I have two books that I look at in the morning before meditating.  They each contain a daily quotation from a spiritual teacher, as well as a photograph of either Tibet or India.  One book is called “Offerings” and the other “Wisdom”, both from Danielle and Olivier Follmi.  I find these two books a constant source of inspiration, and wanted to share with you a quotation from a recent morning, from Pema Chodron:  “When there’s a disappointment, I don’t know if it’s the end of the story.  But it may be just the beginning of a great adventure.”

Reading this quotation got me to thinking about the many times I have experienced myself in the presence of what I would have expected to be an emotional disaster and then the situation or experience did, indeed, become the beginning of a “great adventure”, usually of healing or discovery of some important kind.  How we engage disappointment has a great deal to do with how we move through challenging encounters with life, personally and interpersonally.  In my work with couples (and this applies to friendships and family and business interactions, as well), there’s no question that the dynamics around disappointment are an important element in the success of deepening intimacy and hanging in with the inevitable ups and downs of relationship.

For this week’s experiment, I invite you to explore your experience of disappointment.  When someone lets you down, or a situation isn’t what you expected it to be, what beliefs come into play?  Do you believe, for example, that someone who cares about you should never let you down?  Do you find yourself shutting off from people when they disappoint you?  And, what reactions tend to emerge when you’re disappointed?  For example, when a situation isn’t what you expected it to be, do you fall into a depressed or agitated state?  Do you cut off from the person or situation that disappointed you?  Or, do you move through the disappointment as one more experience in that day, as something that will inevitably come and go from your life?

For many of us, experiencing disappointment triggers us back into earlier states of being, when we were younger and our disappointments may not have been well-received, or skillfully handled by the adults around us.  Working with our relationship to disappointment can become a powerful path to healing, offering us an opportunity to bring our adult sensibilities and capacities to old wounds.  We also discover that we can develop new, more resilient responses to disappointment that serve us well in our current relationships.

And so, I invite you to spend this week being particularly aware of how you move through disappointment, noticing where you’re flexible and resilient and where you get caught in old, child-level responses.  As with every experiment, please allow curiosity, compassion, and gentleness to accompany your awareness.  The point of the experiment isn’t to find out what you’re doing wrong.  It’s to offer yourself a moment of choice, a moment in which you can deepen your awareness and engage a healing journey.