How disappointing is it when your favorite football team loses a game to a team that, you know, they should have beaten a team that they are better [00:01:00] than they're ranked higher than more talented them they lose. How disappointing is that? Today, we're going to talk about the nature of the most purest form of suffering, and that is disappointment.

Disappointment is the feeling that we get when our expectations for how the world should be are not met. That's truly why it hurts so much worse when your favorite team loses to a team you know they should have beaten, rather than a team that's really good, maybe even better than them. 

Brian: When they lose to a team that is better than them, especially if it was a close game, you're probably a little sad because you hoped that they would win, but you're less disappointed because you knew that that wasn't something that you should expect.

You should expect them to lose to a team that's better than them. And then you have nothing but upside.

Disappointment is the purest form of suffering because it's something that we are completely in control of and we absolutely bring upon ourselves by the [00:02:00] expectations that we set for how things should be and how the world should treat us.

And our expectations come from the habits and patterns that have been ingrained into us in our life experience. Up to this point, expectations are essentially organic standards that are set in our mind based on past experiences.

So for example, if you grew up in a really great home with loving parents and a really positive family dynamic, you would probably have an expectation that your family, when you get married and have children will operate in the exact same way. Conversely, if you grew up in a really difficult situation, you may expect that it would be the same thing whenever you grew up and had a family of your own and you may have to really break that expectation in order to create a really positive family dynamic.

This goes for all areas of our lives. If we have a certain amount of success in business for a period of time, we may expect that things are going to continue in that way forever. We may set a mental standard that we expect will never fail again. [00:03:00] And the opposite is true there as well. If we are struggling to find success, especially for the first time, we may get a mental block, set an expectation that we're destined for failure, that we're not good enough, we're not worthy.

And we'll never be great. Those expectations. They're just symptoms of our life experience to this point. But the reality is that we are in full control of our life experience by the things that we choose to focus on, to place energy in.

And that ultimately has a control over our physical outcomes in the real world to where our focus goes, our energy flows and where our energy flows that grows. And that's how we can affect our outcomes more positively. But first we have to break down that wall of expectation around how the world should be, how life should treat us, because that leads to disappointment.

Which is the purest form of suffering because we bring it on ourself 

When we expect nothing and appreciate [00:04:00] everything as the Zen proverb goes, we set ourselves up for success every day because we come from a place of gratitude and we bring positive energy into our lives and the areas where it's needed to influence our outcomes.

When I build a wall of expectations around my life, I am setting myself up for constant disappointment. When I have expectations around my relationships, my business, my family dynamic, my job, when I have all of these standards that I've built up over time based on past experiences, I don't allow myself to enjoy the idea that the future might be different.

I come from a place of disappointment because things aren't the same as they always have been or how I've been conditioned to think that they always will be. But the problem with that is that I'm confining myself to only a certain set of different outcomes. If I expect things to be a certain way, Forever.

I'll be disappointed when they're not. And more [00:05:00] importantly, I won't allow for the possibility that things could eventually be even better or more adventurous or more joyful or more fulfilling. If I set these expectations, they go both ways. If I expect things to be a certain way, not only will I be disappointed when they're not that way.

I'll actually rob myself of the joy and fulfillment of them being even more positive. I can find my potential outcomes and results to a very narrow window based on my expectations. So I'm organically setting myself up for failure.

And when I'm coming from a place of frustration or disappointment, I'm already not more productive. When I'm coming from a place of curiosity. Of how the future could be of gratitude around what I have and what we've accomplished and achieved.

I am automatically more mentally set up for success. I have more energy flowing into my body. I'm projecting better, I'm more confident, I'm ready to get things done. When I'm already pissed off about things that didn't happen the way that I wanted them [00:06:00] to, I'm much less likely to go and take massive action that day to continue to move us forward.

Disappointment is the purest form of suffering because we bring it on ourselves.

The best example of this for me crippled me for years in the business world. I had an expectation that one of my very successful businesses would be the thing that I solely focused on for the rest of my career. I was making a lot of money. I was able to retire early if we were just on this trajectory forever.

That business stopped being as successful as it once was.

I ended up moving into a different direction and for a long time I had nothing but shame and regret and disappointment around what I considered to be a failure. And because I had such an expectation that things would always be a certain way, I robbed myself of the joy of realizing That that business was a massive blessing to me.

Not only did it teach me a million invaluable lessons, it set me up financially to go and explore the next journeys that would really excite me and [00:07:00] energize me and in which I would be more successful than I ever was in that business. I had this narrow window of my preferred outcome and when I got outside the bounds of that narrow window, I went into a cycle of disappointment that was very difficult to recover from.

And a lot of people stay there. A lot of people build this narrow window of how they believe things should be. And when they go outside those bounds, they don't come back. They live in a world of frustration. They stopped trying. They get really dejected. They get depressed. And not only are they suffering unnecessarily, the robbing themselves of the possibility that things could have been more miraculous than they had ever imagined.

And so how do we get out of this vicious cycle of expectation and disappointment? How do we break the chains and free ourselves from the prison of expectation, which leads to unnecessary suffering?

The simple answer is being intentional. We have [00:08:00] to be intentional around rewiring our minds to see all that is good in our world, get rid of the expectations around how things should be appreciate what is and get curious about what could be.

Now, I know that sounds a little high level, so let's get actionable.

Brian: A daily journal where you express your gratitude is an invaluable tool that you can use every single day. You can do it digitally. You can do it by hand. You can carry it around with you. You can have it on your device, wherever you are. You can get an app like the day one app, a hard journal, whatever it is, you can set yourself a reminder on your phone to just write down a few things that you are grateful for each day.

That might be something that feels so insignificant to you in the moment, but you have no idea the positive effect that it has on your neurochemistry. When you prime your mind to intentionally think about what is good and what you are thankful for, you are deliberately breathing [00:09:00] positive energy into your environment.

That will flow into the places where you control your outcomes, plain and simple. What we focus on, we drive energy towards, we take action on. So deliberately being grateful every day is a tool that you must implement right now. You'll see immediate results. I guarantee it.

On top of that, it's really important to get deep with your own mind as well. Some people get a lot of great results just from journaling. Daily reflection exercises are another great tool. Meditate on what you're grateful for. \ Meditate on what is good in your life. And no matter how dark and bleak things seem at times, there is always good in your world. It may take a little bit more digging to find it at times, and that's totally reasonable, but it is there. And in times where it's the hardest to uncover is when it's most important for us to dig deep.

Brian: So reflect daily, practice 10, 15 minutes of daily reflective meditation on what you are grateful for [00:10:00] and drive that energy towards action steps.

Don't fall victim to unnecessary suffering. This life that you are experiencing, this world is so full of promise and blessings and untold miracles that you are going to experience.

Brian: If you drive your energy to the right places, lower your level of expectation, which will lower your level of disappointment. And unnecessary suffering. I would love to hear how your gratitude journals going, how your daily reflections going, drop a comment. If this was useful for you, let me know. I'd love to hear from you.

Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time.