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Not everything at work goes your way. Sometimes the thing that goes wrong is minor. And sometimes it genuinely stings — you did not land the account, you got passed over for a project, the feedback was harder than you expected, or you lost an opportunity you really wanted. When that kind of disappointment lands, one of two things happens next: it passes, or it spirals. This episode is about the difference between those two things, and why that difference is largely in your hands.

I start by calling out the advice that sounds helpful and is not: look on the bright side, everything happens for a reason, there is a lesson in every experience. None of that is useful in the first day or two after something genuinely disappointing happens. It is toxic positivity, and it bypasses the feeling entirely. This episode opens instead with full, unconditional permission to feel disappointed. You are allowed to be upset. You are allowed to feel this is hard. The goal is not to feel better faster. The goal is to feel it, learn from it, and not let it spiral.

I ground the episode in Marty Seligman's research on explanatory style from Learned Optimism, which found that people who spiral after setbacks tend to treat them as permanent, pervasive, and personal. Those three Ps are the spiral's signature. The spiral is not just feeling bad — it is a self-referential loop where disappointment generates stories that generate more disappointment. When you know what to look for, you can catch it before it takes over.

I share a personal story: a keynote opportunity I was genuinely in the running for and did not get. I walk through what the spiral almost looked like, how I caught the wobble before it turned into a full spiral, and what happened when I worked the OWN framework instead. What I discovered in the W step — What is it telling you? — was that I am ready to travel more for my speaking work. From a painful disappointment came a specific list of cities I now actively want to bring my work to. That is what happens when you mine the feeling for data instead of drowning in it.

The OWN framework has three steps. Own the feeling: fully, without minimizing or rushing. Give it the space it deserves and say it out loud — that naming is what puts a container on it. What is it telling you: disappointment is data about what you cared about, what you expected, and where the gap is. Navigate forward: consciously choose your next move rather than letting the disappointment choose for you. Episode 287 — Stop Believing Everything You Think at Work — is a companion to this one. It is explicitly referenced in this episode and linked below.

Listen and catch the full episode here or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also watch it on my YouTube channel, JanelAndersonPhD.

LINKS RELATED TO THIS EPISODE:

Episode 287 — Stop Believing Everything You Think at Work — Janel references this episode directly. The Story Audit is a companion tool for when the spiral starts generating stories about what the disappointment means.

When was the last time that something at work didn't go your way? Not just an inconvenience, not a minor thing, but something that genuinely stung, like you didn't land the account, you got passed over for a key project. You didn't get the promotion, or you got negative feedback that you weren't expecting. Well, what happened next?

For most people, that disappointment registers, and then one of two things happens: either the disappointment passes, or it spirals. This episode is about the difference between those two things and why that difference is largely in your hands. Now, I want to start by calling out advice that just doesn't work. Look on the bright side.

Everything happens for a reason. There is a lesson in every experience. You may have heard some of those things, and I say them a little Pollyanna-ish, but none of that is useful in the first day or two after something really disappointing happens. That advice smacks of toxic positivity, and it masks your disappointment, and it doesn't give you permission to feel the actual feeling of disappointment.

In short, it's terrible advice after disappointment lands, and I want you to just reject it out of hand. It is not good advice. Instead, we need to let the disappointment land. We need to fully experience it.

That's how we metabolize it, and that helps it move through us so that it doesn't eat us alive. So today, I'm giving you full unconditional permission to feel disappointed. You are allowed to be upset. You are allowed to think this is hard.

The goal is not to feel better faster. The goal is to feel it, learn from it, and not have it become a spiral. And there is a meaningful difference between learning from it and letting it go and having it spiral. Now, disappointment hurts; it absolutely does.

Why does it hurt? Why does disappointment hurt so much? Well, there's a gap between what you wanted and what you got, and when we allow ourselves to want to truly desire something, we make ourselves vulnerable because sometimes we don't get what we want, and that gap hurts. So we let ourselves get hurt.

We let ourselves be vulnerable, which is ultimately a good thing. We need to be vulnerable. We let ourselves desire something, which is also a good thing because desire fuels our motivation. And if you weren't aware of that, let me let let me let that land.

