In this episode of Judymay Is Listening, host Judy Mae Murphy tackles one of life’s most common emotional challenges: disappointment. With producer Melis in the studio (and missing Elspeth due to a hair emergency!), Judy dives deep into what disappointment really is and how to transform it. She starts by clarifying that disappointment is specifically the sadness or displeasure caused by unmet hopes or expectations—and the key insight is that not all disappointment is warranted or timely.
The episode features Judy’s thoughtful advice to Wendy, a listener struggling with recurring disappointment in her husband over unmet promises like picking up groceries. Rather than accepting disappointment as inevitable, Judy encourages listeners to examine whether their expectations are reasonable, whether they’ve clearly communicated them, and whether they’re taking responsibility for emotions that aren’t theirs to claim. She introduces the powerful concept of ‘reasonable expectations’ as a framework for clearer conversations and less resentment.
Throughout the episode, Judy emphasizes that while our emotional reactions are always valid and ours to own, we can change how we feel by getting more information and shifting our perspective. She reminds listeners that we cannot and should not be disappointed in other people’s life choices unless we have a direct stake in them. By addressing disappointment head-on with love and thoughtfulness, rather than trying to manipulate situations, we can create better outcomes and decide what’s truly acceptable in our relationships.
Main Topics
Disappointment is specifically sadness or displeasure from unmet hopes or expectations—learning to name exactly what you're feeling helps you address it
Not all disappointment is timely or yours to claim; examine whether something hasn't happened yet or whether you have a vested interest in someone else's choices
Consistency can be reframed: if someone follows through 50% of the time, that's their consistent pattern—adjust your expectations accordingly rather than being perpetually disappointed
The concept of 'reasonable expectations' helps shift conversations from blame to collaboration; ask others what feels reasonable to them rather than imposing absolute standards
You have the right to your emotional reactions, but getting new information can change how you perceive situations and shift your feelings naturally
Set people up for success by asking how they'd prefer to handle responsibilities, rather than directing them like children, which can breed resentment
Address disappointment head-on through loving, thoughtful conversation, then step back and notice results—this approach creates real change instead of manipulation
Full TranscriptWelcome to Judy Mayer's Listening. This is the show where you tell me what's happening in your life and I listen and tog...▼
Welcome to Judy Mayer's Listening. This is the show where you tell me what's happening in your life and I listen and together we transform everything. Welcome, welcome. This is Judy Mae Murphy. You're listening to women's radio station supporting women's well being and today it is all about you. You know what, you know who's in the studio today. Normally we have a huge gang of people and today it's myself and Melis, our gorgeous producer and the lady who is not just pressing the buttons, but creating just something enormous out of women's radio station now that she is back in the driving seat and we're so, so happy to have her around. And you're probably missing Elspeth if you are a regular listener to the show. Elspeth had a hair emergency. So she decided being younger and we have all done this and if you haven't done it yet, you will. She decided she was going to bleach her dark hair herself in her room late at night while a little bit irritated about something. And so you can imagine the results. So she has gone to get that fixed today. Proper hair emergency. So, Elspeth, we're sending you all the good vibes and looking forward to having you back here with some colored hair next week. We don't care what it is, just maybe pick one and stick to that for a while. We love you, we miss you. So today's show is all about dealing with disappointment, destroying disappointment, making sure that we don't feel disappointed again. So many of us feel disappointed a lot of the time. So what exactly is disappointment? Sometimes if we can't decide what is the difference between disappointment, irritation, longing, or we just go around with this kind of big blah feeling. But if we can just decide what exactly am I feeling now? Am I feeling sad? Am I feeling angry? Am I feeling resentful? Am I feeling any of those things? Or even with the happy ones, am I feeling joyful? Am I feeling giddy? Am I feeling. Then we can know what to do to either change it or make it even bigger and keep it around for longer, depending on what we want to do. So with disappointment, what we're dealing with specifically is a sadness or a displeasure caused by the non fulfillment of one's hopes or expectations. So I think the first thing that we need to look at is making sure that there are hopes and expectations that are leading to disappointment. So often people will say that they were so disappointed that somebody else didn't do something or they were so disappointed that this particular thing didn't happen when that thing can still happen. Maybe it's not time to be disappointed. So either maybe it's not yours to be disappointed about or maybe it's not time to be disappointed. Maybe you can be disappointed later on, but very likely the thing that you're hoping for is going to happen and you can avoid disappointment that way. We got some lovely questions in the first one is from Wendy. Oh, and she says, I love my husband very much, but I have to confess that I feel very disappointed in him. A lot of the time. He promises to do even quite small things like pick up the groceries on his way home. And it only happens half of the time. He says that he does his best and that it's my fault that I feel so disappointed. Now I'm just feeling disappointed in him in general and it's starting to affect our marriage. So you're kind of like you're expected to be let down. Well, let's look at how consistent he is because right now you're telling yourself that his inconsistency is leading to your disappointment. But you said that about half the time he does the thing that he has said he will do, so that's consistent. So you know that there's about a 50% chance that he's going to follow through with that. Now rather than being disappointed in that being disappointed half the time, why not just be absolutely elated the times he does do it and then the other times say, well, that's to be expected because half the time he doesn't do it. Then you're in a clearer space to ask yourself, is that a good enough standard for someone who is your life partner to, to be showing up with? So it could be that he feels resentful. Maybe he feels like he hasn't really agreed to do those things. Wendy, just do a little check. I don't know because you haven't given me the details, but do a little check. Is it that he feels that he didn't agree to it, that you decided it was an important thing to do and maybe you just directed him as if he was a child or a teenager saying, you know, get some