The Art of Disappointing
Posted by Jacinta Hin on July 7, 2009
Tweeting on Twitter.com I came across this quote by the fabulous Cheryl Richardson:
You cannot live an authentic life without mastering the art of disappointing people (with grace & love).
I shared this little gem of wisdom with a client and a friend. Both are dealing with conflicted feelings about how people around them are reacting (negatively) to the new choices they’re making in their lives.
E.g. fear that someone would be angry with them, the pain felt from hurting someone and so on.
When people take steps to become more authentic this often goes hand in hand with a renewed sense of integrity. And, not yet firmly grounded in their new selves, they’re often extra sensitive to both internal and external stimuli.
Ideally our environment would applaud and support the changes we make; However in reality not everybody is rooting for us. Some feel threatened, some profoundly disagree, others might even believe we are doomed to fail.
If we allow worries about how others see us go unchecked, we might end up running back to our old unauthentic selves or in some cases we’d be stuck in limbo with one foot in the old world and the other in our new authentic way of being.
But when we realize, as Cheryl Richardson says, that sometimes disappointing others is a natural and inevitable part of the change process, we can learn to accept it, and therefore continue on our path towards authenticity.
It’s better if we can do it with “with grace and love”. That means fully acknowledging the hurt, anger and disappointment of others. And so there’s no need for us to be caught up in a self-justification that sees us becoming angry, disappointed or hurt with those very same people.
Both my client and friend found encouragement in Cheryl’s words.
Once again I learned that when we set out to become who we want to be (in other words, who we really are) we also need new wisdom, new truths and new mantras to help us stay firmly grounded yet also unstoppable in our life journey.
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Rather interesting. Has few times re-read for this purpose to remember. Thanks for interesting article. Waiting for trackback
Thanks. Will put the trackback in place soon!