Desire fuels your motivation, and watch for an upcoming episode on that because I want to go deeper on that with you because it is so important in terms of getting what you want and creating the conditions for you to get what you want. But I digress for just a moment. Now let's go back to this idea of disappointment and letting it move through you, metabolizing it, learning from it, letting it move through you versus spiraling. So let's look at what spiraling actually is.

So a spiral is not just feeling bad; it has a specific quality. It's self-referential and it loops. Now let me put a specific example to it. Let's say I was in the running for a specific keynote that I really wanted, and in fact, I'll tell you a story about that in a minute because I'm going to give you an actual example.

But if I was in the running for the keynote that I really wanted and I didn't get it, I didn't get the keynote becomes this always happens to me because I'm clearly not good enough for that opportunity. And what's the point of even putting myself out there? Right. Note what's happening.

I'm creating stories around something as simple as I didn't get the keynote. I'm making myself not good enough. I'm saying what's the point of even trying anymore, and so on. And that's what leads to what we're talking about as a spiral.

Now, Marty Siegelman, who is the founder of the field of positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, his research on explanatory style or learned optimism really plays into this. He found that people who spiral after a setback tend to treat it as permanent, like this will always happen to me. They also treat it as pervasive, so everything is attached and and affected by this. And then they treat it as personal.

This proves I'm not good enough. Okay, so we'll come back to those things because this spiral is driven by those three assumptions, and we we're going to learn how to challenge those assumptions. The 3p's: permanent, pervasive, and personal. Okay, and again, that's referred to as learned optimism by Martin or Marty, as he's known by his colleagues, Marty Siegelman at the University of Pennsylvania, father of positive psychology.

Now, again, I want to ground this in my own experience so that you can see what it feels like to try this on and to to take this on as a different way of experiencing disappointment, so that it doesn't spiral. This is a story about me catching myself where I could have tipped easily into spiral, and it was a keynote that I didn't get. So I'm in the running for keynotes a lot of times that I don't get. You can't win them all, but of course, if you don't, you know, you don't take, you don't get any of the shots that you don't take.

Okay, but so putting myself out there, and I, it was an accounting association, and I've spoken to CPA at CPA management conferences multiple times in multiple states. Here in Minnesota, they hire me every so often to speak at their conference and to do some other work for them. And my name gets passed around amongst the CPA community. So, and I'm really good with technical audiences like accountants, engineers, technologists because I explain what's going on on the from a neuroscience standpoint, and oftentimes when technical people hear the explanation for what's going on underneath human behavior, it makes them listen differently, and it puts their analytical mind to work, and they see and understand it differently.

So again, that's a little bit of an aside, but part of why I'm really good with technical audiences like accountants, doctors, engineers, technologists, and so forth. So I'm not going to say which state it was because, for obvious reasons, I don't want to run the risk of not getting that in the future. Maybe they'll choose me next year or the year after. Okay.

So, but let me tell you a little bit about the situation. Okay. So the specific opportunity was I they were looking for a keynote speaker to kick off their conference, and my name was in the running, and I didn't get it. Okay, so let me tell you about what that spiral almost started to feel like, and when I started to feel the wobble that was going to lead to a spiral, and what I did differently.

Okay, now if I didn't interject on my own behalf inside my own head, that situation was going to eat me alive. It was definitely going to spiral, and I think it's kind of interesting to think about the wobble that happens before the spiral, because you can catch yourself in that wobble state, and that's what this is about. Okay, and let me give you a few more details. So the person who did get the keynote is somebody that I see at National Speakers Association events once or twice a year.

It's not somebody that I'm particularly close with, but I know this person, you know, tangentially. And if you're wondering how I knew who got the keynote, well, I got the very polite email from the conference planner saying that they had gone in a different direction, selected somebody else, and you know they'd keep me in mind for the following Year, okay. Well, the conference agenda gets published on their website, and so not right away, but I'm sure after all the contracts were signed and all of the all of the details were handled in the background, eventually this person's name went up on their website, and so I knew who the person was. Okay, so again, and this is somebody that I generally cross paths with once or twice a year at National Speakers Association events, and there was some contrast going on in my head.

