Episode 36: Reframing Disappointment

We all face disappointment — a client backs out, a project falls flat, a dream opportunity slips away. But what if setbacks aren’t signs to stop… but signs to look deeper?

In this solo episode, I’m sharing how to reframe disappointment so that it becomes a tool for growth instead of a roadblock. You’ll learn how to normalize discomfort, shift your inner dialogue, and start seeing challenges as invitations — not indictments.

You’ll hear:

• Why disappointment often triggers shame — and how to stop that cycle
• The simple 3-step reframe I use when things don’t go as planned
• What I tell my clients (and myself!) when the inner critic gets loud
• A powerful reminder: everything is happening for your benefit

If you’ve ever felt discouraged by a setback, this episode will give you a new way forward — with more compassion, clarity, and courage.

Transcript

0:08

Welcome to the Purposeful MD Podcast. As a physician, you've sacrificed so much of your life for other people, your patients, your family, your friends, and your colleagues. What would it feel like to spend time doing what you enjoy and to live without guilt? I'm your host, Dr. Laura Suttin, a family physician, certified coach, and business owner. If you're a medical professional on a journey towards your most purposeful life, a life with more time and energy, and ultimately more joy, then this is the podcast for you. Welcome to another episode of the Purposeful MD Podcast. Before we dive in, I want to let you know about something cool that's coming up for me. So my audiobook just came out, the audio version of The Purposeful MD, Creating the Life You Love Without Guilt. Super excited. I narrated it. It was a ton of fun, and I would love to share it with you, so stay tuned for more information about how to purchase the audiobook. Stay tuned to the podcast. Stay tuned to me on Facebook and LinkedIn, and if you wanna sign up for my email, let me know. Drop me an email, laura@thepurposefulmd.com. We'll get you signed up for my newsletter, and I am really excited to share it with you. So let's dive in. Today I'm doing a solo podcast episode, and I'm talking about disappointment. Now you might wonder why am I talking about disappointment. Because, we wanna focus on positive stuff, right? Well, disappointment is part of life, and there have been a few things that have happened for me lately that were disappointing. So it really made me think, you know, if I'm going through this, I'm sure a lot of people are, I mean, I, I coach clients all the time about things that happen in their lives, that just doesn't, things don't go your way all the time. There's no guarantees about life, right? And so I've really practiced reframing disappointments. And so I wanted to share with you some of the things that I've learned along the way about how to ma, how to manage through when we get disappointed when something happens that we don't expect. So for you, maybe it's a, something that you really wanted to happen that didn't happen. Maybe travel plans fell through, or a project that you were working on didn't take off. Maybe it was something personal, something in your family. Um, maybe it's relationship related. So, there's all kinds of things that can be disappointing. If you have kids, maybe you're hoping for them to get a certain grade, or get into a certain school, or make a certain team, all kinds of things can happen that disappoint us. And, you know, the first thing that comes up for me when, when I think about disappointment and, in my own experience is it's, it doesn't feel good to be disappointed, but, it also is a sign that we really care about something, right? It's the same thing with grief. I know grief is a little bit more of an extreme emotion, but, I've heard this a lot, I can't remember who I heard this from first, but grief is a sign that we really loved, right? Grief doesn't feel good particularly, doesn't feel, it's not an emotion that most of us wanna turn towards or want to feel, and it's a sign that we have cared about something. So disappointment is similar in that way, it means that we really cared about something, that we threw our heart and soul into something. And that's not a bad thing, right? That's, that's something that makes life beautiful. So that's what one thing that comes up for me when I think about disappointment. And another thing is that sometimes we see it as a setback, right? Especially if we're on a journey towards something where we have a start date and an end date. Maybe, maybe we're running, you guys, if you listen to me, you know me, you know I'm a runner, so I'm gonna use a lot of running analogies. So, if we're running, wanting to train for a marathon, and we get injured, or we have a bad race, or something happens that, we see as a setback, we can reframe it, it doesn't have to be a setback. I had a client a few years ago, who was a nurse practitioner who, one thing that she was working on was making sure she got enough sleep every night, and because she hadn't been, she'd been sleeping like five, six hours, and that just wasn't enough for her. So, part of what she needed to do was to delegate some things, have some things come off her plate, and also not take on any additional work projects, things that she had been asked to do. So she worked on clearing her plate a little