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Disappointment
Here is Skye. She has given into the disappointment, despair even, because of the foot abyss in her off-side front leg. Her painkiller, Bute, is not working sufficiently. Skye is a an athletic 17 hand warmblood mare. You wouldn't know it looking at her in this photo.
She has relented and is lying down, eyes closed. Horses cannot actually lie down like this for long before injuring their internal organs. Her eyes are closed. Her rear legs very straight. She looks vulnerable and ungainly. Defeated.
The English word disappointment, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, means “sadness or displeasure caused by the non-fulfillment of one’s hopes or expectations.” Skye cannot carry on as she expects to, i.e. keep standing and so she is forced to lie down. We can feel her emotion of lost expectation, hope.
We feel disappointment when the illusion of our expectations, in Skye's case to be a horse, is removed, and we are forced to face reality. For example the reality that we are not being treated fairly at work. Because of who we are - not what we can do. Sometimes, like Skye, we need to feel our bitter disappointment, face into the frustration, before we can move on effectively with transformative power.
Harnessing Disappointment
The intense feeling of disappointment can inspire us to face into the frustration. The German word, ENTTUSCHUNG, (pronounced ent-TOY-shung) is usually translated as “disappointment.” However there is a richer meaning when you examine the literal meaning of the word. Then it reads:
Ent(fernen) = RemoveTuschung = Illusion - Remove the illusion.
EQ Emotional Intelligence: Smarter Kinder
As we face into disappointment in our working lives we have the opportunity to make a profound decision, a smarter kinder decision for our own life and future. This requires a capacity to recognise our patterns of thought and also to harness our emotional agility. To become more attentive to our own values and needs at work.
At Core EQ we offer you the opportunity to spend a recuperative day meeting with, bonding and working with our horses to gain some valuable insights into your own working life and way of doing things. Your values, beliefs and unique strengths.
Recognise your patterns.
The first step, in developing emotional agility, is to notice when you have been caught by your own thoughts and feelings. There are certain signals. One is that your thinking becomes rigid and repetitive. Another is that the story your mind is telling seems like a rerun of some past experience. It is necessary to realise that you are stuck before you can initiate change.
Emotional Agility
Here is Skye once she regained her energy and agility. She is a graceful, collected powerful horse again.
Harvard psychologists Susan David and Christina Congleton speak about these rigid and repetitive patterns in their book Emotional Agility (2013). The authors explain how exercising emotional agility can encourage us to slow down and think, to pay more attention to subtle details instead of relying on quick conclusions.
We know this as mindfulness. Working with horses offers a very effective means to achieve this state of mindfulness as they encourage us to stay present in the moment with them.
The authors propose that the prevailing wisdom is that difficult thoughts and feelings have no place at work stating: "Executives, and particularly leaders, should be either stoic or cheerful; they must project confidence and damp down any negativity bubbling up inside them. But that goes against basic biology. All healthy human beings have an inner stream of thoughts and feelings that include criticism, doubt, and fear. That’s just our minds doing the job they were designed to do: trying to anticipate and solve problems and avoid potential pitfalls".
Instead they propose that ‘negative’ moods can summon a more attentive, accommodating thinking style that leads you to really examine facts in a fresh and creative way.” And that “when we’re overly cheerful, we tend to neglect important threats and dangers". Such as how we are being understood and treated at work.
It is when we are feeling uncomfortable with our feelings, that we can exercise what I call Smarter Feeling by focussing on and analysing what is actually happening for us.
Applying these emotional intelligence skills can equip us with renewed strength and resilience to carry on and face into our work challenges. And to be better equipped and alert so as not to ignore important threats and dangers to our own wellbeing.
Acknowledging our undesirable thoughts and feelings is important. Our challenge is not to get stuck, or hooked by them, like a fish caught on a line as the authors put it.
Getting Hooked
This can happen in two key ways:
Treating our thoughts like facts (It was the same in my last job…I’ve been a failure my whole career), and avoid situations that evoke them (I’m not going to take on that new challenge).
Or, usually at the encouragement of our supporters, challenge the existence of the thoughts and try to rationalise them away (I shouldn’t have thoughts like this…I know I’m not a total failure), and therefore perhaps force yourself into similar situations. Even when this goes against your core values and goals (Take on that new assignment—you’ve got to get over this).
In both cases people can pay too much attention to their internal chatter and allow it to sap their important cognitive resources that could be put to better use. For example harnessing their internal drive and energy to overcome this disappointment and understanding that disappointment can be empowering not debilitating. Smarter Kinder emotional energy.
Accept them.
Susan David and Christina Congleton propose that the opposite of control is acceptance—not acting on every thought or resigning yourself to negativity but responding to your ideas and emotions with an open attitude, paying attention to them and letting yourself experience them. They suggest a mindfulness approach where we take 10 deep breaths and notice what’s happening in the moment, suggesting that although it can bring relief it will not necessarily make us feel good. And that's OK.
Smarter Kinder
In fact the authors suggest that it can be appropriate to realise just how upset you really are. And that the important thing is to show yourself (and others) some compassion and examine the reality of the situation. What’s going on—both internally and externally?
Remove the illusion that all is going well at work. Because it may not be.
At Core EQ we call this our Smarter Kinder EQ strategy - to be smarter about your feelings and kinder in your thinking about yourself.
Act on your values: workability
If you unravel yourself from your difficult thoughts and emotions, you expand your choices. You can decide to act in a way that aligns with your values. David and Cogelan encourage us to focus on the concept of workability.
Some of the questions we can ask ourselves include:
Is your response going to serve you and your organisation in the long term as well as the short term?
Will it help you steer others in a direction that furthers your collective purpose?
Are you taking a step toward being the leader you most want to be and living the life you most want to live?
The Equine (EQ) Link
When I was overcoming my disappointment about my stymied efforts to introduce Legal Working Culture to the legal profession I found my purpose and meaning in life again when I started to work with horses.
I learnt about myself through my interactions and experiences with them. This was a slow and steady build up to the present situation where I ride my dressage horse and also design and deliver Equine Experiential Education Programs and coaching in Life Crafting, Role Sculpting, Leaderwork, Team Building and EQ Smarter Kinder skills.
Equine Experiential Education programs can significantly assist people to draw on their unique strengths and attributes. And enhance their acceptance and enjoyment of their life and their unique potential. Particularly in regard to their working life.
3 March 2024
Dr Deborah Hann
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