In my humble opinion, I do believe that I am a better speaker than she is, and I'm not exactly and entirely sure why I believe that to be true, I have not sat in her audience, so this there's a little bit of unfoundedness that goes on when you're headed towards a spiral because your brain is making up stories, and so there is some contrast between this is what spiraling would have looked like and what was going on in my own head. Okay, so I used my own framework that I'm about to tell you, and and and said I said my own framework, and it is my own, okay, because it's mine, but it's also O W N, so it is is my own, and it spells the acronym OWN because we want to own our disappointment, we want to fully metabolize our disappointment because we don't want that metabolism that unmetabolized disappointment to eat us alive because that is what's happening when we spiral. Okay, so I'm going to show you what these three steps of the own process look like in my own work, suffering the disappointment and the setback of not getting a keynote that I really wanted. Okay, so again, the framework is called own because you need to own your own disappointment.

I need to own my own disappointment. It doesn't own you. It doesn't own me. Three steps to avoid yourself.

To avoid yourself from having it eat you alive. Okay. Step number one is the acronym itself, but own own the feeling. Feel it fully.

Don't minimize it. Don't rush past it. There is no toxic positivity that is going to clear it out any faster. There is, you know, don't fast forward to a silver lining.

Say it out loud if you need to. This is disappointing. This hurts. This stings.

I feel bad. I'm sad. I'm mad. This is hard.

Whatever the feelings are that you're having, say them out loud. Give them the space they deserve. And this also, when you name it like this, it also labels it. It puts a container on it, and the feeling is real.

Now it's and it doesn't have to be your whole life. Okay. Now I owned my disappointment over not getting the keynote. I acknowledged it, and it was like me saying, Hey, disappointment!

There you are. I've been expecting you because I just got some bad news. Now, when I own it and when I feel the fully the feelings fully, I'm a verbal processor. So I will call another speaker friend.

I have many speaker friends. I share an office with a speaker friend, but I also have many speaker friends all around the country and around the greater Twin Cities area who do the same work that I do. And so they're going to get it. They're going to understand it.

So I can talk it through with one of them, like, Hey, I didn't get this, and I really, I'm really feeling the sting of disappointment right now. And they're going to understand that. They're going to understand that vulnerability of pitching yourself for some work and not getting that work. I also have a couple of friends who do a lot of consulting.

They're also pitching themselves and sometimes not getting the work. And so again, I've got a community of people who I can verbally process to if that's what I need. I also like to verbally process by writing things down, and it's not always a dear diary entry. Sometimes it's just a you know angry list of bullet points of things I'm mad about of why I didn't get that opportunity.

In the case of like not getting a keynote, now this is not wallowing when you do this. Wallowing is what happens when you skip right to the story, the story of you know I'm no good or they chose the wrong person that sort of thing. Owning the feeling means staying with the actual feeling, staying with the disappointment long enough to know what it is, to recognize it, and to examine it. It's almost like you know, it's like you're spitting it out, like the you know, like it's in your mouth, and you're spitting it out by saying the words to somebody else, or writing them down, or even literally speaking it out loud to yourself, because then you're labeling it, and you know what it is, and you're saying this is disappointment, and disappointment sucks.

It frankly, it absolutely sucks, and it's okay to feel sucky about it for a while. Okay, so we want to label it because then we're looking at it. We're not looking past it, we're absolutely acknowledging what it is, and we're not letting the spiraling add its own commentary. We're not letting the disappointment take on a life of its own.

Again, that's where it starts to feel a little wobbly. That's where the spiral is about to kick in. Okay, so the first part of the own framework is to own the feeling. The second part that starts with a W because it's going to spell O W N is what is that disappointment telling you?

So disappointment is data. Your emotional response to things, whether it's disappointment or something else, is data. But as for disappointment, it tells you what you care about, tells you what you expected, and it tells you where the gap is between what you wanted or you know hoped for and what actually happened. So there is a gap there, and that's useful information.

So what did you want, and why does it even matter? What was your what was your expectation, and was that realistic? So was this inside or outside of your control? Now you don't have to answer all of these all at once, but starting to ask this these questions, like what is the disappointment telling me, that is how you are using discernment to extract the signals from the feeling rather than drowning in the feeling.

Now you might not be doing this right away. I mean, you can be mad, sad, all the things, feel all the feels for a day, two days, however long it takes. Maybe it's a week, but then you really do need to start doing some more of that analytical looking at the data and mining the data, mining the disappointment, or again, whatever emotion it is for the the the experience of what's underneath that, so you know why you're feeling disappointment and what you really wanted to have happen, and you know do that analytical thinking. Okay, so let's take a look at my disappointment for not getting the keynote.

