86. Disappointment
The other day, I went to a local wine bar to get a glass of this delicious rosé they serve.
For those of you who don’t know, I’m pretty particular about things, so it’s not that often I find a glass of wine I’m so into that I keep going back for it.
But this is one of those wines.
However, when we got there, I learned that they’d actually removed the rosé from the menu and were switching things up.
I was so disappointed.
I showed up excited, expecting an experience I love, and that’s not what I got.
They had other wines. I tasted them. But none of them was what I wanted. I’d been looking forward to that particular rosé so much, and I was disappointed I didn’t get to have it.
When we get specific ideas in our heads and the experience doesn’t live up to our expectations, it can feel pretty shitty.
We don’t like feeling disappointed.
Some of us don’t even like trying new things because we’re so afraid of the possibility that we could feel disappointed if it doesn’t work out.
But the truth is, disappointment is part of life. And not only that, being willing to feel disappointment opens up all kinds of doors.
In order to create your wildly satisfying career, you need to be willing to risk disappointment. Because if you can’t risk disappointment, you can’t try anything new.
While this doesn’t sound sexy or fun, it is part of building a delicious life you truly love. And you can learn how to do it.
So, tune in this week to discover a new way to navigate disappointment.
If you want to supercharge your capacity to create a life that blows your mind, I have some one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Send me an email and let's talk about it or click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
Why trying to avoid disappointment doesn’t mean you’ll be able to actually avoid it.
The ways, as humans, we run from disappointment, even when disappointment isn’t certain.
Why you can’t build an incredible life without experiencing some disappointment and keeping going anyway.
What we make disappointment mean about ourselves, other people, and the world we live in.
How to get really good at navigating disappointment of failure so you can experience more success in the long term.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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Make Money as a Life Coach Podcast – Ep #156: Believing in Magic
The Five Things We Cannot Change by David Richo
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about disappointment.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all, happy Wednesday. I hope everyone out there is having a wonderful day and a wonderful week. And also, if you're not, that's okay too. That's what we have all the tools and skills for that we learn in this podcast.
One thing that happened to me this week is that yesterday, so it's Wednesday for y'all but it's Monday for me. And yesterday I went to this wine bar that I really like in Sacramento, and I was excited to go there and sit on their outside patio and have a glass of this wine that they make.
It's like a wine bar that's also, like they do their own wine there. It's like they're serving their own wine from their own vineyards, or I don't know if it's their vineyards. Anyways, they make the wine, they're like the distributors, they pour only their own wine.
And there's this rosé there that I really love, it's just really tasty and it's very distinctive. There's not a lot of other rosés I've had that taste quite like this one. It's not my favorite favorite, but it's one of my favorites, if that makes sense.
And we got there, and I found out that they have taken this rosé off the menu, and they don't have it. Like I couldn't even buy it in a bottle. They've taken it off the menu, they like ran it all out, they poured all the wine from every bottle that they had. Like they had another rosé still on the menu and they were going to have another rosé coming soon that wasn't there yet.
And I was so sad because I didn't know this was happening. And I was really excited and expecting to be able to drink this wine that I like so much. And the other rosé they have there, it's fine, but it wasn't what I wanted. I tasted it, I tasted a few other wines.
And ultimately I just told the server, I tipped her, and I was like here is a tip because you did bring me these wine samples. But we're just going to go because I wanted this one wines so much, and I wanted this one experience so much. And I was so disappointed I wasn't having it that I didn't actually want any of the other experiences available to me at that time from that place.
And Alex was being so sweet. She was like, “Here are some other wine bars I know you like we could go to, restaurants, da, da, da.” And I was just like, “I just want to go home.” And so we did. And I really think this may seem like kind of melodramatic but it's actually a really common experience for me because I get very specific ideas in my head of what I want to have happen.
And if it doesn't happen that way, sometimes I'm just like, “Cool. I don't want another experience. I just want to go home and soothe my feelings and process them and give myself permission to feel how I feel and then figure out what I'm going to do from there.”
