Turning Disappointment Into A New Direction

Bad news hits harder when you were already running on empty, and sometimes it doesn’t just ruin your day, it rewrites your direction. We’re talking about what happens when you’re expecting a big win, you’ve been holding your breath for the confirmation, and then you learn it’s delayed or may not happen at all. That moment can crack you open, especially when you’re the kind of person who keeps emotions private until they spill out anyway. 

We get honest about overwhelm, the need for real rest, and why weekends at home can be a mental health reset instead of a guilty pleasure. From there, we walk through the emotional anatomy of disappointment: feeling the sadness, naming the frustration, and letting it out instead of stuffing it down. Then comes the part that changes everything, stepping back and asking what the bigger picture might be. Maybe the closed door is protection. Maybe the detour is the point. Maybe the path you built out of “should” is not the path you actually want. 

We also talk about how other people can react in toxic ways that fuel paranoia or anger, and why staying grounded requires choosing your own interpretation before the noise takes over. If you’re navigating a career pivot, delayed goals, rejection, or an unexpected turn, this is a reminder that you can grieve and still move forward. Subscribe to Still Roses Podcast, share this with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a review with the biggest pivot you’ve survived.

Transcript

Welcome And Weekend Reset

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Hello, everybody. This is Still Roses Podcast. This podcast was created for women by women to elevate women's voices. I hope everyone had a really amazing week. I am so excited for the weekend. I cannot even contain myself. And when I tell you why I'm excited for the weekend, you're gonna be like, what are you talking about? For the last three weekends in a row, our family has been out of the house on Saturday and Sunday. I never have thought of myself as a homebody before, but I don't know that, and I still don't think I would classify myself as a homebody, but I have a deep appreciation for being in my home on the weekends and not being obligated to have to go to different things and be all over New Jersey and wherever the tri-state area. It is really, it gets very uh overwhelming for me when we are out of the house on the weekends. Now, you don't know about everybody else, but on our weekends, I typically am home and you know, Saturday is my day of rest, right? That I'm resetting and going technology and work free. But then like I get to still do like cooking and shopping on Sunday and, you know, like prepping for the week and everything. And when we're out every single weekend, none of that happens. And now it's been three weeks in a row where we were not home and we had plans out, and I can feel it. I can feel the drain. So I am excited for the weekend because today we have no plans and I will be home all weekend. I wanted to share something with all of you that happened to me. I needed a minute to really think about how to present this to you guys, especially because I'd like to present it to you without crying. Because you know how I do that sometimes. My eyes leak. I cannot help it. Actually, I can help it. I choose not to help it. I actually choose to let my eyes leak now because it's important to let the emotions out. We hold in way too much, and I think that might be why we age so much quicker than men. Have you noticed women's cortisol levels? Well, have you not gonna notice women's cortisol levels, but women, you know, there's all these anti-aging, anti-things, extra wrinkles and all this stuff. And it's marketed that way because society puts all this pressure on us, right? But if you really look at the biology of the situation, and I'm not gonna, this is not the episode I want to talk about this, but if you look at the biology of women, there's a reason why we age the way we do. Now, pulling us back in. Anyway, so I had this situation where I was expecting some really, really great news. And I was really excited about it. Like beyond, beyond excited about it. And so I'm expecting this really great news, been expecting it for a while, and then I found out this great news is not happening. It's just not happening. It's delayed with the hint of it might not actually happen for a while. And, you know, it's very hard in those situations to to react. For me personally, like I don't like to, I'm not an emotional person by nature to like outwardly showing people. I do actually, you know, prefer to keep a lot of that kind of stuff private, right? So when you're just faced with disappointment, it is hard sometimes because you have to react in the moment. So how do you react? And this is where I think you can either take one of two paths. Now, the way that over the past few years I've started to view things as there is a reason behind certain things, there's a reason why things happen. I do truly, truly believe that there is a reason. There is a path. And so for me, over the