Dealing with Disappointment 1 of 4 (Dr. Brent Lindquist)

I’m going to be talking about dealing with disappointment and possible failure.  In other words, what do we do when we feel like we are failing?  How do we make a difference when we feel like giving up?  This started from an email I got from somebody and it goes something like this.  I’ve changed a lot of the details just so noone would identify themselves or somebody else, but here’s how it goes:

‘Dear Friends,

Thanks so much for your thoughts and concerns for us.  We’ve really been having a tough time here.  I thought our first 3 years were hard, but after this past year I’m confused about how I can make a difference.  I’ve made so many mistakes and then I have to pick up the pieces. I talk when I’m supposed to listen and I stay silent when I should be talking.  I want to do the right things, but when I act that way I get criticized that I’m ‘holier than thou’.  I try to do the best job I know how and I expect the same from others on the team, but they don’t seem to share the same call to excellence and they seem to resent my pushiness.  I know I’m here at my own behest, following what I am led to do.  I shouldn’t have these feelings, right?  Well, I do.  I’m glad I can cry on your shoulder through this email.  I think you may understand what I’m going through.  Maybe you can give me some advice as to what I’m doing wrong or what I’m doing that is not right.  Thanks.  I look forward to your reply.’

Wow. That’s really too bad.  I don’t like to get those kinds of emails or letters and I don’t like to hear about that, even though that’s my line of work helping people in those kinds of pits that they find themselves in.  Haven’t we all felt like this?  I think if we’re honest we’d all say yes.  I know I have.  I regularly struggle with that.  I describe myself as a very optimistic person, but inside I think I’m pretty negative.  I think I fight and that’s a kind of burden I have to bear.  The critical thing here is that this person was open to their friends and networks.  How often have we been that way?  I’m not always that way.  I tend to be protective and take care.

Well, here are some initial thoughts that I have about this whole thing.  As I read through this email I thought of three points. First of all, the fear of failure or the fear of possible failure can be immobilizing.  This person, let’s call him George.  George is really struggling with the fact that he can’t find anything that says that he’s doing a good job.  Let’s try and reframe that.  Can we reframe the fear of failure?  It’s so hard. Let’s instead talk about the fear of being less than perfect.  Now I pick that in particular because George talked about the fact that he wants to pursue excellence and the other people think he’s pushy.  I think it’s important for somebody like you, me or George to kind of make it contexualized into a specific thing.  I think that George like many of us is struggling with not being perfect.  How do you not be perfect?  Well, live life and you’ll find out because life is a series of mistakes.  I remember a woman that I got to know in one of my seminars and she was kind of a quiet person but one of the things that she did was that she really tried hard to be a friend to people.  Now in this particular context we were talking about language learning and it was very important for me that they have a very significantly positive view of language learning.  She tended to agree with me, but she also tended to put herself down. I got the chance to get a little background information about her and I found out that she was loved by all the local folk where she was working.  Why was she loved by them?  Because she wasn’t afraid to do the best she could.  She wasn’t afraid to make mistakes and she wasn’t afraid to sound funny. As a matter of fact, one of the common comments that people would make is that ‘she really speaks our language funny but we love her anyway because it’s so obvious that she loves us in all the other things that she does’.  So don’t be afraid of making mistakes.  Mistakes give you different qualities to the relationships around you.

Another point that I observed is that George is saying ‘all I ever get is criticism’. Now I don’t want to pick on George but I have to ask, How often are we looking at what we’re giving to people? If I get criticism back I have to look at myself and sometimes  I’m pretty critical.  I can be very negative.  I don’t often see that either.  People around me – my family, my wife – they will tell me when I’m being critical.  I just really don’t see it.  It’s a complete blind spot for me because as you know I think of myself as a very optimistic person.  If people around George are seeing him constantly struggling and being critical, both self-critical and critical of them, they’re going to be critical back.  That’s just natural.  What you give out you get back.  So on one level, George, I think we need to be little bit careful about what sorts of things are going on.  Now, George probably is going to say,  ‘Well I’ve really tried to be positive and I just don’t know what to do’.  I do have some ideas.  I can’t talk about them all today, but I will talk about them over the next 3 sessions.

The next thing that I discovered or I thought about was, how many right and wrongs ways are there to do something?  Think about it.  How many wrong ways are there to do something?  There are tons of wrongs ways!  You and I are very good at finding the wrong ways to do things.  How many right ways are there to do things?  Now be careful.  That’s a little tricky.  Is there more than one right way to do something?  Well, you know, with some things there may be only one right way. Is there a right way to steal? Well, probably not.  Stealing is wrong.  Let’s not put it in a black and white context.  What we may be doing is thinking that my way is the right way and that’s the only way that we can do it, when there may not be those kinds of bases like there is with a moral issue.  My way may not be the only right way.  I would like to ask George to think about – is your way that you want people to do things the only way that they can do it?  You might want to consider talking to other people and getting their feedback.

Those are just some ideas and as I look at all of this I’m thinking of a number of things that I want to talk about over the next month.  First of all, though, let me summarize some of the things here for George as well as myself.  Number one, I think it’s always good to reach out and be honest.  I am just thrilled that George is doing that.  I think probably you think I’m being a little hard on George.  I’m not trying to be.  I’m trying to be hard on myself as well as asking George to think about things. Sometimes we don’t need somebody to sit and hold our hand and say, ‘Oh, isn’t that too bad!’  We don’t have that luxury lots of times.  We need somebody to say, ‘Here’s how I look at it. Evaluate it and get back to me on it’. I think that I would be doing George a disservice if I only listened and commiserated with him.  He’s obviously concerned.  He’s writing to his friends and supporters, people in his networks, and he needs input.  He’s actually asking for input so he doesn’t want me to say, ‘oh, that’s too bad’. That’s sort of like a slap in the face too, so I do apologize if it sounds like I’m being too hard but I want to say good job for reaching out and being honest.

Number two, there’s an old wise saying, a proverb, that says there’s wisdom in many counselors.  In this case what this means is – George, look around you.  You’re asking your networks through your email which means mostly you’re asking people who probably live back at home wherever home is. That’s good and you need to be asking them for that.  They can give you things that other people can’t but the wisdom in many counselors works in the local context too.  What do some of the local people say about what you should be doing?  Have you asked them?  Have you tried to reach out?  We’ll talk more about that later.

Thirdly, there is a time or a season for everything.  We can learn in every circumstance and situation.  I don’t want to just gloss over this, but it could very well be that the first three years were one kind of learning and now we’re at a different level.  We wouldn’t be able to be at this different level unless we’d gone through those first 3 years.  Take heart, George.  You’re not alone.  All of us deal with these issues ourselves.  Let’s see if we can find some solutions next time.