milk on your way home. And perhaps he feels like, well, I didn't decide to that and maybe if he's feeling rebellious, he'll say, well, I'll do what I like, thank you very much. Could it be that that's what he's doing? So my suggestion is have a talk with him in a non judgmental way saying, hey, you know what? I realized that it can't be fun for you with me being all disappointed and nagging and equally, you know, it's your actions that are helping me to feel this way. So can we have a little talk about reasonable expectations? Reasonable expectations is one of my favorite phrases because very often we are very black and white about things. We think that something absolutely should happen or absolutely shouldn't happen. So if you say to yourself, you know, my children absolutely should tidy up after themselves and then they don't, you're going to be disappointed and you're going to be maybe even rageful because you feel like they broke a cardinal rule, like of course they should. But if you say to yourself, I have a reasonable expectation that they will tidy up after themselves, then when they don't, you can say, hey, you know what, that's kind of not okay. And you're coming at it feeling better yourself and not seeming so unreasonable to them. And then you can have a better conversation. A conversation along the lines of, well, you know what? I feel that at the age of 16 that your room should be tidy. How do you feel about it? And then you might find out that they don't have that same expectation. And if you say to them, well, what do you think is reasonable? What do you think is a reasonable expectation for a 16 year old who has this amount of free time on their hands as opposed to a parent who has this amount of free time on their hands? And it could be that they have an idea of, well, I'm a teenager, I should just be able to be messy and enjoy myself and do what I want to do. And then you can let them know that that's not a really high standard to live at. Presuming you're living at a high standard yourself, presuming that you are not asking them to do something you wouldn't do. Very often parents will yell at kids to do things that they themselves aren't doing, as we know. Hey, it's tough being a parent, I get that. But let's make sure that we are approaching this from the point of view of, first of all, is it a reasonable expectation you have, Wendy, that your husband is not meeting and because as I say, in his mind, it could be that it's an unreasonable expectation, he could say, well, you know, what with the traffic being so bad and I'm really tired after work and just the idea of having to go and do that extra trip to the, to the grocery store to go in, it's not as easy as it sounds. Yes, it's on my way home. From work, but it's not that easy. So to him, it's. It's different. And just having that conversation in a way where you're not blaming each other for letting the other one down or being wrong because it sounds like it's kind of gotten off on that foot. You're calling him wrong for not bringing home the groceries, and he's calling you wrong for having the emotional reaction. By the way, ladies, whatever emotional reaction you have, that is yours and you have the right to it. That is non negotiable. If you are feeling angry in that moment, that anger is yours. And no one gets to tell you you shouldn't feel angry. They do not know what's going on inside of you. However, somebody can give you extra information which can change how you perceive the situation, which in turn might change how you feel about it. And staying open for those conversations with reasonable people, that's what we're going for. All right, so what I would say is this, that also look, Wendy, at. Is it indicative of something else? Is it that the disappointment you're feeling is kind of a more general disappointment, that maybe you thought that he would achieve something more in his life and he hasn't, and so you're taking it out on the. On the chores, in which case we have to look at the fact that we don't have the right to have expectations around other people. So if you're feeling disappointed because somebody didn't do something in their life, that's not yours to feel disappointed about. So most of my family is completely disappointed in me. I absolutely just. I can't tell you how much they wished I had, you know, gotten married at a young age, stayed in Ireland, studied something that was not drama and history of art. They really, really wish that I had made very different choices in my life. And some of them are disappointed, but it's not their field, it's not their area to be disappointed in. They can have beliefs that maybe if I'd done different things, I would have been happier. Excuse me. Or maybe if I'd done different things that, you know, I would have come around to their way of thinking. Absolutely. They can hold those beliefs. Absolutely. They can feel sad. But if it's disappointment, it really is misdirected because that is suggesting that somehow they had a vested interest in my choices. And certainly if you're not, you know, taking money from family members, if you're not expecting them to pick up the pieces after things go wrong for you, then they really don't get to have a say in that. So have a look at yourself. This is what we always do, Wendy. We always go to me first. Now, it might be that your husband is just being lazy. It might be that he's taking you for granted. I don't have that information. Only you know that and he knows that. And let's be clear. If people are being lazy and taking you for granted, they're not oblivious. You don't have to teach them anything. They know, they know what's going on. So have a little, have a little chat with them and then notice. That's what we always do is we have the conversation and then stand back and just notice that if you stop commenting, does he then start doing the things more often? Or if you just state what needs to be done, does he then say, I can do that? He feels like he's chosen it and he feels vested in it and he feels like he can be a bit of a hero around it. So with everybody, we want to be setting them up for success and that's how we feel less disappointment. So I would say ask him, what does that look like? How would it feel good to you to get the groceries in or whatever the chores are that you feel he's not following through on? It might be that he would prefer to spend money to get somebody else in to do those things or it might be that he would like to do, you know, a great big grocery shopping with you or on his own on a Saturday morning and just get it done and dusted. So a little bit more information there, Wendy. So let's remember that every time we have a problem, there is a solution. So often we're sitting there just trying to be more annoyed or less annoyed or pretend to feel this or pretend to feel that or say this or don't say that. And we're trying to manipulate a situation rather than confront it head on in a loving way, in a thoughtful way and then just stand back and notice, okay, what are my results now? And is this good enough for me? Is this something that I want to stick around with more right after these. Welcome to women's radio station. Hello and welcome to future classic women awards with me, Stefania Passamonte on women's radio station. Hello and