Disappointed
The Story
A lot of the work I do requires me to prepare for conversations. Rarely do I just show up and ad lib. Whether preparation involves putting together a slide deck, doing some pre-reading, or taking some light notes about conversation topics; I’ve found that preparing for conversations is one of the things that has made me successful.
I recently found myself preparing for a conversation. One of my goals for the conversation was to get a few pieces of information from the person. I’d already made some general assumptions heading in to the conversation, but wanted to have those assumptions validated (or invalidated). Hence, the desire to have the conversation.
I’d mentally rehearsed some of what I wanted to say. I’d done my best to anticipate what I thought the other person would say.
And then the conversation happened.
It went mostly as I’d expected, and I emerged with the pieces of information that I felt I needed.
When the conversation ended, however, my initial feeling was one of disappointment. I’d headed into the conversation thinking one thing, but then found that the thing I’d assumed wasn’t anywhere near the truth. But that feeling of disappointment was soon replaced with a feeling of relief. I now knew the truth. And even though the truth didn’t match my version of the facts, I felt content in the new awareness. I knew the answer
The Lesson
Anticipating change is something we all do at some point in our lives. Whether it’s bracing ourselves for big changes — jobs, kids, spouses, houses, medical diagnoses — or small — commutes, meals, what to watch on TV.
Anticipating change can be mentally and physically exhausting. It causes us to live outside of the moment and run through hundreds of potential future scenarios in our heads. “What will I/we do if X happens?” “How will I/we respond if he/she says X?”
And many of these scenarios will never take place.
The challenge in all this is to find some ability to respond to change in a way that’s true to who we are. Because we cannot stop anticipating change. It’s a necessary part of what makes us human.
Morrissey — “Disappointed”