We can think of disappointment as the cousin of courage. To be courageous, we have to put aside fear and move forward. If you are an innovative thinker and willing to put your ideas out there, you will for sure encounter disappointment.

Lunchtime ideas/complaints are not a way of putting it out there. To complain about the management with your coworkers, brining even more apathy and possibly resentment into the workplace, is a way to hide, fail to engage, and produces nothing.

The last time I went to Washington, DC, while waiting in the senator’s office a fellow advocate and two-time Paralympian, openly shared my thoughts; moments before entering the meeting, to clear our heads and be as sharp as possible, we framed the situation as if it were an opportunity to compete against a far superior opponent. We understood we were probably out of our league, but how else are we going to sharpen our skills? It was ok with us that we most likely would get pummeled.  We figured, we made it to DC, to this office, prepared—bring it.

Disappointment and expectation go together. The higher your expectations, the more likely you will be disappointed if you don’t see the results for which you’d hoped.

The beauty of disappointment may be that, with our heightened emotions, we have the opportunity to focus on what failed. The causes of failure are as important as the reasons for success.

We have a choice (we always have a choice), we can let disappointments linger about, negatively affecting our feelings of self worth, destroying our ambition, or sharpen our focus to investigate the failure. That is how we learn and grow.

Remember, successful people fail far more than unsuccessful people.