past few years, the way that I've been conceptualizing change and not things not going the way I exactly wanted them to was to take a step back and say, well, let me look at the bigger picture here. Perhaps I'm being pointed in a different direction. So instead of feeling immense disappointment, instead of being depressed, instead of having a my life is crap, woe is me, nothing works out for me, I'm stuck, I'm upset, I hate it, I hate my life. Instead of going down that path when you're disappointed with something, when something does not work out the way you think it was going to, what I encourage you to do is take a step back. Now, I do want to be transparent here. The news I I am very upset about the news that I got and not devastated, but I'm upset. I really am. And I'm still upset about it. It's taking me a little while to just kind of adjust to it. But nevertheless, the immediate thought that I had in my head when I got this news was my God, I'm being pointed in a different direction. Now, this is both exciting to me and also a little bit scary because the direction that I've been going down for my whole entire life was this is the should, I should be doing it this way. And the direction that I think I'm being pivoted to is the what I want to do, which is actually really exciting for me. So when you're faced with faced with something that you weren't expecting, when you're pushed into a direction that you didn't want to go in, or you're like, that's not for me, that's not what I wanted. I wanted path A, but now I'm being pushed to path B, or I don't even see path B, but I'm not getting path A at all. It is frustrating. And you can let yourself feel that emotion. I'm still sad. And you can let yourself feel the sadness. You can let yourself feel the frustration. You can let all of that happen. You do have to let that happen. You have to let that out. That's important. It's key. It's critical to just let it out. But what you do next is mo is really critical. And the next steps for you when you're faced with disappointment, when you're faced with something that you weren't expecting, is to take that step back and say, well, wow, I I must, I must be pointed in this different direction. Or there may be a reason for this. Everyone has heard that phrase when God closes the door, he opens a window. You don't have to think about that in the sense of God. If you're not a religious person, totally fine. Neither am I. I would qualify as a more spiritual person. When the universe opens a door, you know, close the door, they open a window. Like there's so many paths to this. So what I encourage you to do is to listen to your gut and keep an open mind. My immediate reaction when I got this bad news was, well, this wasn't meant for me. And then I'm gonna be honest, I think the sadness for this wasn't meant for me was not so much sadness. Well, it is a combination, it's a sadness of not getting the acknowledgement I thought I was gonna get. But then it's also a sadness for acknowledging the sign and aligning with the fact that I know that I have to step away from this path that I've tried to build my whole life. And I'm having this realization live with you while I'm recording. Bear with me because I'm as I'm saying it out loud, I'm I'm having this moment as I build it out loud with you. It's not just a sadness over the loss of something that I thought I was going to achieve. It's the sadness for something that I have basically worked my whole life for. And I have to, I have to let it go. It's interesting. It's also interesting that I get to work this out live with you guys on the fo on the recording on the podcast. I encourage you guys really, as I said a few minutes ago, take that step back and really look at the bigger, bigger picture. As you're living your life, there are moments where you are pointed in different directions where you weren't anticipating to go. And I think it's important to acknowledge that there's probably a part of you in your soul that knew you were being pointed in a better direction, or maybe acknowledge, like, hey, you know, maybe this is the right path. But sometimes you water it down with bad feelings and bad emotions and getting paranoid and getting upset and letting other people, you know, feed into you. When I shared the bad news with a couple of folks, their initial reactions were real toxic. I was the one who was like, well, I'm not actually looking at it like that. And they were like, oh, all right, and kind of went the other direction. So you do have to be mindful of that too. It's just an interesting thing to go through and observe in the way that I have been. Really, really interesting. I'll keep you all updated. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. I just wanted to share that personal story with you just because it was something that was a little difficult for me, still difficult for me, and I'm obviously still working through it. So um, thank you all for being here with me today. I really greatly appreciate all of you. I hope you all have a really, really wonderful weekend, and I will catch you on the next one. Take care.