And it's interesting because I think this is not how I used to do things. The way I used to do things I think would be more like kind of tried to overload on whatever other pleasure was available to me, versus really embracing like I'm disappointed. I'm not going to be disappointed forever, it's just wine. It's not the end of the world. But in this moment I just am feeling upset.
So that's what we did. And it's interesting because what I want to talk to you all about this week is disappointment. And the other reason I wanted to talk to you about this is because I heard, it was a podcast by Stacey Boehman, and I listened to it months ago. But I've been thinking about it ever since.
And I looked it up and I think it's the one about believing in magic, I think that's the one it was. But you know how it is sometimes when it's been so long since you encountered the source material that you are having ideas about, that even when you like find it again, you're like, “Is this the one?”
But with all the Google searching I did, that was the podcast that came up where she talks about disappointment, and I listened to part of it, and it seems like it's the right one. So, believing in magic. And also Stacey's podcasts are all just pretty great. She's a coach for coaches to learn how to make money.
And even if that's not you, she's just brilliant and you can learn a lot of stuff from her if you're willing to cross apply it to whatever area of your life. And if you're not, that's okay too because when I'm inspired by something she says and I think it's relevant for you, I'm going to come over here and fucking tell you about it anyways. So you can just have double the trouble if you want to listen to hers as well.
Okay, so the basic idea is that a lot of us do not fucking like feeling disappointment. It's not our favorite And that is a hyperbolic, like we really, really don't like it. Generally people don't like disappointment. And a lot of times people are not willing to try things in case they may feel disappointed.
So what that actually means is then they'll keep all this shit in their life that they don't necessarily like or want because they're afraid that if they go out and try something new and it doesn't work they're going to feel that negative feeling, that disappointment, right?
Like yesterday, if I had been like, “Oh, I want that wine, but I'm just not sure they're going to have it, so I'll just stay home.” Then it's true that I would have avoided the potential of feeling that disappointment. But that also keeps my life so small, and it keeps it to like the things I already know.
And guess what? You can't actually really even avoid disappointment even if you do that. Because even if you're doing all the same things you always do, you still have the opportunity to be disappointed. I mean, in a way I went to a restaurant and tried to order the same glass of wine I've had again and again. So that's still me like kind of doing only things I've ever done before and I still got disappointed.
So how is this relevant for y'all? Okay, the way it's relevant for y'all is because in order to create your wildly satisfying career, in order to create your wildly delicious life, in order to create changes and have fun and be delighted, you have to be willing to encounter disappointment. You have to be willing to feel disappointed.
And that's not super sexy, fun news. And I get that. Like I said, most of us don't want to feel disappointed. We're like, “Ooh, running directly towards disappointment, no thank you.” But as I say all the time, if we're creating anything we haven't already created it's going to require that we learn, and probably that we fail a lot along the way, and that we encounter discomfort. And disappointment is a form of discomfort, and that we keep going.
And even if all you want to do is recreate all the things you've already created, you may still encounter disappointment. So learning how to do that, learning how to get really good at that, and learning how to navigate that for yourself is a fucking superpower. And the more that you can do this, the more you can handle disappointment and navigate it over and over and over again without going into the fuck it effect or into the pit of despair, the more powerful you are and the more cool shit you can do in the world.
So let's break this down, why is feeling disappointment a required skill set? Okay, so at the very basic level feeling disappointed is a required skill set because life is uncertain and anytime we do anything, we don't know what will happen. And especially if you're trying to create something extraordinary, chances are high that you're not going to get it right or get the result you want every time you try something, every time over and over again for the rest of your life, right?
So just think about it, I'm 38. I'm imagining, I don't know, I'll live to like 80 or 100, I talk about this sometimes. So if everything I try for the next 40 years, 42 years, 62 years, whatever, probably not all of it is going to work out the way I want it to. That's just life.
There's this author, David Richo, he's got some great books. Alex really likes him, which is why I know about him. And he has these, he calls them the five things you cannot change, and he talks about like these are five things you can't change about the world. And so his point in the book is it's really valuable to accept them and then decide who you want to be in relation to them.
