Ep. 147: Learning To Sit With Disappointment

In this episode of the Maybe I Can Podcast, I’m sharing a story about disappointment — and how a cancelled girls’ trip reminded me of one of life’s greatest lessons: adaptability.

What started as frustration turned into gratitude, as I learned to release control, shift my mindset, and see the beauty in life’s detours.

If you’ve ever had your plans completely turned upside down, this episode is for you. I’ll walk you through how to sit with your emotions, reframe your perspective, and move forward with grace.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Today’s Theme: Disappointment
• 0:30 The Trip That Fell Apart
• 2:46 Perspective on Money, Travel, and Choice
• 5:20 Bigger Disappointments: Friendship, Work, Life
• 6:51 Feel It Like Grief, Then Reframe
• 8:33 Gratitude, Time Back, and a New Plan
• 9:52 Control, Adaptability, and Spirals
• 11:05 The “Boxes” Mental Trick
• 12:20 Grace Over Blame and Meaning
• 13:23 Plot Twist: Doctor Says Go
• 14:55 Final Takeaways: Feel, Adapt, Be Grateful

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the Maybe I Can podcast. I'm your host, Debbie Weiss, and thank you so much for joining me today. So today's subject is gonna be maybe you'll find it a little disappointing because it's about disappointment. And most of my episodes are usually tied to what is going on currently in my life. And then I just tell you about it. And that's what I want to do today. I'm disappointed because oh, I don't know for how many months now, not that it matters, maybe about five months. I've been planning along with three of my friends this trip out to San Diego. And I'm in New Jersey, for those of you that don't know, and really excited. I've never been there. The three friends that I'm going with had been there before. So we first had this plan to go to San Diego. It started because one of my friends had to go for business and it was like, okay, let's just all join you. And then we also decided that, okay, since we're already flying west, we are going to stop in Las Vegas for one night and see the Eagles at the sphere yet again, because three of us have seen them already, and we're kind of groupies. So super excited. We're gonna go to Las Vegas one night, see the Eagles, stay overnight, and then drive across to San Diego and spend maybe about five days there. And then one of my friends, actually, I'm calling them my friends, and they are my friends, but two of the three of them are my cousins. And so one of them who has a lot of arthritic issues, she is already scheduled to have a shoulder replacement, and then two months later, a hip replacement. She wakes up and she can't walk because her knee hurts. And she's had both her knees replaced, so clearly that's not the issue. And she knew that she didn't do anything to the replacement, so she was convinced it was coming from her hip. And if she can't walk, obviously we can't go. You know, she offered we could push her around in a wheelchair, but that's not fun for anyone. And less than a week before we're gonna leave, she says, I think I'm gonna have to cancel. And I gotta admit, I was really, really disappointed. This is a trip I was looking forward to. This particular cousin and I had planned another trip in December before this trip came up, and I had to cancel due to some kind of money issues that I was having. And so the fact that, oh my goodness, yet another trip that we planned has been canceled. Now, you might be listening thinking, you're a spoiled brat, Dad. Listen to what you're saying. It's a trip, you know, I can't take trips. I totally, totally hear you. Believe me, I was not able to travel for the majority of my life. And honestly, right now, is it the best decision or the best use of my money? Some might say maybe not. I feel like, hey, I'm in my 60s, I'm healthy, I'm able to do it, and I want to go see the world. I want to see as much of it as I can, and this is my choice of what I'm gonna do with my time and money. It doesn't have to be a disappointment like this. Oh, for goodness sake, we all have so many disappointments, whether it's a a relationship with someone, that for me is one that really comes up thinking back a few years ago when my friend of 40 years and I had a big oh, I don't even want to say fight. We really didn't have a fight. I don't know what it was, had to do when my husband died. Maybe it's a misunderstanding, but in the end, I wanted to reconcile, but she was not and still has not been in a place uh about reconciling. And it's one of my life's major disappointments. When I look back when I was younger, talking about disappointments with boys and men who didn't reciprocate my feelings, or times when I would be disappointed in a family member because they didn't remember a holiday or my birthday, or didn't take as much time or care as I felt that they should, or disappointed in your job. Right? You lose your job, or you don't get a promotion, or there are so many different things that we all experience disappointment in. So please don't not listen or shut yourself off because you can't relate to a lie, ridiculous third-world, first world problems that I can't go on my girls' trip. I get it. It's not about the trip, it's about the idea that we all experience disappointment. And I think that we need to experience the emotion that comes with it, and it's okay. And I think it's almost like I can equate it on a very smaller scale to grief, right? Because you're grieving the thing that you're losing or not having go the way that you wanted it to go. So you're losing that perceived or hoped outcome. And maybe you get angry, right? That could be the first phase that you go through. And you could feel depressed, you could feel sorry for yourself. Now, in this case, I'm not feeling sorry for myself, because like I said, really, I can't go on a trip. I mean, a lot bigger problems that we've all had in our lives. But you could be disappointed in your loss, right? You're losing something. And that's okay, and I think that we do have to let ourselves feel those emotions and say it's okay to feel those emotions. But then once you do, I think that you maybe have to shift your perspective and think, uh brainstorm, how else could I look at this? And in this case, gotta use my trip as an example. I reframed it and thought, you know what? At least I'm healthy. I've had times in my life I've had a spinal fusion, I've had two hips replaced when I was in my 30s and 40s. I know what that kind of pain feels like. I know what it feels like when your