I failed. I was sad. Disappointed. I blamed myself. ‘It’s my fault’, I told myself. You should have tried harder.
These were my emotions when I found out that some of my students had not passed their English exam. I was gutted and it was all my fault. I’m sure many educators feel this way when their students do not get the grade they were capable of. In fact, I’m sure most people in various professions feel that pang of disappointment when things don’t go as expected: the surgeon whose patient doesn’t make the expected recovery; the mother whose child is struggling to read; the cashier whose sales weren’t quite enough to make that much needed commission. As human beings, we are very good at blaming ourselves.
The trouble is, sometimes, if not most times, things happen completely outside of our control and we can do nothing about them.
This is when we should remember to embrace failure and disappointment. They are both key to our understanding of future events.
We are not be able to control every event but we can control our response to it.
Please share your strategies for dealing with disappointment.