And one of the things you cannot change, according to David Richo, is things do not always go according to plan, right? So if you think about it, you're like, “Cool, I want to have my like satisfying as fuck, wildly delicious life, and career. And here are the things I think I'm going to do. And then I'm going to start taking action towards those things.” Chances are you're not going to get it the way you want it to be every time and probably there's going to be a lot more failure than there is success.
And then when the failure happens, generally we feel disappointed. And then we have to navigate that in order to keep going and we have to sort of become what I'm going to call like disappointment resilient.
It's not that we become like weird robots where disappointment doesn't bother us. I still felt big feelings yesterday and it was about wine. It wasn't even about my business or my relationship. It was about a sensory delight that I wanted to partake in on a Sunday afternoon.
And I'm doing stuff all the time, right, like building a business, leaving my corporate career, navigating my relationship, which is coming up on five years, which is an amazing relationship. And which also, you know, it's not a one and done, we're still working on that all the time. We're still navigating things and building our connection all the time.
And there's a lot of disappointment in there too and that doesn't mean we're doing it wrong. It just means we're humans living in this incarnation where, as David Richo says, things do not always go according to plan.
Let's also take a minute though to think about like why is disappointment so hard? Why is it so terrible? Why do we all hate it so much? And what I think the answer to that is, is because of what we make it mean.
Because of what we make it mean about ourselves. Because of what we make it mean about the possibilities and the world we live in. Because of what we make it mean about the world at large. Because of what we make it mean about our community. Because of what we make it mean about our industry, our country, our future, et cetera. And so I think that's just really interesting to know, right?
So with my very silly wine example, it's not silly, but it's just like it is true that it's not as essential to me as a career thing. But it's just top of mind because it just happened, right? So experiencing the disappointment of I came here to get this thing and I'm not having it. That's just a set of sensations in my body.
But if I'm in my brain making it mean like I never get what I want. People can just take away the things I love. I'm never going to have a glass of wine I like again. Things like that, those thoughts are going to add misery to the disappointment.
And again, the wine example is kind of lightweight. If you think about it, one time, as y'all know and I've talked about before, I was laid off. So if I made that mean I'll never get another job. I'm never going to be able to earn that much money ever again. I must be worthless because someone laid me off.
There are all these negative stories and painful stories that we can layer on top of the disappointment and that make it feel much, much worse. And that keep us, I think, kind of like we get trapped and stuck there. Or we don't try things anymore because we're like, “Oh, if I try it and I feel disappointment, that will just be too hard. It'll be too crushing.”
Versus what I want you to think about is like, okay, when I left Expedia and I launched my business, I fucked up and failed so hard all the time over and over and over again for months. And, you know, kind of for years. It took a really long time to get my business to the place that I wanted it to be. Much longer than I wanted it to take.
And I had to navigate the disappointment of not having arrived. And then I had to move through that disappointment, get to the other side and decide to keep going and keep taking action in order to build the business that I now have, right?
So if I had tried some stuff to build that business and get clients and it didn't work, which sometimes it did and sometimes it didn't, right? But it didn't work at the scale I wanted it to, right? Like I've said before, I wanted to make six figures my first 12 months and I made less than 15 grand.
So at that point, if I had been like, “This disappointment is too big, and it means I'm too fucked.” And I had stopped, all I would have ever had from that experience would have been the disappointment and the negative stories and all that pain.
Versus learning to tolerate that disappointment and move through it, process it, become resilient to it, and keep going. When I was able to feel the disappointment and keep going, that's how I became the person who was able to build the six figure business and then now the multiple six figure business.
And I think this topic also correlates to like that idea of instant gratification, which I think we've talked about recently but I'm going to come at it from the other angle on this. Which is I think for a lot of us, we want that instant gratification, right? Even those of us who know how to delay gratification really well to get what we want later, which is what we talked about a few weeks ago, when we try something, when we put all that effort in, we want to see results.
And especially, actually okay, this is kind of complex but go with me. If we're denying ourselves moment to moment pleasure to do work on something that feels really hard and terrible to us. And then we do that work and then we don't get what we want, I think then also sometimes we sort of like implode or get into that fuck it effect, that pit of despair, right?