welcome to Julie Mae is listening. Hi, this is Anna Kennedy and we're at women's radio station supporting women's well being and we're talking all things autism women. The possibilities are endless. That's what makes us different. Hi, I'm Lauren Mishkon. I'm a birth Doula and mum of three. And I'm passionate about supporting women to have empowering and positive birth experiences. Please join me for my brand new show From Tummy to Mummy here on Women's Radio Station. Every week I'll be here with an expert guest talking about women's reproductive health, everything fertility, pregnancy, birth and baby related, right through to the menopause and beyond. Please join us for an informative and fun hour. My name is Ingrid Marsh and I host the Radical Wellbeing show supporting women's wellbeing. On my show I bring you ordinary women like me and you who are sharing their unique stories. Women who have refused to be defined by their pains, to be silenced by stigma or crushed by stereotypes, and who are taking back their power. And together our mission is a simple one and that's to inspire you to kick away the roadblocks too. To don your wings and be the person that you were born to be. Hi, I'm Hazel Butterfield, a blogger, book lover and mental health advocate and you can listen to my show get booked here at Women's Radio station daily at 5am and 5pm throughout my shows we'll talk about the books I've read, new releases, chapter authors, publishers and book enthusiasts, all with a theme and aim of supporting women's emotional well being. If you have a book to tell us about, get in touch@presentersomensradiostation.com join me on my show and share my love of books and writing. Hi, I'm Valentina Barbacci and I'm the Executive Director of Media Matters for Women. We're a registered charity operating in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo and we produce and share podcasts via Bluetooth on mobile phones focusing specifically on women and girls excluded from information due to extreme poverty. We empower those living in rural areas with media that transforms how they access, own and share information. To find out more and be part of this movement, come check out our website@mediamattersforwomen.org you're listening to Women's Radio Station supporting women's well being. Women's Radio Station's creating a global network for the empowerment of women and we want you to be involved. Join us on Instagram and Twitter @WomensRadio station. That's WomensRadio stn or Facebook Women's Radio Station to keep up to date with all our exciting programs. Welcome to Judy Mayer's Listening. This is the show where you tell me what's happening in your life and I listen and together we transform everything. Welcome Back here on women's radio station, we support women's well being. We're all about that. And specifically here on Judy Mae is Listening, I, Judy Mae Murphy, endeavor to solve any problem that you might have so that you can feel better and get more stuff done and just have a better experience here on this planet in this lifetime. And I know there's a lot of really messy stuff going on right now, but you can create your own weather. You know, you can create your own little weather system. You can just decide, you know what, it might be raining outside, but it's sunny where I am right now, inside your head. And just sort of imagine that you're in a bubble. And that doesn't mean that you're trying to escape your responsibilities for making the planet better, but it does mean that you just get some breathing space and you're able to remember who you are and live in a less reactive kind of way and do amazing things here. We're really a tribe here at the radio station and we really all support each other and you. And so please do get in touch, get in touch with me personally at infoudymay TV if you have a problem that you'd like to have discussed on the show and also go to the website and get in contact with any of the hosts. And if there's something amazing that you're doing, please, not if you're there to sell products, that's not what we're about. But if you're here to share an experience that you have to let people know and share in your brilliance, that's what we want to do. We want to share in your brilliance. Speaking of sharing in brilliance, Melis, our producer, is also a fantastic performer as well as a great music engineer. And she was on the BBC the other night. She performs Under Glass xs. So if you do so G L A S X S G L A S S if you put that in there, you'll see her and you'll see, you'll be like, oh, my God, I had no idea that the producer on women's radio station was A, so stunning and B, so talented at that. I mean, honestly, it will absolutely blow you away. And her story is extraordinary. I mean, the fact that she came over here from Turkey and she now lives in London with her husband and they both have an amazing life together. And she really has worked like she's just rung every single drop out of every opportunity and showed up and trained herself and she's just so, so lovely and we absolutely adore her. So that's glass Ex s. Right, I'll get our s. Sorry, just catching a little bit there because I just know you as Melis, but do please check that out. And as I say, the BBC are now going crazy about her and lots of other places all around town. She's playing festivals over the summer. So maybe you heard it here first and maybe you're already a fan, but please, please do check her out. And we also support you. We love you, we want you to succeed. And one of the big things in succeeding is making sure that you're not disassociating, that you're not having to run away and watch tv, Netflix all night, that you're not having to have that glass of wine to disappear into it and just forget about life for a while. If you find yourself having to forget about life through either gossip or, you know, just being overly busy with the kids, or if you find yourself, if you know, you're just trying to zone out or tune out what's going on in your life, that is the time to just sit down with a piece of paper and say, right, what is going on with me right now? What am I feeling? What would I prefer to be feeling? What's happening? What would I prefer to be happening? And really just throw a whole lot of action at it. But first of all, you got to think out that action. A lot of people are just replying to emails or replying to phone calls or doing what the latest person has asked them to do. Hey, can you do this for me? Okay. Oh gosh, now I can't do this. But instead designing it and really prioritizing you in your day, because very often the kind of long term disappointment that we feel with our days, and let's be clear that that's what our lives are made up. Our lives are made up of our days. Really, really basic statement, but a lot of people aren't taking that seriously. And they're expecting somehow that something magical is going to happen and without them interceding, excuse me, bit of a winter cold here going on today and without anyone interceding and that they will, you know, that somehow it's going to be okay and then it'll be okay for the rest of their life. You know what? Magical things are going to happen. Great things are going to show up. But we grow around our dream. Our dream isn't something that we run to like some golden crusted