bit, getting more sleep, and it was working for her. And then she came back to me one week after probably, we'd been working together for a few months, and she said this past week I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted. I kind of fell back into my old habits is how she put it. And so we talked through what happened, and there were a few different things that came up. So one of her colleagues was out, and so she was covering for a colleague. Then she was asked to lead a meeting that she normally doesn't lead. So there were a few things that happened that got in the way of her sleeping that don't normally happen. And that experience was actually really valuable for her, as she put it. She said, it's not a setback, I'll never forget that she said this, it's not a setback. She said, I learned that I really need the amount of sleep that I need, and I didn't feel good when I was in this position of overworking, overcommitting, exhaustion, because she had seen how it felt to not be exhausted, to not be overworked. And so she saw this not as a setback, but as something that was actually really positive. It was so incredible for me to hear her talk about that, that she saw the positive in this, and she realized, okay, I need to, I need to really double down on these commitments that I've made to myself. I experience a lot of the same things when, so recently I've been going through rehabilitation to improve my running, and I had a similar week where I just didn't feel right physically. There were so many things going on. I wasn't sleeping very well. And I slacked off on my, my rehab exercises. And because of that, my running suffered. And when I was talking to my physical therapist, who's incredible, and talking to him about it, he said, you know, that's, that's a data point for us, because that means that we know these exercises are really helpful for you. So, it was incredible to, for me to feel not any judgment from him. Um, but also just as that reminder, like, okay, yeah, this isn't a setback so much as it is data, and that reframing has been really, really helpful, that setbacks are not failures. I think we see setbacks as failures so often, and, that's just how our brains work. We, we tend to default towards the negative. I think a lot of us, especially as physicians do this, that our brains are wired to look for the negative. That every, every patient that we see has something wrong with them, right? So we have to look for it. That's kind of how our brains are wired, and evolutionarily, we're wired to look for the negative too. So, back when we were cave people, we had to be on guard for everything that could hunt us down and kill us, right? We, our brains were constantly scanning the environment in case there was a leopard that was gonna come out, and hunt us down and chase us and, and kill us. That's very rarely the case these days, that we're in these truly life or death situations, but our brains are wired that way. Our, our, our reptilian brains are still wired that way. And so it can be really difficult to untangle ourselves from that negativity, and that negative voice. So, that might look like, for some of you, something like you, you don't get the results that you want on something, and so, we, maybe we beat ourselves up, I've done this so many times, if, like these certain disappointments I've had lately, I, kind of sit and tell myself, well, it happened because I'm, I'm not a good A, B, or C. I'm not good at what I do. I should have known better. I should have done X, Y, or Z. I should have done something differently. Um, playing the should game, you know, we can should all over ourselves. And, and that's not helpful, I, that's something that when I work with clients, I, I'll pick up on that if we're saying should. So, our brains can jump to that negative space of, well, it happened, this bad thing happened, because of X, Y, or Z, because I wasn't ready. We, we, we personalize it, and it feels really, really emotional, and we can get stuck. So the good thing about that is it doesn't have to be that way, right? We don't have to feel, we don't have to feel this negativity for, an extended period of time. Yes, we're, we're probably going to get triggered. We can't necessarily prevent that. Um, but if we can start to notice how we're thinking, then we can start to shift from it. And so I'll talk about that a little bit, because that's really what I wanna get into. But when we feel that disappointment, it can feel really shameful, especially if, you know, a lot of my examples are around running, and those are very personal. But they don't, I mean, I'm not a professional athlete, right? Like, so my salary doesn't depend on it. Nobody else is relying on me to run. I, I'm, I'm, I might be disappointed in myself, but I don't, there, there's nobody else that's really impacted, but things can happen, things fall through, plans don't happen. Um, you know, we, we might have to do something that isn't what our kids, or our partners, or spouse, or colleagues, or patients want, and so, people sometimes are affected when we're disappointed or when we feel this, and we feel like we've failed other people. I know as physicians, we, tend to really have high expectations for ourselves, we expect the very best, and there's nothing wrong inherently with having high standards, but if we don't live up