So this is actually my teachings are coming together here where I talk about noticing what's working and infusing your life with pleasure and delight while you're on the journey to wherever you're going. And that's really important because when you're on the journey to somewhere that you're going to need to navigate disappointment in order to get to it, like me leaving Expedia and needing to navigate disappointment to getting to my business being built to the level it is now.
I needed to have pleasure and like delight and notice what was working along the way because it was going to take a lot longer to get to the business working in the way I wanted it to. And I was going to have to tolerate a lot of disappointment.
I wasn't going to get instant gratification of like I made an offer, sometimes I would make an offer, and someone would sign up to work me. And sometimes I would make an offer, and I would make an offer, and I would make an offer, and I would make an offer, and I would make an offer, and no one would sign up with me, right?
So I had to be able to kind of like nourish myself off along the way to that and navigate that disappointment and kind of get through it to get to the place where I can make an offer and then someone does sign up and says yes. And then I make enough offers and I'm like, then I'm in the revenue place that I want to be in and blah, blah, blah.
Okay, so let's review. What are the key takeaways here? The key takeaways are disappointment is part of life. It's not my favorite part, it's not the most delicious part. But it is just part, I think, of being here. I mean, maybe if you're like very, very advanced and you don't expect anything ever, then you don't have to be disappointed. But that's never been my experience.
So I kind of tend to be like, what do I think the average human is going through? And I'm going to orient my coaching to that. I think for most of us, being human and having a human brain means that we're going to feel disappointed, and especially for my people who are trying to create these really extraordinary lives and careers. Part of creating something extraordinary is going through an extraordinary amount of it not working and being disappointed.
And I realize that's maybe not selling it as super great. I do think it's super great. It gives us a chance to come into contact with the full spectrum of our own humanity. And it gives us the chance to create something fucking amazing.
But yeah, if you're trying to create something amazing, there's probably going to be a lot more fucking around and finding out. There's probably going to be a lot more testing and learning. There's probably going to be a lot more failing because most people aren't doing the shit you're doing.
Most people aren't creating the results you're creating, so yeah, probably it's going to require more navigating of that to get there. I don't think that means it's bad or wrong because I also don't think disappointment is bad. I think it's an emotion that doesn't feel the most pleasant. But when you stop layering all those stories on top of it, it becomes much easier to deal with.
And you can even put positive stories on it, right? And this isn't about like positive spin or bright siding, this is more like, “Oh, I feel disappointed because I took an effort to create something I wanted.” Right?
Like yesterday when I went to the wine bar I could be like, “God, what a fucking waste of time. I could have just stayed home, I should have picked a different wine bar.” Those stories are all available to me, but none of them feel like really fun are yummy. And none of them encourage me to keep taking chances to try to have the experiences I want to have in life.
Whereas instead I can be like, “Wow, I'm really disappointed. How can I be with myself in this? How can I parent?” You know, I talk sometimes about like re-parenting. “How can I be that likewise parent energy with the part of me who's disappointed? How can I love that part of me even though she's sad?”
And also how can I celebrate? Like okay, this didn't work out the way you planned, but you really wanted something, and you went after it. And that's a beautiful thing. To me, I think that is one of the easiest ways to turn this around in my head, is to think about like I took effort, I took action, I did effort to try to create the experience I wanted.
And it doesn't always go the way I thought it would. But what if it's worth it? That effort to try to create what I want my life to be like, what if that's worth it even when it doesn't go according to plan? Even when it doesn't turn out the way I thought it would and even when I wind up in disappointment. Because nothing's ever guaranteed, right?
And I want to encourage myself to, just like y'all, to live that wildly satisfying life, to live that delicious life. And that's going to mean trying things and them not always working. And who I am with myself in the moment when things aren't working, that's everything. That's everything.
That's what this shit is all about. And you'll also wind up somewhere really amazing if you're really willing to do that. But even if I had never wound up anywhere amazing, being able to be with myself in that way, that actually is the prize.