finish line. It's something that we grow around. We have to demand that we are going to get the answers. The answers to what the heck is going on inside of me. That's the answer that we're. That's the question that we're answering all the time. And the more successfully we can answer that, the better our life becomes. So one of the things that's going on with you because you're human is disappointment. Is that feeling of sadness or displeasure caused by a non fulfillment of your hopes or your expectations. So the next person that wrote into us is Marcia. And she said, I was really disappointed five years ago when my boyfriend at the time told me he never wanted to get married. I broke up with him over this, as I've always seen myself getting married. However, since then, I've only been on a handful of dates and found myself digging for clues about whether or not they would disappoint me. In the same way I feel. I feel like this single disappointment is ruling and maybe even ruining my whole life. So, Marcia, let's break this down for you. First of all, it's a good thing that you want to be partnered up. You know, it's something that not all women choose, but it's something that you've chosen. You feel that this would be a way that your life would be better. And you were with someone who at the time he said he didn't want to get married. Now, if he was really committed to you, and if he was just really great in every other way, you probably already would have felt that you had your dream. And probably the marriage part of it wouldn't have mattered quite so much. But the fact that it really mattered suggests that maybe there were other things that weren't quite right. Maybe it's that he was emotionally less mature than you. Maybe it was that he was letting you know that he didn't think you were the one, that he was kind of keeping his options open. So whatever that was, my guess is that it was probably that that caused you guys to break up, rather than this more binary idea of marriage. Yes or no. So it sounds as if you did a good thing for yourself at the time, and now you are second guessing that the right man would not have let you go that easily. Right? He would have fought for you. He would have said, okay, you know, here's why I don't agree with marriage. You would have understood him. You would have come around to his way of thinking. He would have come around to your way of thinking. It would. It would have worked. But the fact that it either wasn't talked out fully or, you know, neither of you were prepared to fight for it kind of suggests that maybe it wasn't the right one. Anyway, just an idea. You're the expert on you, as everyone always is, so you know better than that. But just as a way of thinking of it, that because now you're feeling disappointed, you're feeling that there was a hope that wasn't fulfilled. What I'm saying is that maybe you put the hope in the wrong place. And that's something that we can often do. We can say, oh, you know what? I really thought I would get that promotion or that deal. And rather than putting your hope in a very specific place, if we can be a bit more general about it and say, you know what? I am going to this year get a job that is going to bring in twice as much money and give me the same kind of time off. That is the thing that you place your hope in. Not, oh, I was hoping to get that specific promotion that would have given me more money. Because if you say to yourself, I want to get either this job or another one where I end up feeling really great throughout the day and earning twice as much as I am now, then when this specific falls through, somebody else gets it. You don't feel devastated because you know that you have all these other ways of making that part of the dream come true. But when we say to ourselves something like, okay, this was the guy that got away, or this was the woman that got away, then what we're doing is we are really reducing our possibilities and opportunities, reducing what's available to us in this world to a very, very thin slice. And we're making it really, really easy to feel disappointed because we a hundred percent were let down by that person or that job or that opportunity. So when we broaden it out and we say, you know what, it's this person or someone better, for me, it's this job or something better, it's now or it's in a little while. When we broaden it out in that way, it's much more difficult to feel disappointed. And that's what we want. We want to be able to not be kidding ourselves and saying, oh, there's another job coming along, saying, okay, I need to keep looking. I need to keep asking. I had a client who very recently amazed herself because in the last year she has gone from being unemployed to not just having one job of her dreams, but then moving into a job that was even more the job of her dreams. So it was a job she loved. And then it started to get a little bit different when a new boss came in and then she moved into a new job with a boss that she loves and she is making even more money and that's what's possible. But when she got turned down for other jobs, she felt really disappointed. And I just said to her, why are you disappointed? If they're not choosing you, they probably have more insight into why you're not a good fit. So they're actually freeing you, they're releasing you to go and find something that's a better fit. Same thing for relationships. Let's imagine that you are crazy about somebody and you decide that that is the person for you. But they know that there's. They might know that there's something about themselves. They might know that they're not over an ex or that they're not over their divorce. They might know that they are, I don't know, a million pounds in debt. They might have information of some kind or they might know that they are the kind of person who never likes to just date one person. They've got information about themselves and therefore they remove themselves from the situation. And you feel disappointed because you were deciding that you knew it was in this one specific space. So that is our tip for this part of the show is if you're feeling disappointed, ask yourself, have you set your hopes and expectations too narrowly? Have you put them onto one person, one situation, one job, one university course. There was a woman who was at university with us and she was devastated that. She was devastated because she didn't actually get into our university, she was at a university down the road. But what she ultimately wanted was to be a world famous actress and she now is that. She goes and performs on huge stages all around the world. She had thought the only way she could do it was by being in our university. It wasn't true, but she didn't get disappointed. You know what? She got busy. So let's make that a little mantra. Don't get disappointed. Get busy, get busy planning, get busy looking after yourself. Get busy and get out there because everything is available to you. Your dream is coming true and you've got this. More right after these. 