Bounce Back from Disappointment
How do you respond to letdowns at work? Over the course of my long career, my initial reactions to setbacks have run the gamut from getting mad and feeling scared to beating myself up. I’ve also scratched my head and asked, “Huh? What just happened?”
It's completely natural to have a lot of feelings come up when we're surprised by something that happens around our work, especially events that we see as a failure or otherwise negative. It's how we respond and behave after the first feelings have dissipated that matter the most.
If you’re curious about the strategies for coping with disappointment shown to make us more resilient, read on.
One client felt the hurt sharply when she didn’t get the raise she’d hoped for. When we met, she said she had turned positive feedback she recently received from colleagues into self-affirmations about her value to her employer and clients. And she did a reality check confirming that staying in the job she loved was more important than the raise she’d wanted.
Another client reached out to friends after she learned a new person with less experience and expertise would be her new supervisor. Her friends’ support helped her find a way forward despite the brief hit to her self-confidence.
A third client was able to reframe self-recrimination around his reticence in meetings. Talking with me, he realized that he had an important point of view to share and decided to speak up more in future meetings.
Their strategies are well-documented to boost resilience. A recent article in Greater Good Magazine describes three ways to cope with setbacks and what research tells us about their effectiveness.
Use positive self-affirmations
Reframe your mindset and accept reality
Ask yourself big questions to affirm core values and top priorities
A different article in Greater Good talks about the importance of social support to help us recover from setbacks. As for the helpful practice of reframing your perspective, see my earlier post, Reframe Failure & Grow Your Grit.
Mindful Self-Compassion
Another proven method for handling difficult feelings disappointment causes is what’s known as “mindful self-compassion”, pioneered by researchers Kristin Neff and Chris Germer. (Neff talks about the technique in this short video.). I’ve successfully used their three-step process many times:
Mindfulness – becoming aware of my feelings of hurt, shame, fear, grief, anger, or of having been treated unfairly -- and letting myself feel them for a few minutes instead of trying to stuff the pain
Common Humanity – reminding myself that hard things happen to everyone from time to time, that I’m not alone in my suffering
Self-kindness – actively directing kind messages to myself, acknowledging my strengths, focusing on what I’m grateful for and using self-affirmations
The next time you’re disappointed by something at work, try one – or more -- of these techniques to bounce back:
Follow the 3-step mindful self-compassion process described above;
Seek positive feedback from trusted people who know, respect and care about you; you might ask them how they’d describe you for a job reference;
Spend time reflecting on alternative explanations for the negative incident and, if you can, try to find an optimistic explanation. Questions you might ask yourself:
Is there a lesson I can learn about appropriate workplace communication or behavior from this incident? If so, how might I do better in the future?
Did something from my past get awakened, making it even more painful than it might have been? if so, is there something I can do about this?
Do I need to set a boundary with someone?
Try to avoid rehashing the event over and over. Be careful about blaming another without seeing your part -- even if it’s a small part. Do your best not to jump to worst-case conclusions or act abruptly.