As mostly all of us do, I invested my time in a lot of things, possibilities, opportunities, options of deals with great outcome, companies, projects reviews, technicalities and so on. It all seemed a winning horse at the time and off course worth my time. A lot of the time invested did not turn into anything at all and very often the feeling was of being immensely let down by the matter, the people, the reality of things that should have been highlighted from the start and so on. Some started behaving and interacting with you in a certain manner, just to change behaviour as soon as things start progressing and start wanting more or different outcomes, pushing to self-serving interest over the project. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong in my books in wanting to be ambitious!
For the few deals that happen and materialise, the joys is immense and it makes you feel a bit, I imagine, like a golfer who has just hit the perfect shot! The problem is to understand if the perfect shot is it out of around of 120 shots, or if it is it out of round of 72 shots, with a great scorecard.
That is where the difficulty is: having sufficient detachment in your vision and accepting adversity as it comes to learn and grow from it.
So here are three steps that seem to work for me and others (see Keith Bartlett video – link here on his view on this topic – for how he manages disappointments at Santapod Raceways):
- Accepting that disappointments and adversity are part of the process is the first step. Doing nothing is not an option. You need to accept that if something is done, disappointment of a certain level is part of it.
- Understand what part of the elements that created disappointment are under your control or not and understand how you can circumnavigate them or manage the outcome is the second step. Be creative here.
- Leverage the disappointment to learn from it and acquire knowledge that wasn’t there before. You never know when that knowledge will become useful or needed. Certainly, it will prevent you from being surprised again by the same disappointment and adversity.
The say “Fool me once, shame on you; full me twice, shame on me” is a reminder of precisely that, and is based that between the first and the second time one learns from it. Some good lesson are learned the hard way I guess.