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Turn to us as a national charity helping people struggling to make ends meet. Job loss, illness or bereavement can cause a real financial crisis. We give practical help to get people back on track. Whether you're thinking of having a baby, trying to get out of an unhappy relationship, or just unsure what benefits you may be entitled to, we can help. Visit turntous.org.uk welcome to the women's radio station supporting women's well being. Women's Radio station can give voice to your brand. With a wide range of sponsorship opportunities, including individual programs, we can tailor your experience for you. For more information on how you can sponsor a show, go to womensradiostation.com women's radio station supporting women's wellbeing. Welcome to Judy Mayer's Listening. This is the show where you tell me what's happening in your life and I listen and together we transform everything. And the transformation that we're making this week is that we are destroying disappointment absolutely Destroying it. Not just putting it to one side, not distracting from it, but making sure that this is something that we don't have to feel. How can we do that? Well, we've been talking about it through some of the questions that have come in, but also, let's look at it this way, that in order to feel disappointment, it means that you have to currently feel that there's nothing you can do about it. Right? So let's imagine that you are standing at the bus stop and a bus goes whizzing past your bus, and you feel that it's going to be at least two hours before another bus comes along. That's a very different feeling from if you're standing at the bus stop. A bus goes whizzing past, but you can already see another bus coming round the corner, maybe that's half empty. Or somebody says to you, oh, don't worry, they come every two minutes. Then you're not feeling disappointed. You're feeling a little bit annoyed, maybe a little bit, you know, frustrated that you didn't get there. But it doesn't sit with you as disappointment. It's the same thing. Anytime you're feeling disappointment in your life, you can just say to yourself, right, why am I believing that there's nothing I can do about it? And isn't that true? Is it true that there's nothing I can do about it? And very often just, you know, getting up, taking a shower, putting on your best dress, putting on your lippy, getting out the door, that in itself shifts things. You start to notice possibilities. You start to remember that you have agency, that you have a way of changing things in the world. So this is what we want for you. So the thing that we're going to think about today is what is the action that we can take in order to let us know that we don't have to sit in disappointment. What is it we can actually do about this? And sometimes we are so much kind of like longingly staring at the thing that seems to be drifting off into the distance that we're not looking at what can be done right now. Take a moment to grieve. If it's a huge disappointment, if it's something that you were really going for, take a moment to say, okay, right now I feel sad. And right now disappointment is the right thing to be feeling. And how long am I going to give myself on this? Because some people, if they have a disappointment, they will spend years, years talking about it. We all know people like that. People who there was that job that they didn't get and they thought they were going to get it and. Or maybe they did get a job and then they were fired after a week. I know a lot of people in entertainment who will just sit around and talk about the auditions that they didn't get or the time when they were going to be taking over a leading role. And then they didn't because. And they put so much energy into the story that they're not putting energy into the actual life because you can feed one or the other. We just don't have the time or energy to do both. You don't get to, you know, talk on and on and on and focus on and on and on about your disappointments and simultaneously turn them into not disappointments. Because even if there's something that you were disappointed about from years ago, you can still pull that up and say, hold on a second, I don't want to feel that disappointment anymore. Maybe you were disappointed that you dropped out of college. Well, the great way to fix that is to go and get yourself that degree or that diploma. Maybe it was that you felt like our caller early, earlier. Our caller. I wish. I know one day we're gonna be able to do that with Melis at the helm. We're gonna be doing live calls at some stage, but for now we're gonna. We read every single email that comes in and make sure that we weave them into the shows for you. So it was Marcia. Marcia was talking about her boyfriend and how disappointed she felt. So I bet Marcia, for the whole five years you weren't feeling disappointed about him. I bet you just feel that disappointment when you feel like you don't have any control over being in partnership. Maybe when you feel a little bit lonely, when you feel a little bit less than a little bit separate from the world. So you can always do around that. Loneliness is one thing that we can cure in three ways. Loneliness is made up of three things. The first thing is isolation. So first of all is make sure you're out and about around people. Now, that's not all of it because as you know, you can feel very, very lonely in a crowd. The second thing that we need to look at is a feeling of somehow unworthiness that you're not as okay as others. And a lot of women when they're single, they feel that because we've been sent such a strong message of that, that is an indication of our value whether or not we are in a relationship, particularly whether or not we're in a so called good relationship. One that looks good to the outside rather than one that lives good. So those first two things, just taking care of those, making sure that you are talking yourself up, making sure you're noticing your wins, making sure that you are living in a gently structured way so that you don't feel ashamed of yourself. You don't feel like you're somehow losing at life. Just, you know, getting up, feeding yourself well, having your routine. Those things really, really matter. The third thing then, that contributes to loneliness and disappointment. This is where the two have this overlap, is a feeling of powerlessness, a feeling that there's nothing that you can do to make it better. Well, you know what? There is always something you can do. You can either change the thing itself, you can change the physical world around you. That might be something like making phone calls, doing research, sending emails, going around and meeting people, talking to people. Any of those things, just getting agency. It could be something like, you know, cleaning your apartment or your house. It could be doing some gardening. Just anything that side of it, the physical, outward part of it, that can shift you into a place of feeling powerful. It might not be direct. I've got a really, really good friend who now is worth tens of millions. And he went through a situation about 20 years ago where he was with a really big firm, and they just let him go. They just suddenly, after being in that job for years, they let him go. And he started a company with his brother, and the company failed. And he felt really badly about that. And then he was just like. He just didn't know what to do. He didn't have any money coming in. He had this huge mortgage. He just