that you're just creating another expectation you expect
that by getting rid of expectation or lowering your expectations then you will
be happier because everything will seem like it's just sort of spontaneous and
it's all wonderful so that's just another expectation and again that will
create disappointment so no that's not really the solution to this think
about when you were younger and you may be very young already you may be like in
your early 20s but think about when you were even younger and of course if
you're like my age you can think about you know twenty years ago when you were
very idealistic and you had all these great expectations of life and
everything that was to come and then what happened later you kind of had
those expectations dashed well so why is that well when we're younger we
don't have so much life experience to create realistic expectations we don't
have a whole lot of life experience it's just a matter of we're going by what
we've been taught we've gone by what we've seen in TV on the internet and
then we create expectations out of that and then as we get older we start to
find that reality and our expectations aren't really meeting each other and
this is actually called a U and they've done Studies on this then around the age
of 25 we take a sharp drop into unhappiness and we don't usually
resurface until about the age of 45 to say 55 it's different for everybody and
it's even different from men to women but in general there is this drop
around mid 20s and resurfacing about 20 to 25 years later now you could
make the argument that what happens is is that we have enough of our
expectations dashed we hit this low this low point in our lives where nothing we
expected or most of the things that we expected didn't happen so we start to
climb our way out of it by adjusting our expectations to meet reality in other
words creating more realistic expectations now
there is probably a lot of truth to that but I don't think really that's the
whole story because what I think starts to happen is as we get older and if you're into a lot of personal development you can get there faster
what I think happens is you start to not have as much expectations and you start
to live more from intention now we're going to have expectations there's no
way to get rid of that if you're used to the Sun rising every day you're
just going to naturally have an expectation that the Sun is going to
rise if you buy a brand new computer you probably going to expect that it works
but sometimes it doesn't so we're going to have expectations so there's no point
in trying to get rid of that but when you find yourself getting disappointed
and you switch to the disappointment itself should be sort of an alert to let
you know you haven't you have an expectation it wasn't met now you need
to adjust something here and the adjustment is to go back to what was
what is the intent behind that expectation because expectation really
places a lot on circumstances that are not within your control I'll give you an
example I'm coaching this woman and she's telling me by the way she's 32
she's like right in the middle of that U and she's telling me that she
doesn't know why she's not happy because she's got a she has a very supportive
family she's doing fine financially and she's running businesses and that was
always important to her but she's just not feeling happy she doesn't know why
she doesn't she doesn't feel very fulfilled and so I said well so
tell me more about that what you know what is the unhappiness when it
basically came down to disappointment and so she said you know I had all these
things that I wanted to accomplish in my 20s and right now I'm nowhere near that
so I know this very well I went through it myself
and I'm recognizing she's in that U and I'm recognizing what
she's telling me is she had these very high expectations of herself and reality
just hasn't really lined up with that so I just said
what was one of your expectations what was one of the things that you thought
you would accomplish by this age and she said I honestly thought that I would
figure out how to end poverty in India now that's pretty extreme and she was
dead serious she actually thought that she was going to do this and so I told
her I said you know that involves a lot of circumstances that are way beyond
your control that involves a lot of the cooperation of many many people who have
various political agendas way out of your control so I said it's an
admirable intent it's a great intent but to set that sort of expectation on
yourself that that's a little - that's a little too hard on you I said what was
the intent behind that and she said what my intention is to help people and I
said after this call because we were skyping doing the coaching on
Skype I said after this call can you go outside your house right
away and go help someone and she said well yeah absolutely
and I said would that fulfill your intent she said she said yes it would I said
would that feel good and she's like well yeah it would so this is the point that
I'm making here when we live by intention it's a
lot easier to fulfill that intent usually in whatever it is we can do it
right away and we can do small things it doesn't have to be the big things like
ending poverty in India that was just setting herself up for disappointment
but we do this to ourselves we set these very lofty goals where there is so much
that is really out of our hands instead of focusing on the intent and when we
meet that expectation so say we do because we do sometimes we meet our
expectations it feels pretty good but it's not terribly fulfilling because we
expected it it's sort of like well yeah that's what I expected anyway so if you
expected an extra $500 this week and you get it
it's cool but it feels somewhat good but it's not it's not great it's because you
you know you've expected it but what if you intend to make 500 extra dollars
this week and you do, you're probably going to feel really good about that
because you weren't putting all this pressure down on yourself that Oh I expect
that this will happen also if it doesn't happen you know you can you can it's
easy to go back and say okay well whatever I did didn't work and then I
can change it so expectation is actually very very rigid intention is much more
flexible because you can have a strategy that you're using to fulfill your intent
and maybe the strategy doesn't work and then you just toss it out because it
didn't fulfill your intent with an expectation we have a tendency because
it's all built up on this one way to do something that we're sort of loyal to
that strategy and when the strategy doesn't work we get very disappointed
and we don't see another way to do what it is we wanted to do because it was
laid in this way of this one way of doing something that this is the way it
has to happen because this is the way I expected it to happen so with intent it
gives you more room it gives you more space to grow going by intention frees
you up it doesn't put all the pressure of all the things you can't control
because the truth is is that another word for intent is value your intent is
your focus on the value that you want to fulfill and there are many ways to
fulfill your values and since your values come from within you there's
pretty much even the smallest thing can help you fulfill a value if
you value kindness you can just go out your front door and be kind to someone
doesn't mean you have to do anything extraordinary you can just help an old
lady walk across the street that's being kind you can say hi to someone that is
the cashier at your grocery store you can say hi to them that's being kind
so every little behavior every little activity
every little action you take can support your intent support the value you want
to fulfill but if you place this heavy expectation on yourself you're setting
yourself up for disappointment if you try to lower your expectations of life
then that's another expectation that by lowering your expectations that you'll
be happier with the simpler smaller stuff the best thing to do is just to
get out of expectation as much as possible now like I said you're going to
have expectations it's just going to happen so don't go through trying to rid
yourself of all your expectations but when you feel disappointed a lot of
people feel this point and not even sure why if you feel disappointed know that
what that means is is that you have an expectation that wasn't met
then you can ask yourself well what was my intent with having that expectation
and once you know what that intent is then you can be super flexible and then
ask yourself well what's something I can do right now that would fulfill this
intent and then more than likely whatever it is you can do right away and
with intent the small stuff really counts with expectation it has to
fit that expectation otherwise it doesn't count I think of so many times
in my life that I set goals without really understanding the intent behind
them and goals that's another word for expectation and intent is another word for
values so I set goals and found myself achieving the goal but I didn't realize
it because my expectation of what it would look like how it would arrive or
especially the successes that I've had I thought you know I set this goal that I
would I would make X amount of dollars in this business or that business or
this many sales and it didn't happen and then I look back on those times where I
actually did have the success that I wanted I made the money that I wanted to
make but because it didn't fit the expectation I didn't realize that I'd
actually fulfilled the intent so you never quite know the package it's
going to show up in if you have too strict
of an expectation you may get exactly what you want the very thing that will
fulfill your value or your intent but because your expectation is so detailed
you don't recognize that you've actually gotten what you wanted when you fulfill
intentions and values your confidence goes up your self-esteem goes up because
you are acting in ways you're behaving in ways you're being what you value when
you fulfill an expectation though it's sort of just like well that's what I
expected I'm doing what I expected so it doesn't it doesn't carry
that sense of fulfillment it's not it doesn't feel as valuable and meaningful
when you fulfill your intents when you're aware of what your intents and
your and your values are and you're acting in ways that align with that
your life will have a greater sense of meaning and purpose because
you become and you do what you value
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