to them, then we are constantly feeling like a failure. So that shame can be really, really powerful when we feel that disappointment. So, how do we rise above this, right? How do we go from that space where we feel like, oh my gosh, I just, I poured my heart and soul into this. I pour everything into it, and it went nowhere. Well, remember that success isn't linear. And there are, it's just part of the process, right? And I think, that's something that has been really helpful for me to learn in my journey, is that we have to plan for, we have to plan for setbacks. We have to plan for rest and recovery. Again, when athletes train, they factor in rest. They factor in recovery. There is no such thing as completely linear, gradual, no rest, recovery, growth. It just doesn't happen anywhere. And, so we have to build that in. We have to know that things are gonna happen. There might be times when we take one step forward and two steps back. So normalizing that I think is really, really important. And then reframing it, so, what if we ask different questions instead of beating ourselves up. What if we, what if we ask different questions? And I'll go through a little bit of a framework here in just a little bit that that helps to clarify that. I wanna come back to reframing it, and there's a quote that I love. One of my absolute favorite movies is The Sound of Music. I talk about The Sound of Music in my book, I talk about how she, how, uh, Maria von Trapp creates her own confidence. Um, and I, I just love, I love the whole, I love the movie. So there's a line from the move where Maria von Trapp is meeting with the, um, the Mother Abbess, who's the, the head nun in the Abby, and, she says, every time God closes a door, he opens a window. Um, and this was when Maria von Trapp was considering leaving her, uh, her ordinance as a nun and marrying Captain von Trapp. And she was really concerned that she was gonna, miss out on this opportunity to serve God in the way as, as a nun. Um, and I just love this line, and whether or not you believe in God or are religious at all, I think just the, the, the theory around it or the, the notion of, when we feel like there's been a door closed in our face, if we can always look for that open window. And so how can we, how can we go into, uh, an opportunity or go into a new endeavor in our life with that mindset? And something that my coach tells me over and over again, and he's, he's always reminding me of this, is that everything happens for my benefit. So, that's something that I've been really mindful about, about being intentional, and looking for the benefit in something that happens to me, and I'm, and I'm not talking about toxic positivity or, you know, always look on the bright side, Pollyanna. There are, there are absolutely times when things happen that are, really bad, and I am not discounting that at all, and not saying we need to look on the bright side for everything. I'm talking really more about some of the things that are just every day, like something didn't go as planned. And we can ask ourselves, how is this happening to my benefit? And even if we can't answer that right away, even if it doesn't feel like it's happening to our benefit, how can we, how can we answer that question? So, really, that framework has just made such a huge shift in how I look at disappointment, how I move through it, and how I'm able to rebound more quickly when disappointment happens, because then I remember, yeah, it's not a setback, it's not failure, it's just data. It's just data, and it's telling me what's important. It's telling me maybe I need a course correct or do something differently. So a couple of steps that you can take when you feel this. The first one, they're all important. This is a one that a lot of us skip. Incredibly important, important. Let yourself feel it. Let yourself be human. These emotions are part of life. We all get frustrated. We all get sad, we all get disappointed. We all get confused. Don't try to talk your way out of it. Don't try to think your way out of it. Just feel it. Let it sit there. It's, it's uncomfortable, it doesn't feel good. But when we suppress it, when we try to push those emotions down, they grow. And so allowing yourself to feel it, um, whether that's taking some deep breaths, um, doing a mindfulness practice, where we really, just allow that emotion. One thing that, that coaches and therapists have, have helped me to do over the years is, you know, where do you notice this emotion in your body? So if it's disappointment, it might be in the chest or in the stomach. Can we put a hand on, over that part of our body and give it some grace? Give it some warmth. Allow that feeling to be there. Don't try to push it down. Don't try to make it go away. And then, so that's the first step, let yourself feel it, let yourself be human, because we've all been there. The next one is to name it, and I don't mean like name it to tame it, but naming the significance of this emotion for you. Remember at the beginning of the episode, I said that, when we're disappointed, it means that something, we really cared about something, so you can ask yourself, what am I making this mean? And, this could be a question that says, this means that I really cared about this project, and this is really important to me. We could also say, I'm making this mean that