I posted a question on my Facebook page: are all disappointments bad? Among the many who commented, one said he hated being disappointed because he would lose confidence, get confused, and wouldn’t know what to do after. Another said that disappointments make him stronger in his resolve to do better.
I remember learning from disappointment when, many years ago, my daughter Hannah came home from school and showed the Ilocana and me a red mark on her report card. We were disappointed. It was easy for us to blame Hannah for spending too much time on the phone with friends, not taking her schooling seriously and watching too much MTV (Yes, this was that long ago).
Failing a subject was a calamity for our daughter, for she had never had a red mark on her report card. That meant that she would have to take up summer classes and miss our family vacation. And so we went without Hannah; I felt that my other kids did not deserve to miss out on the vacation because of their sister’s failure.
Meanwhile, Hannah dutifully went to summer class. She hated it. And she missed us, her family.
Was Hannah disappointed? Big time! Were we as parents disappointed? Of course. Was the experience damaging to her ego and her confidence?
This was what happened. I gently told Hannah that we all have the freedom to make choices in life, and nobody has the power to stop us. But we also have to face the reality that we cannot escape the consequences of the choices we make, and nobody has the power to prevent them from happening.
Hannah was disappointed, but her disappointment only strengthened her resolve. Much as she loathed the experience, she promised herself that she would never fail in school again. And she made good on her promise.
As parents, the Ilocana and I learned a valuable lesson. Just as we cannot exempt our children from other people’s expectations, we also cannot shield them from disappointments. From time to time, they will fail to meet expectations, and our job is to equip them so that when that time comes, they will have the resolve to make themselves better.
Make things easy for them today, and we make life difficult for them in the future. Disappointments are not necessarily bad when they become the spark for one to resolve to be better.
Every disappointment I experience when I would deliver a speech or give training moves me to improve and correct my mistakes. Cruising on my competence and being overconfident is a recipe for career disaster. I need to set my own expectations, raise the bar constantly and persevere through disappointments.
Do not prevent your children from being disappointed. Encourage them to learn from disappointments and become better.
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