Every situation has a silver lining – discover a mindset that heals and enlightens.
October 11, 2021 · 7 min read
Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation. - Eric Hoffer
“I feel hopeless, unworthy of love, I let everyone down including myself”
We’ve all been in a situation that life just felt like too overwhelming. I’ve felt myself being a disappointment in difficult times.
However, it’s just mind playing tricks on us. The more we think negatively, the more we believe in it.
Trust me, you are worthy of everything. You should be proud of who you are and you must value yourself.
10 Signs you feel like a disappointment
Here are a few signs that a person that feels like a disappointment can relate to:
- You feel like no one supports you
- You can’t achieve your goals
- You overthink a lot
- You have negative thoughts
- You feel anxious, stressed, or depressed
- You care too much about others
- You seek for acknowledgment
- You have to hide your true feelings
- Your daily routine drives you insane
- You’ve experienced traumatic events
Next, we’ll find out ways how not to be a disappointment and the reasons behind that feeling.
10 Tips to overcome “I’m such a disappointment” feeling
1. Stop living by others’ standards
You might feel like a disappointment because you’re trying to validate someone else’s expectations.
Is that your friends? Family? Girlfriend or boyfriend? Perhaps it’s society’s expectation?
Look, even if you are living by your closest ones expectations, there are high chances that they are living by society’s expectations.
“You have to be a doctor, lawyer or an engineer!”
“You don’t look good, do something about it!”
“You really disappoint me with your academical results, you’ll get nowhere with that”
“Stop wasting time and get a grip of your life”
… and a lot of others.
What to do about it:
First of all, you must stop hurting yourself like that. There are no benefits to that. You’ll experience only sadness and loneliness.
You have to understand that there’s no perfect path in life. Every path has its ups and downs. The ultimate goal in life is to be happy and not to be someone’s personal experiment.
Life is a long preparation for something that never happens. - W.B. Yeats
If you will please someone else’s expectations, later in life you’ll realize what mistake you’ve made. You’ll feel unhappy and unfulfilled with life. In other words, the time you spent pleasing someone will be simply wasted.
Instead, learn to live by your own standards and accept yourself. You don’t have to follow someone else’s footsteps. You don’t have to think that you disappoint everyone. Happiness and your life path are choices that you choose.
2. Don’t live by unrealistic expectations
Social media is a blessing and a curse.
It’s amazing thing to track news, trends, have a chat with friends all in one place.
However, social media has it’s own dark side.
Influencers on social platforms distort the reality. A lot of people who are followers become insecure about their lives, career choices, self-look, and happiness perspective in general.
Normal people start having nightmares that their lives are disappointing and unsuccessful.
What to do about it:
If you really believe you can’t live without social media, then try to at least unfollow celebrities. Leave social media only for purposes as to get in touch with acquaintances, get information about local events, and similar information.
To be fair, celebrities have a lot of doubts about themselves too. They must accept constant criticism, fight anxiety and stress like a lot of people do. However, social media reflects only their happy moments. Their real life is behind the scenes.
Influencers distort real life way too much.
3. You’re experiencing gaslighting
Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse when you are feeling confused after a discussion. Gaslighting includes lies, gossips, distracting you from the important things, shifting blame on you, etc.
After such discussion, you are feeling vulnerable, doubting your feelings, you feel alone, disappointed who you are, you lose confident, and similar.
One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on. - Alain de Botton
What to do about it:
If you notice such signs of emotional abuse, you have to realize that it has nothing to do with you. It’s the other person’s problem. The only thing you can do is set boundaries with that person.
Whenever you notice patterns of emotional abuse, call out this behavior. Tell them to stop and start speaking with respect instead of using emotional manipulation.
However, in some cases these people might find more reasons to gaslight you. At that point, just leave the room. It’s a waste of time and emotional energy to discuss anything with them.
Always keep in mind that you have nothing to do with it. It’s the other person’s psychological problem to validate their ego.
4. Tackle with abusive environment
It’s very important to differentiate whether you are truly getting abused by someone emotionally or if they are trying to help you for real. Sometimes people just might be really bad at trying to help you and may appear as unsupportive and make you feel like a disappointment. I know that, I’ve been there.
People might be pushing you to achieve more than you already have, which is partially okay. However, their success and your success might differ drastically. No one has the rights to make you live life by their expectations.
What to do about it:
You are your own goldsmith of your life and you must decide on your own and have a vision how your life should look like.
- Plan your responses ahead of the time. You have to come up with strong and valid points, such as: “Everyone has different understanding of values and successes. I understand my values differently than you.” Don’t respond with cursing or yelling. Speak calmly.
- Don’t show emotions. When you will be having a discussion, you must avoid getting emotional. Showing emotions is a sign of vulnerability and toxic people might see that as an opportunity. If needed, practice the situation beforehand and try to be prepared as much as you can.
- Don’t run away. Avoiding a conflict is another sign of vulnerability. Abusive people will smell the fear and will take that to their advantage. Instead, try to be with someone you trust at that time. You won’t be standing alone and you’ll have someone to witness the situation.
5. Learn to be happy with yourself
You might be feeling like a failure because you can’t find your significant other. However, you are certainly worthy of others.
I know, it can sound cliché, but you have to be happy on your own first. You think that you need a life partner to be fulfilled and to be happy, but that’s not the right way to approach the problem.
Here’s why.
Let’s visualize a situation: you find the perfect life partner. Life becomes like a rainbow, full of bright color and happiness.
However, after a few months your significant other starts to feel that it’s too much for them. He or she can’t take it anymore.
That’s because you are draining your partner emotionally. You dump your all emotional pain on his or her shoulders. You don’t give anything back. You give only negativity. You can’t treat your partner like she or he deserves.
