With all that has happened the last few years, I often talk with people who are disillusioned. Disillusionment comes when what we are doing has not worked as we expected. When we try to do things, we expect to succeed or at least to somewhat accomplish the task at hand. When we find that we are consistently getting poor results, we are forced to stop and re-evaluate.
For example, when a sales person calls on clients, they expect to close a certain amount of their sales. If their expectation is vastly different from their results, they begin to ask what is going wrong. When they consistently find that they are not getting the expected results, they have a series of choices: (1) they can avoid the inquiry by blaming someone or something. “ It’s the recession. It’s the companies fault. It’s the wrong time of year. “ Or (2) they can look deeper into the problem. As we look deeper we begin to ask different questions: “ What is really going on here? Are my expectations realistic? Do I need to change things I have been unwilling to consider? Do I need to approach this problem differently than I have been traditionally willing to do?” Often we embark on this more in-depth inquiry without a great deal of difficulty. We find our answers and go on with life. Sometimes what we try still does not work. At this point we may move to a level of disillusionment. “Am I at the right job? Will I ever be able to figure this out?“ Disillusionment is painful, but it can also be helpful. Its purpose is to cause us to go beyond what we would ever have considered. Disillusionment calls for real out of the box thinking.
When we are willing to sit in the discomfort, we often find a road that eventually enables us to re-invent our life, our work life, our relationships or whatever we have become disillusioned about. So the next time you feel disillusioned take a moment to reflect. Do you need to move on or do you need to find a new way forward? Do you need to change your situation or do you need to change your approach to the situation?