So what was my disappointment telling me? Well, one of the things it was telling me was that I really do want to work in other markets? You see, for the last 15, 1617, years, I have had a very local business. I have done a lot of work in the greater Twin Cities area and across Minnesota and really the Upper Midwest.

I've kept my business more or less contained to that area because I had small children. Well, guess what? My small children are now in their late teens, and they will be graduating high school and moving on to finish up their lives. So, or not finish up their lives, but move on to the next chapter of their lives.

And so, I have some some specific ties to that particular city that that keynote was in for that state association, which will remain nameless. And so I was disappointed also to not go to that city, but again, this was all awakening in me a realization that I'm at a place in my business where I absolutely can travel more, and that I absolutely want to. And so that realization just like again, it was mining this disappointment for the data that was underneath it because it's like, yeah, there's a lot of times I don't get the keynote. I go up against some big names in my field.

I go up some people up against people who are different price points. There's all kinds of reasons for not getting the the gig or getting the speaking engagement. But this one, you know, stung particularly hard, so that's why I was really looking at underneath it, and I saw, oh, I'm ready to travel more. I'm ready to speak in other cities, get on airplanes more.

I can spend more nights away from home than I could when my kids were little. Now, another thing to do to get at what it's telling you is to watch for Marty Siegelman's 3p's here. Again, is your brain treating this as permanent, like I'll never get another shot at this again? Is it treating it as pervasive?

Everything about my whole career is wrong. Nothing's ever going to work out for me. Or is it landing as particularly personal? This is proof that I'll never be good enough.

I'm not good enough now. I'll probably never be good enough. Those 3p's-permanent, pervasive, and personal-signal that you are starting to spiral because whatever those 3p's are, whatever statements you're saying inside your head, those are not facts. Those are absolutely not facts.

Those are stories you're telling yourself. And if again, if you're a listener to the podcast, you're going to want. You've probably already heard the one. Don't believe everything you think at work.

We'll link that one up in the show notes because it's very germane to this episode. Okay, so now let's get to the N. Navigate forward, and in navigate forward, O W N. Remember, O was own the feeling, and W was what's it telling you?

And now we move on to N. Navigate forward. So now you get to choose what happens next, and it's not just like be positive. Okay, that's toxic positivity.

So is just get over it. Okay. Instead, we want to leave that toxic positivity behind, and instead, just simply ask yourself: Now that I know this, what's my next move? Because the spiral happens when you hand your next move over to your feelings.

I didn't get this turns into I should just stop trying. I'll never get anything. Okay, without you consciously deciding anything. Okay, navigate doesn't mean move fast.

It means move with intention. So maybe the next step is to give yourself 24 hours to be sad, be frustrated, or do some journaling or some processing or whatever, so that you can indeed come up with what it's telling you. Maybe you need longer than that. Okay, it's up to you.

But navigating means doing something intentionally, and you can wallow intentionally. I mean, maybe it's not wallowing if you're going to decide to like I'm going to be with my disappointment, my sadness, my anger, my frustration, all the things for the next three days, so the next 72 hours, I get to be all kinds of pissy and hurt about this. Okay, that would be intentional, and that would be also a productive step towards navigating. You're putting some time boundaries on it, and and then after those 72 hours, now you actually need to think about what positive steps am I going to take?

How am I going to learn from this? And again, positive steps doesn't mean putting on a big smile, and it's not sunshine, and you know, it's not about sunshine and unicorns. It's about what am I going to proactively do? Okay, whatever it is, it's yours to choose, and it absolutely is your choice.

So again, decide how much time you want to spend in the disappointment. Is it a day, three days, a week? Now, for something like not getting a keynote for me, even if it's one I really wanted, a few days is more than enough. Like two is probably my tops.

Okay, and if you've got something bigger going on, like you got laid off or something really tragic happened in your type in your life, absolutely more time is in order, right? But you don't stay there forever. So for me, not getting the keynote, two days tops in this particular case. I gave myself two days to, you know, do a little bit of indulgent wallowing and being sad, mad, upset, telling my friends about it, that sort of thing, and then it was now time to do the work of navigating what I wanted to do next.

