After last week’s post, a friend of mine (shout out to Emily) asked, “Having a plan is all well and good. But what if something doesn’t go as you planned? How do you handle the disappointment?” Thanks for the comment Emily. It’s a great point.

So let’s say you’ve got your plan together, and you’re motivated to start off. You set goals and then begin working on them. Then WHAM! Life throws you a curve ball. A financial problem, health challenge, relationship difficulty, or other speed bump knocks you down. Then what? What should you do? How do you get back on your feet and keep going? Allow me to share two experiences. One of them is from about 5 years ago as a result of my brain injury. The second is an experience from this last weekend.

Two Types of Disappointments

Type 1: Major Disappointments

First, the brain injury. At the time of my injury, I had been working for my current company for about 7 months. I was eating it up! This company was smaller than the one I previously worked for. There was more autonomy and more opportunity to learn and grow. I controlled my schedule more. My boss (our company’s owner) was allowing me to step up to experiences and challenges that I hadn’t had before. From my perspective (and my boss’s too, I think) I was learning quickly and enjoying the work. My boss had given me an unexpected (and un-asked-for) raise a few weeks before the injury.

Then out of left field I had an accident and a rather serious brain injury. The doctors weren’t expecting me to make it through, or at best I was going to be a vegetable. They were surprised when I was waking up, talking, and even speaking Spanish to some friends that came to see me. Waking up and being coherent was a miracle. In addition to the brain injury I had a few broken bones.

For my first few weeks out of the hospital, everything was pretty mellow. People could see from my bruises and braces that I was injured. Then the bruises went away and the braces came off. The physical healing was over, but the cerebral healing was just beginning.

Recovery

There were three main side effects from my brain injury: poor (alright, very poor) memory, poor reasoning, and a terrible temper. If you are a medical person, you’ll recognize all of these as normal symptoms of a traumatic brain injury. The doctors told me that the only solution for my problems was time. They weren’t sure how completely I would recover, but they told me that 95% of my recovery happen over the next two years.

Poor memory, poor reasoning, and a bad temper aren’t qualities you want in any employee, let alone a project manager. Professionally, I went from feeling like a rock star to being the last kid picked on the play ground. Instead of being an independent go-getter, my boss had to constantly check on me to make sure I didn’t forget anything or make a stupid decision. For goodness sakes, I was supposed to have his back and keeping an eye on the money on my projects. Instead, he had to keep worrying about me unintentionally stabbing him in the back.

To his credit, I think he handled it extremely well. I remember a time 4 or 5 months after the accident that I went to his office almost crying out of frustration and discouragement. I asked if he wanted me to leave the company. He calmly replied with a question, “What do you want to do?” After a long discussion with him, I decided to stay.

It did take the full two years for my mental abilities to come back. And if you ask my wife, she would probably tell you that my memory is still not there :). But I digress.

The mental recovery from that brain injury was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to go through. It set my personal and professional development back in a serious way. I went from rocking my job to being barely able to function at it.

Type 2: Minor Disappointments

Now this story is from last weekend (Mother’s Day Weekend). I need to preceed this story by giving a little background. I’m a laser focused person. When there is a goal or task that I want to accomplish, I will shut out the entire world until it’s complete. And if something interrupts me (anything really), I can get a bit perturbed. I know that approach is not always healthy, and I’m really working to get better.

So back to this weekend. I had set some mini-goals for what I wanted to get done with the blog and a few other side projects I’ve got going. I had been planning to complete these tasks for the entire week. Then for various reasons my weekend got used up for other things. They were all worthwhile things: a little bit of work, and then time with my wife and her family (who I get along with well). But because I was disappointed that I didn’t finish what I wanted, I was under a cloud all weekend until Sunday afternoon when I realized how dumb I was being. Overall I did enjoy my time with them, but it wasn’t as nice as it could have been if I’d have chosen to have a better attitude.

How Do You Deal?

Both types of disappointments are crippling. And an important, but challenging part of life is overcoming and rising above our disappointments. What is a major disappointment and minor disappointment is individual to each of us. I hope the big disappointments in your life are few and far between. The smaller disappointments seem to be more frequent. Here are some things I’ve learned:

Major Disappointments

1. Take time to process it. You don’t have to deal with it all at once. Be patient with yourself. Perhaps a relationship didn’t work out, or you didn’t get accepted to a school you wanted. Maybe a loved one died, or you lost your job. All of these things can be devastating.
2. Praying, meditating, and writing. I did each of these things frequently as I was recovering from my brain injury. They helped me see my slow progress towards recovery. And they each helped lighten the load of what I was dealing with.
3. Talk to trusted people. Major disappointments were not meant to be weathered alone. Close family, friends, clergy, and when necessary, professionals, can help us unpack what we’re going through.
4. Serve others. I really believe in this. When I was going through my recovery from the brain injury, it was way too easy to wallow in self pity. Serving others helped me get out of my head and remember how much I could still do.
5. Make sure major disappointments are just large speed bumps that slow you down, not walls that stop you. So often in my recovery of my brain injury I was tempted to give up and move back home with my parents. In hindsight, it scares the heck out of me. I could have given up on life and all of the good things that have happened since then (including my awesome wife). Yeah, so take the time to grieve, and process your disappointments, but make sure you learn and grow. Then start moving forward again.

Minor Disappointments

1. Learn to roll with the waves of life. Sometimes things just happen, and there’s nothing we can do. As my story from this last weekend shows, this can be a challenge for me.
2. Attitude is everything. Stuff is going to happen, and we can me upset, or we can be happy. There have been times when I’ve chosen to be happy in the face of a small disappointments. This is by far the best way to go. A positive attitude makes it easier to get back on track after a disappointment. And it can even help us see opportunities in our disappointments that we can take advantage of later.

One more thing to say about dealing with disappointments: they can sometimes help us decide what is really important to us or if we should truly go down a particular path. I’m not saying to give up. But evaluate where you are and decide if it’s what you really want. If so, recommit yourself. If not, adjust your goals, set your course, and get going. I hope you can take away some ideas from this. I’d love to hear how you have dealt with challenges, setbacks, and disappointments in your life. Leave a comment below.