Daily Dose of English 175
Disappointment
Daily Dose of English 175
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on www.benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about disappointment. which is a pretty big term because it's very general. It's a big thing. Disappointment is an emotion that you feel usually after something doesn't go the way that you want or expect it. And it's a very normal thing to feel disappointed when something bad for you happens. It's a little different than sadness, right? Sadness has to do with something that is very, well, saddening. It is usually not something that you were expecting or that you were thinking was going to happen. It's just something that's sad. So, if a pet died or your phone broke or anything like that, that might be sad. But disappointment is usually when there is something specific that you wanted to happen or were hoping for and didn't happen. you were disappointed by something where it didn't live up to your expectations, which is basically the same thing as like a hope, right? So not living up to expectations is a great phrase to say when something didn't quite work the way that you wanted it to or didn't come out how you wanted. So an example is, let's say you ask for a present from somebody, right? And they give you something not very good. and you wish that it was better, you go, that didn't really live up to my expectations or whatever. I don't know if you can hear the banging going on. There is the person in the exact apartment below me is doing a lot of work in the room directly below my office. It is very annoying. I think I've complained about this in the past couple of days because it is just so annoying because it's literally under my feet, right? Like if it was in the apartment next door or they were in a different room, it would be fine. Like I could hear it, but it's not like that loud. But they're doing work on their ceiling or their wall, which means that it's coming directly into my apartment, right into my office where I sit all day. It is loud. I feel the vibrations. So if you hear that, I'm sorry. I tried to wait to record this because it's late now. It's almost 6 p.m. and they're supposed to be completely done with sound at six like that. It's just so constant all day. I'm so tired of it. I'm sorry. I just had to record this. Disappointment, right? So that, for example, is not disappointing, right? I don't really have expectations about it. It's just something that's happening. It's annoying, it's frustrating, but it's not really disappointing. Something that could be disappointing is if they said, hey, we'll be done by today at noon. And if they're not, then it's like, that's disappointing. I'm kind of bummed out that it didn't happen. That's not a great example. That's not really something that's disappointing. So let's give a... Reset, can't speak. Let me give a better example of something that's disappointing. For example, going to see a movie that you're excited about. That can be very disappointing if the movie's bad. Or going to a restaurant and going, wow, I'm excited to try this food, it looks really good. I am very disappointed. So I'll share actually one example from each of those that I did recently. I went to go see the Wolverine Deadpool movie relatively recently a couple weeks ago and I did not like it. I thought it was not a very good movie. It was Because like I'd seen that exact same movie 20 times before I've seen a lot of the Marvel movies from before not recently and I was like Oh Deadpool is usually kind of funny right now. So like the Wolverine movies, maybe it'll be sort of fun but it was just the same stuff. It was not that it was, there was some fun jokes, right? But there was some okay scenes, but it just wasn't good and it was boring and I was just not having a good time. I was very disappointed, right? I was hoping that it'd be better, but it was not. It was pretty bad. Um, the other thing that was disappointing is that I went to a pizza place recently. Um, cause I, I quite like pizza. I like artisanal pizza, sort of fancier pizza. Right. Um, and there's this pizza place not too far away and it had some good reviews and I was like, Oh, this looks pretty good. They have a nice oven. They've got a good wood fired oven. And so I went, I walked there, and I go in, I sit down, and I was immediately disappointed because it was so loud. Because it's right on this very big street. It's essentially a highway close to where I live. And it was so, so loud. All the cars going by, just incredibly loud. And they have to put on music to kind of drown out that car sound because it's horrible. It's terrible. And so their music was also loud, and it was just so much. I wanted to go and just read, have a glass of wine, order a pizza, and have a nice time, but that was impossible. I had to put in my headphones, my noise-canceling headphones, and put on an audiobook or something just to not hear as much noise, and then it was still noisy. And then add on top of that, the pizza was actually fine. It was not amazing. It was not terrible. It was fine. The dough was pretty good, but it was like soggy in the middle, and the toppings were like pretty basic. And the wine was also very mediocre. It was fine wine, but not like fine wine, but it was OK, I guess. And so all of that ended up being just pretty disappointing, and I was not very happy with that I went. It was a little bit expensive. And then when I paid, they give me my change incorrectly. They didn't give me the right amount. So like I was going to leave a tip. And then they took more, like they forgot to give me back the change that was more than the tip. And I didn't want to wait for them. So I was just like, you know what, whatever, I'm going to go. And so it was just a very disappointing experience, right? Again, I wasn't like sad or I wasn't hurt in any way. It was just I was hoping for something and it didn't happen. Disappointment is a fact of life. Things are going to be disappointing. Things are not going to be that much fun or when you think about it. And we have to accept that, right? We have to have a How do I phrase that? We have to be okay that some things are going to be disappointing and it's okay to feel that emotion and to be sad or to be disappointed, but it's also important to move on, right? Something that I really try not to do is let that really affect me. I often will like to talk about it or express my disappointment or my emotions in that, around those areas, but I try not to let it affect my day-to-day happiness, my work, whatever it is, because that's not helpful. These are things that I could not control. I didn't choose for this restaurant to be on a street. I didn't choose for them to make the pizza that way. These are things that are not in my control at all. I can't change them. And so I really try not to let them affect me too much. Naturally, they're going to affect me a little bit. You can't avoid being human, but being okay with certain things not being perfect and moving on and focusing on the things that you can control is very important. And I've noticed that with that sort of philosophy and that state of mind, I am often a lot less disappointed than other people. I am better at handling disappointment because I understand that it's just gonna happen, it's not my fault, I can't do anything about it, and that's okay. My favorite example to bring up is travel. So back in 2018, I traveled around with a pretty big group of people. And we were all fairly young. And I realized that a lot of other people kept getting disappointed about the places we were going. We were going to a bunch of different countries. And they would get there, and they'd be like, oh, it's not like how I expected. And I would ask them questions. And usually, they weren't unhappy. didn't really have any problems with the place. It was just different than they were expecting, right? They were expecting something specific and they were disappointed because it wasn't that way. And that disappointment kind of ruined a bit of the place for them, not because it was anything bad, but because they just It wasn't the way that they wanted. And that can have a big effect on your mood and your outlook on things if you let things really disappoint you, right? Or rather, if you set up your expectations poorly. So another example is in language learning. We see a lot of people who want to achieve a certain goal, a certain level of fluency, a certain ability in a certain amount of time, right? I wanna be fluent in just three months. I wanna be fluent in four months. And they don't do that, and then they become really disappointed and they stop learning because they didn't appropriately set their expectations and they were focusing on something that they couldn't control. If you put all of your hope and your self-worth into something that you don't control, you don't control your ability in the language. You control the factors that contribute to your ability, but not your ability in and of itself. Right? And so if you want to be successful, if you want to be a little bit more stress-free, put your focus on the things that you do have more control over and be okay with some disappointment, but don't let that guide you. Don't let that control you and be the end of, be the end of you, I guess you could say, but yeah. Yeah. Anyways, I'm out of time for today. I didn't quite get to finish everything I wanted to say, but I think that's a decent spot to stop. But yeah, let me know down in the comments below. Is there anything that you've recently been disappointed by? I'd be curious to hear. But that's everything for me today. I'll see you again tomorrow for another episode. Have a good one. Bye.
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