Having the multiple six figure coaching business is also fucking amazing. I love it, I wouldn't want to give it up. But if I can be with myself and my full spectrum of my human emotions, if I can be with myself and my disappointment, that's something that goes with me. And that's something that would make any sort of human experiences I could have in any job, or any relationship, or any situation easier and more okay for me to navigate. Not more okay, that sounds weird. But it's a skill set, right?
Having the wonderful things I've created for myself is also fun. But the relationship I create with myself is actually, to me, I think the most exceptional thing and the thing that's going to lead to the most wildly satisfying life.
And listen, if you want to have a wildly satisfying as fuck life too, I want that for you. Come have a consult with me, you can set it up on my website and let's have a conversation about what that would look like for you and how to get you there. And if you want to work with me, I'll also tell you how I'm currently taking clients. But I think even just to the console will be enough to change your fucking life.
All right, that's what I got for y'all. Happy Wednesday. Have a lovely week.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y'all, happy Wednesday. I hope everyone out there is having a wonderful day and a wonderful week. And also, if you're not, that's okay too. That's what we have all the tools and skills for that we learn in this podcast.
One thing that happened to me this week is that yesterday, so it's Wednesday for y'all but it's Monday for me. And yesterday I went to this wine bar that I really like in Sacramento, and I was excited to go there and sit on their outside patio and have a glass of this wine that they make.
It's like a wine bar that's also, like they do their own wine there. It's like they're serving their own wine from their own vineyards, or I don't know if it's their vineyards. Anyways, they make the wine, they're like the distributors, they pour only their own wine.
And there's this rosé there that I really love, it's just really tasty and it's very distinctive. There's not a lot of other rosés I've had that taste quite like this one. It's not my favorite favorite, but it's one of my favorites, if that makes sense.
And we got there, and I found out that they have taken this rosé off the menu, and they don't have it. Like I couldn't even buy it in a bottle. They've taken it off the menu, they like ran it all out, they poured all the wine from every bottle that they had. Like they had another rosé still on the menu and they were going to have another rosé coming soon that wasn't there yet.
And I was so sad because I didn't know this was happening. And I was really excited and expecting to be able to drink this wine that I like so much. And the other rosé they have there, it's fine, but it wasn't what I wanted. I tasted it, I tasted a few other wines.
And ultimately I just told the server, I tipped her, and I was like here is a tip because you did bring me these wine samples. But we're just going to go because I wanted this one wines so much, and I wanted this one experience so much. And I was so disappointed I wasn't having it that I didn't actually want any of the other experiences available to me at that time from that place.
And Alex was being so sweet. She was like, “Here are some other wine bars I know you like we could go to, restaurants, da, da, da.” And I was just like, “I just want to go home.” And so we did. And I really think this may seem like kind of melodramatic but it's actually a really common experience for me because I get very specific ideas in my head of what I want to have happen.
And if it doesn't happen that way, sometimes I'm just like, “Cool. I don't want another experience. I just want to go home and soothe my feelings and process them and give myself permission to feel how I feel and then figure out what I'm going to do from there.”
And it's interesting because I think this is not how I used to do things. The way I used to do things I think would be more like kind of tried to overload on whatever other pleasure was available to me, versus really embracing like I'm disappointed. I'm not going to be disappointed forever, it's just wine. It's not the end of the world. But in this moment I just am feeling upset.
So that's what we did. And it's interesting because what I want to talk to you all about this week is disappointment. And the other reason I wanted to talk to you about this is because I heard, it was a podcast by Stacey Boehman, and I listened to it months ago. But I've been thinking about it ever since.
And I looked it up and I think it's the one about believing in magic, I think that's the one it was. But you know how it is sometimes when it's been so long since you encountered the source material that you are having ideas about, that even when you like find it again, you're like, “Is this the one?”
But with all the Google searching I did, that was the podcast that came up where she talks about disappointment, and I listened to part of it, and it seems like it's the right one. So, believing in magic. And also Stacey's podcasts are all just pretty great. She's a coach for coaches to learn how to make money.