You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to swim. - Jon Kabat Zinn
What to do about it:
Deal with the root cause. Deal with your insecurities. Track the beginning where all these feelings came from.
What makes you think that you can be happy only if you find your significant other?
Why can’t you be happy right now?
Do you feel behind because everyone else has a partner?
Please take a look at this engaging and touching video:
To be fair, people that rush in relationships often end up unhappy. There’s nothing worse than being in a relationship where you realize that you are unhappy with the other person and unhappy with the way it turned out. In the end, you both end being hurt.
Practice enjoying your own companionship. Build your skills, spend time on your hobbies, learn something every day. It’s not a rare occasion when being in a relationship you’ll have to sacrifice something. You won’t be having as much free time as you have now.
If you want to achieve your dream, you should begin it now. Especially if your dream is to establish your own business. Your chances of doing that when having a partner will reduce by at least 50%.
While having a partner has its benefits, it also has its negatives. Don’t fall into society’s trap that you must find someone to live with. Learn to be happy on your own first.
6. You care about others too much
You are always emotionally available for other people and you always help them. Your kind heart doesn’t let to turn other people down.
However, being always available has its own drawbacks – you sacrifice your time, emotional energy, and in some cases even respect.
That’s because people start using you as a tool to feel better about themselves. They just bounce off you and move further away with their lives. When the moment comes when you need their support, they disappear.
People abandoning you might make you feel a disappointment as a result.
What to do about it:
Always prioritize yourself. If you don’t feel too well yourself or you just simply don’t feel like helping right now, then by all means the stage is yours.
Do whatever seems the best for your well-being. Always look for your happiness first. Don’t let anyone abuse you and use your emotional energy.
7. You overthink
Overthinking can lead both to positive and negative thoughts.
However, It might happen that you believe you are disappointed in yourself because of having too many thoughts in your head. You over-stimulate your mind and you just can seem to find peace within it.
You create worst scenarios that could happen and try to find every excuse in the world why everyone is against you. You just don’t feel alive.
Life is the dancer and you are the dance. - Echkhart Tolle
What to do about it:
Comprehend your triggers. What makes you overthink and how do you justify those thoughts?
For example, you might be thinking that you will never be able to achieve anything successful in your life. You don’t have a mentor, friend or a parent that could help you.
However, how did you justify that? Did you try to do anything more than just thinking about it? Have you tried putting in a few sincere years of effort into your dream?
Success is not born overnight. Everyone works hard and if they say they didn’t they are liars or were one of the lucky guys out of 100,000.
I was all alone in my life and I believe I did just fine on my own. My father was non-existent (alcoholic and very self-centered), I had no ambitious friends or any friends that would seem to have common interests.
You can learn everything on your own if you really want to. You can learn everything about relationships, skills, self-improvement tools and anything else you need. You can overcome difficult situations
Have faith in yourself, because I certainly believe in you.
8. You believe you are not enough
It’s a very common, yet an unfortunate state to be in. When people believe they are not good enough, they start depreciating themselves and thinking about being disappointments of their own lives.
Such thinking can lead to anxiety, stress and depression.
What to do about it:
Stop comparing yourself to others. Life is by no means no competition. You don’t have to hurt yourself by comparing yourself to celebrities.
Trust me, you’ll find someone that will appreciate you and will think of you as a perfect person, even if you don’t think so. It’s just a matter of time. Until then, learn to be happy on your own.
Your mind is playing tricks on you. Our minds tend to play games with us and make us think negatively about ourselves. Don’t take it personally. Thoughts are just thoughts and nothing more than that.
9. Leverage happiness to your advantage
According to psychologist Shawn Achor, our happiness depends only 10% on the environment and 90% by how we perceive it. I strongly recommend you watching this video before continuing. It might be just what you need:
Frankly, we chase success. Whenever we achieve it, our perspective on happiness changes again. That’s because it’s human nature to want more and more.
Instead, we should reverse this conceptualization and start living more in the present. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have any goals. All it means that you should enjoy the process and live in the moment.
When you achieve your goal, you are happy very temporarily. It becomes a race to chase happiness which we’ll never win. Therefore, you must change your mindset and embrace a happier life.
Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open. - John Barrymore
What to do about it:
All of these tips might sound like a cliché, but please try them. The simplest things are the best things.
It’s very easy to do and not to do simple things. It’s only up to you if you are dedicated enough to be happy.
- Be grateful. Write down 3 things daily that you are grateful for.
- Journaling. Try to find at least 1 positive thing that happened throughout your day. Such approach lets you to relive it and feel happy again.
- Meditate. This activity lets you to focus on 1 thing instead of multiple. Your mind will be sharper and calmer.
- Exercise. Being active has been proven by many studies to help with well-being and being happy in general.
That’s it. Practice these points for at least 21 days and you should be able to see the results. You’ll leave scarcity mindset and eventually embrace abundance mindset.
You can leverage happiness to be successful in other areas of life. It’s proven that people who are happy are more effective at work, relationships and other life areas.
10. Seek for help
If you feel like you are in a really bad state of mind, seek for professional help. It’s always a good idea to look for a mentor to help you solve your problems faster and more efficiently.
Experienced therapists have accumulated massive amount of experience and will be glad to help you overcome your thoughts about being a disappointment. It’s all in your head and you have to win this fight to ease your mind.
Final Words From Delightful Mindset
It’s easy to fall into a trap of thinking yourself as a disappointment. There’s no shame to it and we’ve all been there to an extent.
However, remember that you are not alone and you should find a way to be happy on your own first. You can’t please anyone else if you can’t please yourself.
Life is not a marathon. It’s a slow walk where you learn new things every day.