For years I worked hard at not being a disappointment. I wanted to avoid disappointing my parents, my teachers, my friends, my employer, my mate, my children and myself. Have you ever done the same? Maybe it's just me, but I think there is certainly a significant portion of our society that shares my fear of being a disappointment. Those of us who "fear being a disappointment" (FBAD) work diligently to gain the approval of others. We try hard to please, because we are afraid to find out what it would mean to fail.

Our efforts to not disappointment may well indicate a belief that we have to be worthy just to belong. It reveals a belief that we need to be something in order to be acceptable. We've bought into the American virtue of "rugged individualism"where our "Yankee, can-do attitude" demands we succeed or else.

In reality, what underlies our attempts to avoid failure and banish our FBAD is the belief that I actually can please everyone else. This very attitude keeps us trapped in self-centeredness. It's not for the sake of others that we perform. We perform in order to prove that we are something. Driven by our fear that we are nothing, we keep spinning like a hamster on a wheel trying to get somewhere, but finding ourselves further into nowhere. Our drive for approval is not for the benefit of those for whom we dance. Rather, it's about our mad pursuit to obtain approval from others, an approval that for whatever reason we cannot give ourselves.

We are deceived. We fail to understand that happiness can never be found in winning the approval of others. Rather, it comes from the acceptance of what we are not. Freedom comes in facing our fears, not running from them. It comes when I can honestly explore my own inadequacy, my own unworthiness. I must accept what I am and recognize this is all I am, and that no amount of effort will make me better than I am. At that point, I can begin to live in the solution rather than running like a hamster on the wheel attempting to prove I am that which I as a human can never be - perfect. Acceptance of that reality opens up new possibilities, and allows me to recognize that if there isn't a power greater than myself then I'm destined to fail.

When I was finally able to accept the parts of my life which were a disappointment, recognize there were forces which revealed my powerlessness and weakness, and admit that this is as good as I get, then I was able to begin to look for the answer.

Freedom comes from acceptance not from accomplishment. Accomplishment based recovery results only in an ever growing need to continually prove that we are changed, we are good. We live with a FBAD, always wary of what others are thinking about us (a little self-centered). We become engulfed in a fear based life, trying to disprove that which we know, deep down, may very well be true (that we are not and cannot even be perfect). But all the while thinking that if we can just avoid the reality of others discovering the truth, then we can at least bask in the approval we garner from our life of illusion.

Freedom can be found, however, by letting go of our "Yankee, can-do attitude" and moving into honest acceptance of who and what we are (not to be confused with defeat). Freedom happens when we come to the point where we accept we are unworthy, incapable, and powerless. It happens when we allow ourselves to feel a desire for a new way of life. At that point, hope and healing can be found. It's at that point that we can begin to ponder our need for a power greater than ourselves. We must recognize that this is as good as I get and stop trying to get from others what only the God of Light can give.

Frequently, we view the tragedies of life, such as a betrayal, as the low points of our existence. But maybe they are the highlights - the places of great humiliation where we discover and acknowledge how we've lived. The opportunity to accept that what we've pursued hasn't worked, and that it's finally time to try something new. In my life, it was my time of greatest failure, the point when I was clearly a huge disappointment, that finally brought me to my senses and helped me get off my little hamster wheel. If you have a FBAD and are having to face your worst fear, that of being a disappointment, then I'd like to invite you to try something new. Explore whether there might be a spiritual solution, a God bigger than you who can finally accomplish what you have not and never will be able to.

June 2007