And even if that's not you, she's just brilliant and you can learn a lot of stuff from her if you're willing to cross apply it to whatever area of your life. And if you're not, that's okay too because when I'm inspired by something she says and I think it's relevant for you, I'm going to come over here and fucking tell you about it anyways. So you can just have double the trouble if you want to listen to hers as well.
Okay, so the basic idea is that a lot of us do not fucking like feeling disappointment. It's not our favorite And that is a hyperbolic, like we really, really don't like it. Generally people don't like disappointment. And a lot of times people are not willing to try things in case they may feel disappointed.
So what that actually means is then they'll keep all this shit in their life that they don't necessarily like or want because they're afraid that if they go out and try something new and it doesn't work they're going to feel that negative feeling, that disappointment, right?
Like yesterday, if I had been like, “Oh, I want that wine, but I'm just not sure they're going to have it, so I'll just stay home.” Then it's true that I would have avoided the potential of feeling that disappointment. But that also keeps my life so small, and it keeps it to like the things I already know.
And guess what? You can't actually really even avoid disappointment even if you do that. Because even if you're doing all the same things you always do, you still have the opportunity to be disappointed. I mean, in a way I went to a restaurant and tried to order the same glass of wine I've had again and again. So that's still me like kind of doing only things I've ever done before and I still got disappointed.
So how is this relevant for y'all? Okay, the way it's relevant for y'all is because in order to create your wildly satisfying career, in order to create your wildly delicious life, in order to create changes and have fun and be delighted, you have to be willing to encounter disappointment. You have to be willing to feel disappointed.
And that's not super sexy, fun news. And I get that. Like I said, most of us don't want to feel disappointed. We're like, “Ooh, running directly towards disappointment, no thank you.” But as I say all the time, if we're creating anything we haven't already created it's going to require that we learn, and probably that we fail a lot along the way, and that we encounter discomfort. And disappointment is a form of discomfort, and that we keep going.
And even if all you want to do is recreate all the things you've already created, you may still encounter disappointment. So learning how to do that, learning how to get really good at that, and learning how to navigate that for yourself is a fucking superpower. And the more that you can do this, the more you can handle disappointment and navigate it over and over and over again without going into the fuck it effect or into the pit of despair, the more powerful you are and the more cool shit you can do in the world.
So let's break this down, why is feeling disappointment a required skill set? Okay, so at the very basic level feeling disappointed is a required skill set because life is uncertain and anytime we do anything, we don't know what will happen. And especially if you're trying to create something extraordinary, chances are high that you're not going to get it right or get the result you want every time you try something, every time over and over again for the rest of your life, right?
So just think about it, I'm 38. I'm imagining, I don't know, I'll live to like 80 or 100, I talk about this sometimes. So if everything I try for the next 40 years, 42 years, 62 years, whatever, probably not all of it is going to work out the way I want it to. That's just life.
There's this author, David Richo, he's got some great books. Alex really likes him, which is why I know about him. And he has these, he calls them the five things you cannot change, and he talks about like these are five things you can't change about the world. And so his point in the book is it's really valuable to accept them and then decide who you want to be in relation to them.
And one of the things you cannot change, according to David Richo, is things do not always go according to plan, right? So if you think about it, you're like, “Cool, I want to have my like satisfying as fuck, wildly delicious life, and career. And here are the things I think I'm going to do. And then I'm going to start taking action towards those things.” Chances are you're not going to get it the way you want it to be every time and probably there's going to be a lot more failure than there is success.
And then when the failure happens, generally we feel disappointed. And then we have to navigate that in order to keep going and we have to sort of become what I'm going to call like disappointment resilient.
It's not that we become like weird robots where disappointment doesn't bother us. I still felt big feelings yesterday and it was about wine. It wasn't even about my business or my relationship. It was about a sensory delight that I wanted to partake in on a Sunday afternoon.
And I'm doing stuff all the time, right, like building a business, leaving my corporate career, navigating my relationship, which is coming up on five years, which is an amazing relationship. And which also, you know, it's not a one and done, we're still working on that all the time. We're still navigating things and building our connection all the time.
