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Expectations are the root of disappointment.
We are all complicit in our own disappointment. If you are being disappointed about something it is important to examine the roots of your disappointment, and it always comes back to one factor: expectations.
If you are disappointed by the behavior of another person, stop and ask yourself why you expected a certain behavior from them, and why you allowed your personal well-being and satisfaction to be tied to something that is completely out of your control – the actions or attitude of someone else.
If you expected someone to be polite and they acted rudely, ask yourself: Do people sometimes act rudely? The answer is yes, they do. Before you developed your expectations for politeness you were aware that many people act rudely sometimes, so you can and should hope for polite interactions but it was this expectation, and not the rude behavior, that caused your disappointment.
When you got in your car to drive to work and ended up stuck in traffic you were very disappointed. In fact, you were downright angry! But was it the traffic that ruined your day, or was it your unreasonable expectation that traffic would move smoothly? Traffic jams happen. Ever since cars become popular over 100 years ago there have been issues with too many people going in the same direction. And you were aware of this reality long before you ever picked up your keys. It was always a possibility.
You don’t have to like being stuck in traffic but you cannot blame the traffic for your unhappiness. Someone in the car in front of you might not mind the delay, and the person behind you could really love this personal time to sing along to their favorite songs. It is a failure to account for the realities of traffic and an expectation that everything would flow smoothly that caused the distress, while the traffic is neutral.
When you expect your kid to come home from school with an A+ on an assignment and they instead bring home a C+, are you bothered by this? Many people would be, but most people would also be quick to blame their kid’s inattentiveness or lack of effort before they ever turned the microscope on themselves. Sure, the child could have studied harder or paid more attention in class, but the parent also needs to understand that there are only a handful of possible grades that can be given out, usually in the range from an F to an A+. Before your kid even begins the assignment you know that the end result will be one of these grades. C+ was always on the table, yet it caught you off guard.
Do kids often get distracted and have a hard time focusing? They always have and they always will. Do smart kids often bring home grades that vary greatly? Absolutely. Do some people just struggle with a particular subject? Yup! These are the ups and downs of every education. If it were the C+ itself that caused your frustration then you’d have to explain why another parents of a child in the same class, working on the same assignment, would be perfectly happy with the C+, and yet another parent might be ecstatic. The emotional reaction is connected to the expectations and not to the letter on the page. Love or hate the C+, you have to own your part in the disappointment.
It is empowering to take ownership over the things that cause your frustrations. It feels satisfying to blame others – like that impolite person, awful traffic or lazy kid – for ruining your day, but when you do so you are handing over the power to determine your happiness. If this is your mindset then you are inevitably going to be unhappy, because assholes, traffic and mediocre grades are facts of life. They are outside of your control, and you can take the power back by taking ownership over your role in your own frustration.
If you are frustrated due to your own failure to mentally prepare yourself for setbacks then you have a course of action to prevent future frustrations: Premeditatio Malorum.
Premeditatio Malorum is an ancient Stoic expression that means to anticipate the negative things that can happen in your life. In the first chapter of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations he lists some of the negative people whom he could possibly meet that day:
“Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.”
You should do the same. Before you even think about getting in your car you need to remind yourself that traffic happens, tires go flat, people get in accidents, some drive far too slow while others drive far too fast, and most importantly of all, remind yourself that every single one of these factors is outside of your control. Saying this to yourself will inoculate you against the anger that arises from these things. Remember, it’s not the traffic that upsets you, but your reaction to the traffic.
The foundational concept of Stoicism is the Dichotomy of Control. It is assessing what things fall within your control and what falls outside of your control, and then directing your effort and attention towards what you can control while accepting or ignoring that which you cannot control. It ties in nicely with Premeditatio Malorum, because most of these negative possibilities that you need to consider will be outside of your control and you'd be infinitely happier if you just let them go!
So much unnecessary disappointment, frustration and conflict could be avoided if we all thought honestly about the nature of our expectations, why we hold such expectations, and whether or not they are reasonable. The world is a certain way regardless of your desires or opinions, so to hold expectations that contradict this nature is setting yourself up for negative outcomes. The best methods to ease these negative feelings are to avoid holding expectations about things which are outside of your control and to remind yourself daily that bad things happen, rude people exist and negative outcomes are a fact of life. Disappointment is the responsibility of the person who is disappointed. Being annoyed, irritated and frustrated are logical reactions to things that are annoying, irritating and frustrating, but your disappointment is on you.
J. Peterman
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