body lets you down. And it's really, really difficult, especially when it's over an extended period of time, and that's what's been happening to my cousin. My reframe, I'm grateful that my body would allow me to walk as much as I want to. I also reframed it to say, oh, you know what? Now I'm getting a week kind of back where I don't have any appointments, either personal or work-wise, because I planned on being away. How can I utilize that free time? Boy, it's almost like maybe I could have, I don't want to say a staycation because I knew I wouldn't take the time off of work, but yet I could maybe use that time and turn a little more inward and do the things instead of worrying about putting out fires and rushing to meetings and appointments. I could do the stuff that's pressing on my own list and make some headway on my to-do list. And all of a sudden, I was like, you know what? It's okay. There will be other trips and moving on. Life rewrites our plans so often. And I think it is that ability to adapt to all the change. Cause I don't know about you, but for such a long time, I was a control freak. I'm a recovering control freak. I haven't mastered it yet, but I want to control the outcomes. And when life disappoints you, that means you're out of control. You're not controlling the outcome, you're not getting the outcome that you planned. And that's hard. That's hard. Because it when you feel like you lost control, you can get that out-of-control feeling, and it can spread and permeate into every aspect of your life. My uh another one of the other friends that I'm traveling with, years ago, she had said something to me that for me really made sense. And sometimes you hear something and you've heard it a million times, but it just hits you a different way. And what she said is every problem that you have, visualize that each of the problems are in its own little box. And just because maybe one box opens, like that problem erupts or you're disappointed, whatever it is, our minds tend to say, Oh my goodness. And now you start thinking about all the things that have gone wrong, all the things that you're disappointed about. And she said, just because one box opens, you don't open the other boxes. And now, every time, if I talk to her and I'm telling her something, and she said, Don't open those boxes. Because I spiral, right? Oh, and now I'm not going on the trip. And now this and this and this and this and this. There was no extra problem there. That box could have stayed closed. That was not something I needed to be dealing with, right? I would love to know, is that something? Have you ever heard that before? Or do you have a trick? I would love to hear your trick and what you do to allow yourself not to allow one disappointment or something that makes you feel out of control how you stop that downward spiral. Because it's easy to do. Keep all the other boxes closed and then adapt. The more, I think, the more practice we have. I don't know, maybe it's the older that I get, you know, a lifetime of adapting to disappointment, to change, to loss of control. It's like, okay, I think maybe we get better. If we are not adaptable, boy, we are gonna live one tough life. Because life is fill of filled with disappointments. The other thing I think when you are disappointed is have a little bit of grace for yourself, for others. Don't feel guilty. I don't blame my cousin one bit in this case, but sometimes, maybe you do. And realize it's nobody's fault. Most times it's nobody's fault. Maybe you think it's somebody else's fault. That's another whole rabbit hole you can go down, but if you do, honestly, you're only hurting yourself. So, stop the blame, give grace to others. Even if they disappoint you, it's for a reason. And know that who knows? Maybe it wasn't meant to happen. Whatever it is, that trick, that relationship, that job, maybe there's something better. Maybe there's a reason that didn't happen. And give yourself grace. So as I'm closing, I wanna tell you that I knew I was gonna talk to you about this today because this cancellation up the trip came up, oh, maybe about three, three or four days ago now. But my cousin said, don't cancel anything. But yet, I mean, she couldn't get out of bed, or when she got out of bed, she could walk to, you know, a a little bit around her house, and then the minute she started walking, the pain came back. But she wanted to wait. She wanted to wait because she was going to see her hip surgeon that's gonna do the hip replacement. And the other three of us, I mean, it's a done deal in our minds because what could the doctor possibly say? It doesn't make a difference what it is. If it can't be fixed until her hip is replaced, it's not gonna matter. She's not having hip replacement tomorrow and then going on a trip three days later. And she's having her shoulder replaced before her hip, so forget that. Well, a couple of hours ago, just as I was about to cancel the rental car reservation, she sent a text, don't cancel anything. What? It turns out that her knee pain, which she thought was coming from her hip, is not. They told her it's a separate, unrelated issue. They were a hundred percent sure. They gave her injections and the doctor told her, Go on your trip. But I decided to still record this episode because boy, this has been a roller coaster. Now the funny thing is, is that I had so already accepted it, adapted, changed my perspective. It's like, oh my goodness, now I gotta shift all that up because in my mind we weren't going, and I had already moved on. It's crazy, right? I guess in the end, we were meant to go on this trip, and I am just gonna trust in that, and life is just full of surprises. So remember, sometimes life's canceled plans or arguments or disappointments, they lead us to something better, and it reminds us that we can't control everything, that we have to be adaptable, we have to be resilient, yet we have to honor our emotions. Because if you don't honor your emotions, if you don't feel that disappointment, that grief, then it's gonna come back to bite you later. So make sure you allow yourself to feel all the feels, sprinkle in a little bit of perspective, grace, adaptability, and gratitude. Cause hey, we are still here on this earth, breathing, as someone reminded me this morning in exercise. She said, I don't care if my hair is falling out and all the things that us midlife women complain about. I am here and I am happy to be on this earth, just enjoying each moment. So, sprinkle in a little bit of gratitude and make it a great week.