Disappointment
As a human being, who has never been disappointed? Most likely all readers here have felt disappointed. Actually, what triggers feelings of disappointment in us? According to Adjie Santosoputro, a mindfulness practitioner, feelings of disappointment can arise because of our expectations/hopes/thoughts on other people or something. It is undeniable, as social humans, we have a tendency to expect others to be kind to us. However, in reality, what other people will do or say to us is beyond our control.
The feeling of disappointment that arises is actually relative. One incident can be neutral for us. However, when the incident happened to someone else, it was possible for him to feel disappointed afterwards. The level of disappointment felt by each person is different because what actually brings up disappointment is our thoughts, not the incident or other people.
The illustration is this: there is one person, we will call it Mawar, doing the same thing to A and B. These two people, namely A and B, could have responded to the action very differently. It could be that for A, the action was neutral, but the action turned out to be offensive to B. Why is that so? Because A and B have different past experiences. That's how hurt and disappointment can come to our mind. Maybe B had never accepted this action before, so the first experience he felt made him disappointed in Mawar, while A had experienced it many times, so A felt that Mawar's actions had no impact on him.
Therefore, give control over our thoughts and feelings to ourselves. Don't let your control rest with someone else. To be able to heal from our feelings of disappointment and hurt, we need to make peace with ourselves. In order to be at peace with ourselves, let us realize our thoughts as a whole (be mindful). Put some distance in your mind and give yourself complete control.
Some of us have a tendency to categorize things into black and white, aka right and wrong. One concrete example is when we feel we made the wrong decision. Our tendency is to focus too much on the error. In the idealism of our minds, the words 'I should have made another decision, if only I didn't choose this' keep running around in our head. In fact, regret it will not make our condition for the better. Instead of dwelling on the unplayable past, we can focus on the action for the present.
The past no longer exists today. The past exists only in the mind. The reason most people find it difficult to move on from the past is because they enjoy too much memory or memories of the past, which as a result is difficult for them to recover. We need to tell our minds that emotional past stories are not something we need to dwell on constantly. Be careful, the biggest impact of dwelling too much on the past is: we do not live 'today' to the fullest. Then, the moment of 'today' that will become the past also does not help us make peace with the situation and ourselves.
To be at peace with ourselves, we need to recover from the wounds of the past. In order to recover, we need to learn not to recall painful events in the past. Indeed, it is impossible for us to ask our minds not to remember something because the human brain is designed to have a self-defense mechanism. If our brains didn't have this mechanism, we would be harming ourselves. For example, when we accidentally step on a banana peel and slip, our brain will remember this incident and keep us from stepping on the banana peel again which will make us slip in the future.
Bitter moments that are sometimes remembered in our minds do not mean they are not good. However, what we need to realize, when that bitter moment arises, it would be nice if we are fully aware that thoughts are memories, not reality.