Disappointment and Resilience

Earlier in the year, I had the idea that hosting a podcast would be a next big step for me. I didn’t give it a lot of thought or energy until June, when I attended a mastermind and the idea really started taking root. Pretty soon, I was getting excited – and things were underway!

I began working with a podcast producer who gave me her estimate of the time it would take to get this puppy off the ground. Based on the info I had, I set a tentative date to launch and things started to pull together – like the Goethe quote:

Whatever you can do, or dream you can—begin it;
Boldness has genius, power, magic in it.

The whole process was more involved than I expected: I didn’t know what I didn’t know and didn’t get some important information.

One little snag after another kept coming up. I missed my first date. I set a second date- this one in mid-August – August 12th, which would have been my mother’s birthday. It seemed so exciting because launching on that date would be a tribute to her. One of the first episodes (Flambe’) related to her and to launch on the 12th felt really special.

The new launch date was getting a little close, but the producer said she and her team would go the extra mile, since the date had a special significance for me. I was thrilled!

Best laid plans

A few days later, though, I got the producer’s email telling me that she and a key team member were planning to take vacation during that critical time period.   The launch wouldn’t happen until they got back later in the week – and that was IF iTunes had accepted my podcast.

Not only was I frustrated that I hadn’t known about the vacations, disappointed that a hoped-for date probably wouldn’t happen, but I was embarrassed, too: I’d been so enthusiastic about my timeframe and sharing it with people – and now it wasn’t coming together as planned and the launch date was out of my hands completely! The podcast could be submitted to iTunes, but they could take their sweet time about approval.

I have to admit I was BUMMED – and everyone around me knew it!

Let’s face it: stuff happens. Things don’t go according to plan. Sometimes our expectations go unmet and we can take an emotional tumble.  Personally, I have a tendency to get really enthusiastic and excited and can take disappointments pretty hard – and this was one of those!

Fortunately, over time, I’ve picked up some practices that help – these are some of the things in my resilience toolkit I used this time (however imperfectly):

• I did allow myself some time to be disappointed – honestly, I took a lot of time…wallowed in it for a while might be more accurate. (wallowing isn’t necessarily recommended)
• I practiced some of what I preach – “turning it over” to God, reminding myself that there’s a Higher Power and I’m in that Power’s Supreme Care – even if I don’t see it at the moment. (there were some periods when the disappointment flareups came often, which meant I was doing this turning over stuff every few minutes!  With monkey mind yammering that I should have this stuff handled by now!!).
• I reminded myself that this delay was not the end of the world, my work was not wasted…the podcast would launch sometime, not NEVER. (and my mother would be honored and happy for me WHENEVER it happened)

Faith, Trust, and Letting Go…

Obviously it doesn’t always happen this way, but this time it did: on Sunday, I received notice from iTunes that the She Moves Mountains podcast had been approved! The official launch won’t happen until the producer and her team are back and able to work their magic, but the podcasts are available!! There’s a little glitch and parts of the listings are in French – ooh la la! – but I wanted to share this whole experience with you! Such is life!!

Click on the following  link to access the episodes (pretty soon I’ll figure out how to direct you through to iTunes itself): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s he-moves-mountains/id1475942581?l=fr