And there's a lot of disappointment in there too and that doesn't mean we're doing it wrong. It just means we're humans living in this incarnation where, as David Richo says, things do not always go according to plan.
Let's also take a minute though to think about like why is disappointment so hard? Why is it so terrible? Why do we all hate it so much? And what I think the answer to that is, is because of what we make it mean.
Because of what we make it mean about ourselves. Because of what we make it mean about the possibilities and the world we live in. Because of what we make it mean about the world at large. Because of what we make it mean about our community. Because of what we make it mean about our industry, our country, our future, et cetera. And so I think that's just really interesting to know, right?
So with my very silly wine example, it's not silly, but it's just like it is true that it's not as essential to me as a career thing. But it's just top of mind because it just happened, right? So experiencing the disappointment of I came here to get this thing and I'm not having it. That's just a set of sensations in my body.
But if I'm in my brain making it mean like I never get what I want. People can just take away the things I love. I'm never going to have a glass of wine I like again. Things like that, those thoughts are going to add misery to the disappointment.
And again, the wine example is kind of lightweight. If you think about it, one time, as y'all know and I've talked about before, I was laid off. So if I made that mean I'll never get another job. I'm never going to be able to earn that much money ever again. I must be worthless because someone laid me off.
There are all these negative stories and painful stories that we can layer on top of the disappointment and that make it feel much, much worse. And that keep us, I think, kind of like we get trapped and stuck there. Or we don't try things anymore because we're like, “Oh, if I try it and I feel disappointment, that will just be too hard. It'll be too crushing.”
Versus what I want you to think about is like, okay, when I left Expedia and I launched my business, I fucked up and failed so hard all the time over and over and over again for months. And, you know, kind of for years. It took a really long time to get my business to the place that I wanted it to be. Much longer than I wanted it to take.
And I had to navigate the disappointment of not having arrived. And then I had to move through that disappointment, get to the other side and decide to keep going and keep taking action in order to build the business that I now have, right?
So if I had tried some stuff to build that business and get clients and it didn't work, which sometimes it did and sometimes it didn't, right? But it didn't work at the scale I wanted it to, right? Like I've said before, I wanted to make six figures my first 12 months and I made less than 15 grand.
So at that point, if I had been like, “This disappointment is too big, and it means I'm too fucked.” And I had stopped, all I would have ever had from that experience would have been the disappointment and the negative stories and all that pain.
Versus learning to tolerate that disappointment and move through it, process it, become resilient to it, and keep going. When I was able to feel the disappointment and keep going, that's how I became the person who was able to build the six figure business and then now the multiple six figure business.
And I think this topic also correlates to like that idea of instant gratification, which I think we've talked about recently but I'm going to come at it from the other angle on this. Which is I think for a lot of us, we want that instant gratification, right? Even those of us who know how to delay gratification really well to get what we want later, which is what we talked about a few weeks ago, when we try something, when we put all that effort in, we want to see results.
And especially, actually okay, this is kind of complex but go with me. If we're denying ourselves moment to moment pleasure to do work on something that feels really hard and terrible to us. And then we do that work and then we don't get what we want, I think then also sometimes we sort of like implode or get into that fuck it effect, that pit of despair, right?
So this is actually my teachings are coming together here where I talk about noticing what's working and infusing your life with pleasure and delight while you're on the journey to wherever you're going. And that's really important because when you're on the journey to somewhere that you're going to need to navigate disappointment in order to get to it, like me leaving Expedia and needing to navigate disappointment to getting to my business being built to the level it is now.
I needed to have pleasure and like delight and notice what was working along the way because it was going to take a lot longer to get to the business working in the way I wanted it to. And I was going to have to tolerate a lot of disappointment.
I wasn't going to get instant gratification of like I made an offer, sometimes I would make an offer, and someone would sign up to work me. And sometimes I would make an offer, and I would make an offer, and I would make an offer, and I would make an offer, and I would make an offer, and no one would sign up with me, right?