didn't know what to do. So he went out and he planted trees. He lives in one of those gated communities. It's the same place that he lived in back then. Stunning house now fully paid off, of course. And he just went out every single day, and he just kept reminding his physical body that he could make a difference on the planet. So that's a thing that you can do in your disappointment. Why is it that we women go out and get our hair done, like when we feel disappointed, or as Elspeth knows, sit in and try and do it yourself? Like, why is it we try and do that? It's because we're trying to let ourselves know that we can make a difference. So if you're at the stages of just being so in the grips of a disappointment that you need to just go and put one foot in front of the other and just go and, you know Walk around the block and say, right, I've moved my body. Eat a salad, right? I've nourished myself. Reach out to a friend, right? I've made sure I've reminded myself that I'm not alone on this planet. These teeny, tiny things, when we add them up together, they remind us that we are not powerless. So speaking about my friend who had a great disappointment when he lost that big job, and then he. By the way, the happy ending to that is that he started his own company. He now employs lots of people around the world. He is, you know, traveling all the time himself. He has that home that we talked about. He also has another home in a warmer place by the sea. Just a fantastic life in that time. He's also. He also attracted his wife. They've got a daughter in. It's just lovely. But sometimes we feel like it's always going to be like today. So when we're sitting there in that disappointment, disappointment feels static, doesn't it? It feels like it's yucky. I'm powerless, and it's always going to be this way. So we've got to remind ourselves that things change. The world is changing all the time. You know, I mean, even if you've got to wait 10 years, think about what didn't exist 10 years ago. Probably we couldn't have done women's radio station in this format 10 years ago. So the world is changing, and it's changing in your favor, and you got to just make sure that you stay strong and that you stay here with us and that you remember that you're a very valuable part of the tribe, valuable part of the community, and that your time is coming. And very often the things that are most worthwhile are the things that take longer to happen. One of the things that took me a very, very long time was I always wanted to have a book of poetry that would help people. So not just. That was sort of about me gnashing my teeth and, you know, being angry about things. Although that form of poetry is very valid. I wanted to put together a poetry book that was about people being able to turn to an index at the back and identify what is their particular thing that's going on for them, so what is their particular concern, their particular worry? And from that, be able to turn to a poem that would inspire them, that would console them, that would let them know that they're not so alone in this, that maybe would get them ideas for getting into that better place, would get them good and angry. You know, anger is A great place from which to take action. So I did produce this poetry book and it's called Monster Proof Poetry, and it's out now. You can either go to the Eyewear Publications website or get it on Amazon. So it's called Monster Proof Poetry by Judy Mae Murphy. And that's what it does. It answers your questions in poetry form. And when something's in poetry form, it's easier to carry around. You're carrying it around as a rhyme in your head. And people have told me already that they've learned off some of the poems and they now, you know, carry them around with them, as I do with not just my poems, but other people's poems, too. I mean, if you ask me, at the drop of a hat, I can. There's about 50 different poems that I can recite because I make sure that I don't leave it to chance, that I feel good. I make sure that there's always something available to me. And poems are great for that because they are, you know, they usually have a particular story, they usually rhyme, and they feel really good to carry around. You know what? I'm going to make this announcement now. I think that poetry is the new designer handbag. That rather than spending your time earning the money to spend £4,000 on a designer handbag, instead invest a fraction of that time and learn a great poem. Maybe Maya Angelou's Still I Rise or I Felt a Funeral in My Brain or by Emily Dickinson, or maybe Robert Frost's the Road Less Traveled. Anything, Anything. Just don't leave it to chance. You feeling amazing on this planet? Just make sure that you're constantly feeding your mind. And in fact, I'm all over women's radio station this week because I am the guest on Get Booked with Hazel Butterfield, who we just adore her on this show. We really do. And you know what? She has even more fun on her show, which I didn't think was possible. We have so much fun here in studio doing Judy May's Listening, but in Hazel, at Hazel's studio, when it's Hazel's time, doing Get Booked, Tune in, if you haven't already. If you have already, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. It is a fun, fun time. So today we are talking all about demolishing disappointment. So in order to be disappointed, you have to have a dream in the first place. So the fact that you feel disappointed is a really, really good sign. We've got another question from one of you coming up right after these. Welcome to Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to future Classic Women Awards with me, Stefania Passamonte on Women's Radio Station. Hello and welcome to Julie Mae is Listening. Hi, this is Anna Kennedy and we're at Women's Radio Station supporting women's well being and we're talking all things autism with the possibilities are endless. That's what makes us different. Hi, I'm Lauren Mishkon. I'm a birth doula and mum of three and I'm passionate about supporting women to have empowering and positive birth experiences. Please join me for my brand new show From Tummy to Mummy here on Women's Radio Station. Every week I'll be here with an expert guest talking about women's reproductive health, everything fertility, pregnancy, birth and baby related right through to the menopause and beyond. Please join us for an informative and fun hour. My name is Ingrid Marsh and I host the Radical Wellbeing show supporting women's wellbeing. On my show I bring you ordinary women like me and you who are sharing their unique stories. Women who have refused to be defined by their pains, to be silenced by stigma or crushed by stereotypes, and who are taking back their power. And together our mission is a simple one and that's to inspire you to kick away the roadblocks too. To don your wings and be the person that you were born to be. Hi, I'm Hazel Butterfield, a blogger, book lover and mental health advocate and you can listen to my show get booked here at Women's Radio station daily at 5am and 5pm throughout my shows we'll talk about the books I've read, new releases, chapter authors, publishers and book enthusiasts, all with the theme and aim of supporting women's emotional well being. If you have a book to tell us about, get in