I don’t know about you, but I am do not handle disappointment well. I’m not talking about a normal what-a-bummer reaction. I get downright depressed, and depending on the circumstances, can get pretty enraged when someone doesn’t follow through on their promises.  I continually try to find better ways to set expectations, because that rollercoaster ride I go on when I put my faith in other people is probably not a good ride to spend my money on.

A friend of mine has told me on more than one occasion that I put too much faith in people – I sort of thought of that as a nice characteristic – I assume people will do the right thing rather than cynically assume they will do just the opposite of what is expected.  But over time I’ve seen her foretell quite a few disappointments – events that probably wouldn’t have been quite so upsetting if I hadn’t been so rosy about it in the first place.  Her point has always been that I tend to put some people on a pedestal when I first meet them – that person is amazing, wonderful, so smart, so talented…etc – so that when they turn out to also be the type who does dumb things, I feel like an idiot.   I’m not sure what the solution is:  I don’t want to start assuming everyone is going to do dumb things and then be pleasantly surprised if they don’t. 

The quandary is this: How can you make decisions in life – take a new job, start dating a new person, or anything like that -  if you assume the new people are going to be just like the old people?  You would never change anything if you assumed that change would result in future disappointment as you slowly recognized  you just switched out the faces.  Then there’s the question of repeating mistakes – am I drawn to the same types of personalities and places?  Am I just reaping the same result because I’m making the same bad judgments?  I guess that is part of life – learning what your patterns are and trying to break them.  I can’t seem to shake this practice of giving people a lot of benefit of the doubt – but I also can’t seem to stop walking into repeat performances.

I certainly understand that disappointment is a part of life – and I truly believe that how you handle disappointment says a lot about your character (are you a: oh well, let’s try something else and move on kind of person, or are you a: bad things always happen to me what’s the point kind of person?), but I also believe that I set myself up for it by focusing too much of my energy on what other people do.  If I didn’t expect so much, I wouldn’t have to feel bamboozled.

Frankly I should avoid all people when I’m in grouchy-bear mood. I will inevitably say or do something that I’ll later think about and regret. One of my challenges is that I have pretty bad allergies, and if the air is really terrible I get these killer head aches. There is no cure for it, so I just have to grin and bear it until the air clears. Occasionally my breathing gets bad enough that I have to use an inhaler, but that just makes me feel like tearing off someone’s head, so I don’t do it unless I realize I’m not getting enough oxygen – usually the sign is constant ‘sighing’ that my roommate comments on.

I really think addicts handle illness poorly. As it is, we don’t like to feel bad, so being sick just multiples the effect.

I suspect I”m not alone here – are you a big baby when you are feeling under the weather?

You know the feeling when you just don’t want to do something a new way? It’s like you hit a wall of resistance so tall and so wide it hurts just trying to knock it down. It’s funny that tonight on American Idol Adam sang a great Sam Cook song, and I really heard that line, “change is gonna come…”

Change is inevitable. The only thing we can do is decide how we are going to handle it.  A few years ago I noticed I was more resistant to learning new things – this was the same time I was guardian to my aunt who had Alzheimer’s.  I recognized then that if I didn’t exercise my brain’s ability to take on new information I would be on the fast track to this devastating disease. My mother has it too.

One of the ways you fight this kind of brain degeneration is to use your brain, and the best way to use it is to push through that resistance to change and to new information. After a while, the resistance disappears and you discover you can indeed change!  Now I have this rule – if I feel resistance I do it anyway.

Face it. Some people are black holes of negativity. Debbie Downers. When you can, avoid those people who manage to find the dark clouds and gravitate toward the people who find the silver lining. Being around positive people naturally makes you more positive.

I remember a sponsor once said to me what I’ve now come to know is a famous quote, “People don’t do things to people. People just do things.”  At first I didn’t really get it – sure people do things to people. People hit other people. People even kill other people!  But then it quickly dawned on me. She was talking about the quotidian things that happen minute by minute and day by day that as an alcoholic, I tend to take personally.

It reminds me of another somewhat well-known story of a man who would buy his paper every day from a very surly vendor. He would smile and greet the vendor in a pleasant way, but the vendor always scowled and grumbled. A friend witnessed this a few times, and finally asked, “Why are you so nice to that man when he is so rude to you?” And the man replied, “I’m not going to let other people control my behavior.”

An extraordinary lesson comes in that little anecdote.