So I had to be able to kind of like nourish myself off along the way to that and navigate that disappointment and kind of get through it to get to the place where I can make an offer and then someone does sign up and says yes. And then I make enough offers and I'm like, then I'm in the revenue place that I want to be in and blah, blah, blah.
Okay, so let's review. What are the key takeaways here? The key takeaways are disappointment is part of life. It's not my favorite part, it's not the most delicious part. But it is just part, I think, of being here. I mean, maybe if you're like very, very advanced and you don't expect anything ever, then you don't have to be disappointed. But that's never been my experience.
So I kind of tend to be like, what do I think the average human is going through? And I'm going to orient my coaching to that. I think for most of us, being human and having a human brain means that we're going to feel disappointed, and especially for my people who are trying to create these really extraordinary lives and careers. Part of creating something extraordinary is going through an extraordinary amount of it not working and being disappointed.
And I realize that's maybe not selling it as super great. I do think it's super great. It gives us a chance to come into contact with the full spectrum of our own humanity. And it gives us the chance to create something fucking amazing.
But yeah, if you're trying to create something amazing, there's probably going to be a lot more fucking around and finding out. There's probably going to be a lot more testing and learning. There's probably going to be a lot more failing because most people aren't doing the shit you're doing.
Most people aren't creating the results you're creating, so yeah, probably it's going to require more navigating of that to get there. I don't think that means it's bad or wrong because I also don't think disappointment is bad. I think it's an emotion that doesn't feel the most pleasant. But when you stop layering all those stories on top of it, it becomes much easier to deal with.
And you can even put positive stories on it, right? And this isn't about like positive spin or bright siding, this is more like, “Oh, I feel disappointed because I took an effort to create something I wanted.” Right?
Like yesterday when I went to the wine bar I could be like, “God, what a fucking waste of time. I could have just stayed home, I should have picked a different wine bar.” Those stories are all available to me, but none of them feel like really fun are yummy. And none of them encourage me to keep taking chances to try to have the experiences I want to have in life.
Whereas instead I can be like, “Wow, I'm really disappointed. How can I be with myself in this? How can I parent?” You know, I talk sometimes about like re-parenting. “How can I be that likewise parent energy with the part of me who's disappointed? How can I love that part of me even though she's sad?”
And also how can I celebrate? Like okay, this didn't work out the way you planned, but you really wanted something, and you went after it. And that's a beautiful thing. To me, I think that is one of the easiest ways to turn this around in my head, is to think about like I took effort, I took action, I did effort to try to create the experience I wanted.
And it doesn't always go the way I thought it would. But what if it's worth it? That effort to try to create what I want my life to be like, what if that's worth it even when it doesn't go according to plan? Even when it doesn't turn out the way I thought it would and even when I wind up in disappointment. Because nothing's ever guaranteed, right?
And I want to encourage myself to, just like y'all, to live that wildly satisfying life, to live that delicious life. And that's going to mean trying things and them not always working. And who I am with myself in the moment when things aren't working, that's everything. That's everything.
That's what this shit is all about. And you'll also wind up somewhere really amazing if you're really willing to do that. But even if I had never wound up anywhere amazing, being able to be with myself in that way, that actually is the prize.
Having the multiple six figure coaching business is also fucking amazing. I love it, I wouldn't want to give it up. But if I can be with myself and my full spectrum of my human emotions, if I can be with myself and my disappointment, that's something that goes with me. And that's something that would make any sort of human experiences I could have in any job, or any relationship, or any situation easier and more okay for me to navigate. Not more okay, that sounds weird. But it's a skill set, right?
Having the wonderful things I've created for myself is also fun. But the relationship I create with myself is actually, to me, I think the most exceptional thing and the thing that's going to lead to the most wildly satisfying life.
And listen, if you want to have a wildly satisfying as fuck life too, I want that for you. Come have a consult with me, you can set it up on my website and let's have a conversation about what that would look like for you and how to get you there. And if you want to work with me, I'll also tell you how I'm currently taking clients. But I think even just to the console will be enough to change your fucking life.
All right, that's what I got for y'all. Happy Wednesday. Have a lovely week.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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