fear

During the mid-1990s while I was practicing teaching the Inward Outlook in my coaching private practice as well as in my professional life as a public speaker, trainer, and consultant, I was also interning as a psychology doctoral candidate. In the clinic where I worked, my colleagues and I partnered in pairs, co-leading fifteen schizophrenic patients five hours each day, three to five days a week.

Disappointment is, literally, failing to keep an appointment. Which is why I think it hurts a little more than the other bumps and bruises of life.

When you feel disappointed, you are feeling deprived of something you thought was already in motion. If you’re feeling like you have an “appointment” with a promotion or a successful presentation or a new love, having that thing not work out is especially crushing because it was kind of a done deal inside your mind.

(Mark Twain...looking worried)

This week’s reality check - or, as I like to call it, “whack upside the head with the Frozen Fish of Reality” (Google Monty Python's Fish Slapping Dance for the reference and have a good laugh)comes courtesy of the great American humorist and writer, Mark Twain.