I'm not a good enough doctor, partner, spouse, parent, whatever that is. And because, again, we personalize a lot of these, a lot of these problems, a lot of these things that happen to us. And so if we can ask ourselves, am I meaning, am I making this mean something more than it is? It's probably not a reflection of who I am as a person. It's definitely not a reflection of who I am as a person. It's not a reflection of who I am as a professional, as a parent, as a partner, as a colleague, as a friend, all of those things. And so, really asking ourself, what meaning am I creating from this can be very helpful. And then we can reframe the question. So, a question that's not helpful is, why? Why did this happen? Why did so and so do this? Why did I do that? Those questions really aren't helpful in the moment. Instead, we can ask ourself a better question, like, what can I learn from this? Or, what's the message in here for me? How can I make this mean something? How can I use this to direct me towards something that I really align with? Maybe, maybe I'm feeling actually relief about not working on a certain project, or my kid not making the team, or whatever that looks like, just notice what's coming up for you, because that's, that's something that I've noticed as well, is something, sometimes I, I think something's gonna disappoint me, and then really doesn't. So that's always interesting. Those emotions are really helpful in that situation to know, okay, maybe it means that I need to course correct a little bit. And then another helpful question is, if my good friend, or child, or partner came to me with this situation, what would I tell them? Again, we're so hard on ourselves a lot of the times, and so loving and kind towards the people in our lives, how can we use that same voice to, calm and comfort ourselves. How can we use that same voice to address what we're feeling? So what would I tell a loved one if they were in this situation? A lot of that comes from the work of Dr. Kristen Neff and Dr. Chris Germer. They're the experts on self-compassion. I always, um, I, I look to their work a ton. If you've, if you're not familiar with their work, their, their website is self-compassion.org. I've no affiliation with them. They just have fantastic work around self-compassion, and so this reframing and asking about what would I tell a loved one in this situation comes from their work. I wanna make sure I give them credit, and also point you to that, if self-compassion is something that's, uh, a straight, a skill that you'd like to practice. So those three things have been really helpful for me. The first one, let yourself feel the emotion. The next one, try to find out what the meaning is, and what's going on, and then reframing the question. Try those, and, I would love to hear from you and see how it, how it lands for you and, and when you try it, let me know. Again, feel free to drop me an email, laura@thepurposefulmd.com. I read and respond to all my emails. It's really interesting that, when we think about disappointment, it's really growth for us, and a lot of times it feels like failure, but it's growth, and we can't grow unless we have these things happen to us. Again, there's no guarantee that things are gonna go perfectly, and we look at perfect, what we consider perfect works of art or performances, and we don't see all the mess that goes into it. We don't see all the discomfort, and because that's where growth is. Growth is uncomfortable. It's messy. It's hard work. And the people that grow the most, and the people that succeed, are really the ones that don't let failure hold them back. They show up anyway. They show up despite the discomfort. They show up despite the fear, and they look for the lesson, and reframe it, and they'll use it as fuel, and as motivation. Use it for energy. How do I let this keep me going? How do I allow this to move me in a direction that's more aligned with what I am looking for? And that's really how we become the best version of ourselves, is we're growing, and learning, and iterating all the time. So as we close, I just want you to remember that when disappointment hits, it's not happening to you, it's happening for you. It's not the end, it's the beginning. I hope this is helpful for you. I would love for you to tuck this away. Use this as a, in a journaling exercise. When disappointments come up, ask yourself, what's the lesson that might be learned here? Write it down. Sent, put a, a voice recorder, I'll do that sometimes. Um, text a friend, and, see if you can reframe what you're going through, and see what comes up for you, cause remember, those setbacks are not setbacks, they're setups. Keep going, I know you've got this. This is all becau, be, all a part of your becoming your most purposeful self. Thank you very much. We'll see you next time. While I am a physician, the information presented in this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your own healthcare provider before making any significant changes to your lifestyle or routine. By listening to this podcast, you are not creating a physician patient relationship. Thank you for listening to the Purposeful MD Podcast. If you like what you hear, please rate and review the show. Please also visit my website, www.thepurposefulmd.com for free downloads or to discuss working with me as your coach.