So what I did is I realizing that I wanted to travel more, and I'm ready in my life to travel more. I made a list of six cities that I want to get work in. Now, particular city that I wanted this, that the keynote was in, is not one of these six cities, and that's I think an important detail here because it led me to the six cities that I do want to get more work in. Even though I did have a a particular personal tie to the city where that conference was going to be, that I didn't get the work, it made me realize, like, okay, it's not about going to that city.

It's about going to cities where I do have maybe even more personal ties. So I made a list of several cities that I want to get work in. Again, that particular city is not on the list, and I'm telling you that it's not on the list because I'm about to tell you what the list is. My experience taught me that yes, I wanted to travel more, and so I made a list of exactly where I have strong ties to Austin, Texas, other places in Texas too, but particularly Austin, Texas, Phoenix, Arizona, Denver, Colorado, Seattle, Boston, and Washington D.C.

Now, if you are in any of those cities, or you are running conferences that are going to be in any of those cities, absolutely. Let's talk because I will give you a discount on travel because I want to go to those cities because I have strong ties in those places. Okay, a little bit of an aside, but not really because I want you to see how powerful disappointment can be because my my disappointment of not getting a keynote in this city led me to go. Oh, I'm ready to travel more.

I want to travel more. Where do I want to travel? And even though that city wasn't on the list, it it it led me to a list that's very important to me. Okay, now let's just do a little recap here, because we are at the end of our own OWN strategy, that framework.

So let me give you a few takeaways. So toxic positivity of just like oh everybody suffers disappointment. Okay, that's toxic toxic positivity, and that bypasses the feeling. It doesn't give you a chance to fully metabolize it.

The own framework starts to. Okay, that's the whole distinction here. We want to metabolize the disappointment so that it can move through us and be free from us because we don't want to hold on to it forever. Now, a spiral isn't just feeling bad; it's a loop.

It's a recursive loop where that disappointment starts to generate stories that generate more disappointment, and then we start to feel ourselves in that negative loop, and you can catch it when you know what to look for. We've been talking about what to look for in this episode, and then third, disappointment is data. Disappointment is data because it helps you see what you care about, what your expectations were, and where that gap is between what you want and what you got, and that information is really valuable. It's absolutely worth having because you can use that to navigate forward.

Okay, number four: watch for Siegelman's 3p's: permanent, pervasive, personal. If it starts to feel any of those things, you are starting to spiral. Your disappointment is starting to sound like all three. You're clearly in a spiral, and you're not actually feeling the disappointment.

You're letting the disappointment feel you. If you're letting it run the show, and then number five, when you own your own disappointment, it doesn't own you, and that is the whole episode in one sentence. When you own O W N, your disappointment, it doesn't own you. All right, now it's time to put it to work.

The next time something disappointing happens at work, and something will-it always does-I want you to run the own framework before the spiral takes hold. So you're going to want to bookmark this episode so that you can come back to it and you can find it easily. So own it, say it out loud, own the feeling. Say this is disappointing.

Give it the space that it deserves, and then W. What is it telling you? Sit with that question instead of letting a story run for you, and then N. Navigate forward.

Make one conscious choice about your next move. It doesn't have to be a plan for everything. Just one thing you're going to do differently as a result of what you learned from what that disappointment told you. Okay, again, bookmark this episode so that you can come back to it when you need it.

And if you know somebody else who is going through some disappointment right now, please share this episode with them. If you you know somebody is dealing with that disappointment that feels bigger than what they can hold right now, give this episode to them as a gift. That's what this episode is all about. So this is Janel anderson.com forward slash 292 for episode 292.

Now, please don't keep me a secret. Share this episode widely. Share the podcast widely, and give it a five star rating. Write a quick review.

That is the best way to help this podcast and help me and help me keep the podcast going because when more people find the podcast, I am of greater service to people, and that's what this is all about, my friends. So, and of course, they hire me too sometimes when they find the podcast. So that's also what this is all about. But it also is a way for me to go deeper and give audience members the tools they need to navigate the tough stuff at work because it's called Working Conversations, the podcast for a reason.

These are tools that help you work through the conversations at work that make work work. Can I say work any more times than that? All right, my friends, put it to work. I will catch you right here next week on the Working Conversations podcast for the next episode.

Be well.