touch@presentersomensradiostation.com join me on my show and share my love of books and writing. Hi, I'm Valentina Barbacci and I'm the Executive Director of Media Matters for Women. We're a registered charity operating in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo and we produce and share podcasts via Bluetooth on mobile phones, focusing specifically on women and girls excluded from information due to extreme poverty. We empower those living in rural areas with media that transforms how they access, own and share information. To find out more and be part of this movement, come check out our website@mediamattersforwomen.org you're listening to women's radio stations supporting women's well being. Women's radio stations Creating a global network for the empowerment of women. And we want you to be involved. Join us on Instagram and Twitter imminsradio station, that's Women's Radio STN or Facebook Women's radio station to keep up to date with all our exciting programmes. Welcome to Judy Mayer's Listening. This is the show where you tell me what's happening in your life and I listen and together we transform everything. And the transformation that we're taking care of this week is disappointment. We are taking disappointment and we're turning it into empowerment. You're here on Women's Radio Station supporting women's well being. I'm Judy Mae Murphy and what I do for a living is I travel the world helping men and women, but in this specific context, helping women to completely transform their lives. This week alone was a really banner week for a lot of my clients. A lot of my clients come to me when they're at their very, very lowest point where they are so broke that they have to go and borrow money for my fee. Not that we encourage that, but many of them are in that place where they are feeling just really broken and they really just say, you know, I'm willing to try anything, I'm willing to do anything. And this week we had one person who styled someone for the baftas and managed to get onto the Best dressed list and Cosmo and all the other magazines. Also another client, he had been absolutely just at rock bottom. And last week his TV series that he produced, well conceived of produced and starred in, was on the Travel Channel and he's just going from strength to strength. Another client was holding these auditions for the West End. Another client paid off their house. Another client that the lady we talked about earlier went and got an even better job than the dream job that she got last year out of after years of raising her kids and before that of being disappointed because she was unemployed. So everything can turn around, absolutely everything. I could actually sit here for the whole of the rest of the show. I won't. I could sit here though, and just talk about clients who this week are doing incredible things. And I can remember so clearly the conversations that we had when they were feeling disappointed. So remember that disappointment is a sadness that we feel it's relevant. It's giving us that message that there's something to be taken care of, whether we need to take care of ourselves with radical self care and just get our energy back for the next part of the fight, or whether that is that we need to change our strategy, we need to change Our outlook, we often just need to do things radically different. That's why we talk about transforming things on this show. Not just kind of making neat little changes, but actually transforming them because it is possible. And these days, there's so much hyperbole, so much hyperbole flying around the entire planet that we often feel that we can't make statements like that or we can't have expectations like that. Some people will say that they, you know, they don't want to set themselves up for disappointment. Excuse me, ladies. I'm getting over such a cold I got last week, so I can feel it still in a little bit in my throat, but I'll be right with you. So the disappointment that a lot of people are trying to avoid ends up in the ultimate disappointment. So if you're not putting yourself out there because you don't want to feel disappointed in the moment, well, then you're going to be ultimately disappointed with your entire life because you haven't taken chances, you haven't jumped back up again. Particularly if you're at a place where you feel like you have just been smashed. Like whether that is by a relationship finishing, a business thing not going right, an illness you went through. But if you're just feeling like, oh, this is. This is like disappointment with several capital D's in front of it. That's. That's where I'm at right now. If that's what you're thinking, that's okay. Just do the small things. Just because the disappointment is huge doesn't mean that the action needs to be huge initially. The action can be small and consistent. As you know, those of you who listen regularly, I'm all about what it is that you do daily. The dream is made up of the daily things. So we've got one more question coming in, and that is from Claire. And Claire says, I feel like a complete failure because I started a local hairdressers and had to close it after only six months. Every time I meet people who know that I opened it, I feel so ashamed and rush away. Instead of stopping to talk, talk to them. This is more than disappointment. Or is it? Okay, so first of all, what you're doing there is you're doing something that a lot of people do is you're taking the initial disappointment and then you're stacking it with a whole bunch of other disappointments and shame feelings. And so you're taking one negative feeling or one feeling that doesn't feel good, and you're putting on top of it a whole bunch of Other things. So let's imagine that it was pure disappointment. So you opened up this hairdressers. It didn't work. It closed. You learned a lot about yourself, about your area, about the hairdressing world, about the economy, about money. You learned something, but still you're disappointed, and rightly so, that this thing that you put a lot of energy into didn't work out. So that is pure disappointment. Then if what we do is we say not only am I disappointed, it's also evidence that there's somehow something broken about me, something intrinsically wrong with me that can't be fixed. Something that just, you know, makes me less of a human than the other humans that I'm around, that somehow I shouldn't have made this mistake, I shouldn't have, that maybe it was all my fault. And it's not okay for me to learn. It's okay for others to learn. It's okay for others to make mistakes, but it's not okay for me. So I'm going to take that shame based feeling and I'm going to stack that on top of disappointment. And then you take other people's reactions. So other people probably aren't thinking about your hairdresser. They're probably thinking, oh, that was a shame, that was a nice hairdresser. Pity that's not around anymore. But you are also mind reading and you're going in there and you're saying they are thinking less of me, so I'm thinking less of me, therefore they're thinking less of me. And so you stack these imaginary, these fantasy opinions on top of your own shame based feelings. So now you've got this, you've got a short stack going on. You got, and it's not pancakes. And you've got like, first