The Courage to Disappoint
- iona45
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
The Courage to Disappoint
Welcome to this week's Letter from the Edge of Becoming, our intimate weekly reflection, offering you a quiet pause from the noise of life and a bit of space to listen to what may be stirring within you.
Hello Friends!
Something I have been thinking about this week is how much courage it can take to disappoint someone.
That might sound strange. We usually think of courage as doing something big or difficult, in other words, taking a risk, making a bold decision, walking away from something that no longer fits.
But some forms of courage are much quieter than that. Sometimes courage is actually allowing someone to be disappointed in us without immediately trying to fix it.
I have spent a good part of my life being very attuned to other people. I can usually sense what someone needs, what they are hoping for, what will make things easier or more comfortable for them. And for a long time, I probably thought of that almost entirely as a strength. And, please don't get me wrong, it is a strength, until it begins to cost us ourselves.
I have been noticing the subtle ways we can organize our lives around avoiding other people's disappointment.
For example:
We say yes when something inside us is saying no
We soften what we really think
We stay available when we need space
We explain our choices far more than they need explaining
We may even remain in roles, relationships or versions of ourselves long after they have stopped feeling true, only because changing them would affect someone else
None of this necessarily looks dramatic from the outside. In fact, it can look like being kind, responsible, generous and dependable. Which is why it can be so difficult to recognize.
So, the question I have been sitting with this week is:
How much of what I do is genuinely mine, and how much is designed to make sure nobody is disappointed in me?
It's actually a rather uncomfortable question. Because when we begin choosing differently, people may actually be disappointed. Someone may not understand our decision, or they may wish we were still the person who always said yes.
I do understand, of course, that personal sovereignty isn't about becoming indifferent to other people's feelings, in fact, quite the opposite but we can care deeply about someone and still choose something they would not choose for us.
For example, we can be compassionate without abandoning ourselves. We can listen without automatically agreeing. We can love someone without making their expectations the compass for our life. And we can allow another person to have their feelings about our choices without making those feelings evidence that our choice was wrong.
This last one feels particularly important to me because there is a difference between causing harm and causing disappointment.
If I have hurt someone, behaved without integrity or failed to take responsibility for something that is mine, of course that deserves my attention. But what we need to remember is that someone's disappointment does not automatically mean I have done something wrong. Their disappointment may simply be the inevitable consequence of me becoming more truthful.
Crossing thresholds in life consciously and with intention is an important topic to me because I believe these are the very moments where we have the greatest opportunity to claim more of our authentic selves. And I think allowing ourselves to disappoint someone can be one of those quieter thresholds of becoming: realizing that the life that is truly ours may not be the life everyone else would choose for us.
Crossing that threshold asks somethings of us.
It asks us to trust our own knowing.
To tolerate the discomfort of being misunderstood.
To stop endlessly explaining ourselves in the hope of receiving permission.
And, most importantly, I think,
To recognize that we are not here to live a life that keeps everyone around us comfortable.
We are here to live the life that is ours.
This Week's Still Point Reflection
Ask yourself:
Where in my life am I making a choice primarily because I don't want to disappoint someone?
And then ask:
If I trusted that I could survive their disappointment (and that they could too), what might I choose?
With Love,
Iona
p.s. If something in this reflection Touches a Chord...perhaps there is a place in your own life where you are beginning to recognize how much of yourself has been shaped around the needs or expectations of others. This is one of the areas we explore in my 1:1 Transformational Coaching Immersives.
If you feel you may be standing at a significant threshold, I would be very happy to have a conversation with you. There is no obligation, simply an opportunity to explore whether working together might feel right for you.
