If you’re alive and reading this right now, there’s a good chance you’ve been disappointed about something.

A crappy job. Relationship problems. Sickness. A political election. Or life in general is going nothing like you planned. Pick your poison.

Disappointment loves sneaking up on you — like that weird neighborhood cat who keeps showing up on your porch and peeing all over your decorative pillows.

So the question becomes — how do we deal with the disappointments in our lives?

And I write this having gone through my fair share. You don’t take the path of an entrepreneur without a lot of failures paving your way. Unmet expectations are a daily occurrence.

We can’t avoid disappointment. But when it comes your way will you crush the disappointment or let it crush you?

I say we crush disappointment. But how? Here’s some ideas:

3 Ways to Overcome Disappointment1. Stop tying your identity to the perceived outcome of your work

You never know how a “disappointment” will look in retrospect.

Sometimes what we see as a disappointment now is merely a blessing to be discovered later. (click to tweet that)

Sometimes we’re wrecked with disappointment because we’re tying too much of who we are to what we do.

As I first write in 101 Questions You Need to Ask in Your Twenties (and Thirties)

You are more than the visible outcome of your work.

And the outcome of your work might be more than what is currently visible.

Do good work. Put your dream out there. Do your best to help others.

Then, let it go. Your dream can’t fly if your identity and self-worth is clinging onto the back of it.”

You are more than what you do. Actually who you’re becoming is more important than what you’re doing.

“We think the outcome is the entire point, when it is just another step on the journey. If we make the whole journey about the predetermined outcome we envisioned, we are destined to be disappointed and disillusioned.” – 25 Lies Twentysomethings Need to Stop Believing

2. Have Faith

The more I’m trying to have everything work out exactly how I planned it, in exactly my timing, the more disappointed I’m going to be. I know this. Yet, I still try to grip tight to all the details of my day.

The more faith I have that God is working things out better than I ever could, even if I can’t see it at the moment, the more peace I have.

It’s not a blind faith, it’s a faith seeing with eyes wide open how many times God has come through for me.

If we’re only looking at what we can see, we will miss everything else that is going on.

What you see as a failure now, might save someone else’s life later.

3. Be willing to be adaptable

Sometimes the best plan you can make is to plan to continually make new plans.

“Success in life is not about things going as we planned. But how we adapt, change, and grow when they don’t go as planned.” – 101 Questions You Need to Ask in Your Twenties (and Thirties) 

It’s hard to be too disappointed in life if you’re willing to adapt your plans when they don’t go exactly as planned.

If you let each failed plan and exploding expectation overwhelm you with disappointment, you won’t be able to move forward very far in life.

It’s only a dead-end if you let it stop you. Or you can climb the wall in front of you and get a better view.

Or as I wrote as Secret #1 in 101 Secrets For Your Twenties,

Sometimes surviving your 20s is nothing more glamorous than just holding on for dear life on the back of an inner tube like a kid being whipped around by a speedboat.

You can’t see a thing.
Repeated waves knock the wind out of you.
Your hands are gripped so tight your fingers begin to cramp. And your only choice of survival is to just let go.