of all, you've got your initial disappointment about what happened and then you've got your feeling of therefore I'm less than. And then you got your feeling off and everybody else thinks I'm less than. And then we just keep going, we just keep stacking because hey, why not? We're having fun with this in a weird kind of way. And so you end up with every other disappointment that you have. So maybe you apply for funding for something and you get turned down and you stack that on top of it. Again, you don't see it as a separate thing. You don't see it as, oh, I just got to keep going and something's going to click for me. Something's going to click. Instead you're like, oh no, I'm sitting Under an even heavier weight of another disappointment. More proof that I'm not okay. The people who can shrug off disappointment are the ones that can live very light. They don't have this habit of stacking like that. It's kind of like what Marcia was talking about earlier, that she had one relationship that wasn't right for her, she got out of it, wasn't right for her at the time. Maybe now she would have handled it differently. But, hey, you know, if only we could all go back in time in a TARDIS and fix those things, but we can't, because we're living forwards. So with her, then, she had some other relationships that didn't work out, or dates that didn't work out, or she became more cautious and less courageous and didn't really, really go for it. But now she's taking all of those dates, or what she probably is thinking of as failed relationships or failed opportunities, and she's stacking those on the initial and saying, look, let's look at this as a whole big picture. Let's not. Let's look at it as separate incidents. This particular person wasn't right for you, and this particular person wasn't right for you at the time in the mindset that you had, and then this other person wasn't right for you in the mindset in the time that you had. You know what? Your mindset is changing. Times are changing, people are changing, opportunities are changing. So it doesn't mean there's always going to be that way. So that's what I would say to you, is instead of stacking in that way, let's just separate it out and maybe just write some lists. Write lists of what did you learn from that business venture? And by the way, whatever we label something, that is a shortcut telling our brain how to think about it. So if you call something a failure, then you're missing out on all the ways it wasn't a failure. Did you cut people's hair? Were they happy with it? I bet they were. Did you make some money? Did you feel proud when you were opening it? You're missing out on all those different great things when you're just using that label that shortcuts you to what wasn't great about it, particularly when it's a label like failure, because then that's something that you can also wear as a badge or get tattooed on your forehead or whatever it is that you do psychologically to yourself on a regular basis. And, you know, you do this right, because it's usually the thing that's happening for us right now. We do different versions of it quite regularly. So let's graduate out of these ways of doing that aren't working for us and graduate into better ways for us. Ways that we can make sure that we are growing and learning and having a bit more fun and not being so tough on ourselves all the time. All the time. That's something that women's radio station does brilliantly, by the way. We have some new shows coming up. We've got great shows coming up that are focusing on things like the, the menopause part of your life. We've got great shows already that are about being From Tummy to Mummy is a really, really great show if that's a phase that you're in. Other shows like get booked. We've got the classic women's awards about music. There are so many shows here on women's radio station. We are all about your well being in every different area. Judy Mayes Listening is all about me listening specifically to the problems that you have so that we can turn them around and we can transform them. And I just want to say that if you're right now feeling a little bit less than you're feeling a little bit like stuck, maybe that's the term that you're using for it or feeling like it's too late for you, I am here as the person to say you're not stuck. You just stopped, you looked around. Maybe you looked around for a little bit longer than you would have liked. Maybe your focus was on other people that now you know they need to focus on themselves a little bit more and that you can take that focus back and you can look at you and you can dream again. I don't mind where you're sitting right now in the world. Whatever the circumstances are. When you look around the place, the circumstances that really matter are what's going on in your mind and your heart. What have you decided is going to be great for you in this lifetime? Where have you decided to go? What kind of money have you decided to make? What kind of opportunities have you decided to create? How is it that you're going to move forward? What is it that you've learned? Have you really learned what you've learned? Or is it just kind of being baggage that you're carrying around? What is it that's going to happen to you over the next couple of months? Is it that you're going to just roll your sleeves up and make that house gorgeous before you move out? Is it that you are going to Start smiling anyway and just seeing how that's going to feel. Is it that you're going to give yourself more opportunities? Yeah, it might be that the current place you're working in isn't giving you everything that you need. You know what, you can look around elsewhere and I'd really encourage you to give the first part of your day to you have at least 30 minutes where it's all about you, all about you. Dreaming on paper, dreaming out loud, really getting in contact with what's possible. Because when we remember that, we remember there is so much to be experienced. There's so many great things here on the planet for you. You're going to amaze us. You are going to amaze us all. And it's going to start with you just getting brave and amazing yourself by how you design your day. And that is the ultimate cure for disappointment. You've got this. Welcome to the women's radio station supporting women's well being. Women's Radio station is all about diversity from opinions, career, ethnicity, education and most importantly, women's well being. We aim to celebrate the individuality of every woman everywhere, providing opportunities and the platform for your voice. Visit our website womensradiostation.com for more information. Hi everyone and welcome to the Femaling Show. I am your host, Nicole Goodman and I am a woman's identity expert and coach. As women, we fall into different phases of identity through our adult life and during these, our challenges can look pretty similar. Here at wrs, I will be talking to you about the real issues we all face and even the ones we can silently struggle with. Through honest, heartfelt conversation. Here at Femaling, you will learn how to accept yourself, understand yourself and be yourself. Hi, I'm Carolyn Van Beers. Please join me for a brand new show here on women's radio station. 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