How do you handle your disappointments?

I believe everyone has their own way to release/get away from their disappointments. What is yours?

Today, I face one of my disappointments at work. To be honest, I seldom have disappointments about my work other than its routine nature.

I have this desire that I hope to be a mentor of a new joiner in my team. I have spoken to my only senior in the team and she says why not? She is absolutely fine with me guiding any new joiner that is going to join our team in the foreseeable future.

Today the new joiners came to the production floor and introduce themselves. My senior is not around and the other experienced fund accountant (labeled as A) led the new joiner and have us all introduced ourselves. “A” introduced him to his new mentor, which is another experienced fund accountant (labeled as B) who has more experience (to be truth, I have the least experience in the team because I just joined the firm for six months). Well, she did not do it on purpose as she really did not know that I was hoping to be a mentor, so things were cool.

Then I spoke to A after the new joiner left after introduction, asking her if it was the manager who assigned B as his mentor. She said no and it was her decision on that matter. So she then knows my intention for asking. She said she thinks that I am not ready to guide the new joiner. Instantly, I felt upset and offended at the same time. I wanted to tell her that it is not what she thinks about me if I am ready to guide, it should be me myself who think if I am ready.

To be honest, even though I am the newest in the team, but it does not mean that I am not capable of calculating the daily net asset values (NAV). I am able to justify all of the daily NAV impacts accurately.

Unfortunately, the B fund accountant is really the best among us and he has not guided any new joiners. I am absolutely fine with him guiding the new kid simply because he has no pupil in his 2 years tenure as a fund accountant (well, unlike me, he never wanted one). Probably it is just because the fact that I am not guiding the new kid is not within my calculation. Again, it comes back to that, expectation. I was really excited when I saw the new kid today, he is an Indian guy, and I greeted him with thinking “Hey, you are going to be my new disciple”. Unfortunately, he will not be one.

That’s the story. I felt really frustrated at the time the A told me that I am not ready for it. I mean, how would she know that I am not ready? Perhaps she thinks that the fact that I have just 6 months of experience.

How did I handle the frustration? I kept it to myself. I was angry, but I did not have the intentions to destroy anything. I channeled all of the frustration within myself. Of course my facial features could not manage to hide all of them; I remained silent for a while. Within my mind, there were all these crazy thoughts that were looking for non-physical ways to hurt/annoy the A. Things like for not responding to her questions, not going to volunteer to help her out in the daily production, etc. You know, small little things like that running throughout my mind.

Well, I don’t like myself being like that. I need to learn to be able to embrace things better, especially all of the unwanted things that are not in my calculation/expectation. When I looked back at this event which happened just yesterday, I felt that my EQ level is not there. I am hoping to increase it. The question is how? I think I need more moments like this and write them down each time I faced them.

I have seen some other guys who really channel their angers through destruction of items. I think they would feel better after destruction of each item. I have never reached that kind of stage though. However I really believe I won’t behave such a way.

I remember when I was in high school, like when I was 13 or 14, I used to tear, squeeze the unwanted papers with my fist, making them looking like a throwing basketball and toss them into the dustbin. Then my best friend Li Ching, who actually picked up the tossed paper from the bin and re-fold them into 4 folds (half with horizontal line in the middle, and then half again, making them small enough so that it could fit into the bin). She said this is one of the good anger management exercises that we should practice. By doing so, she believed that we would not channel our frustration towards the item. I find what she said to be so significant that I have always folded them into 4 folds before these papers enter into the bin since then. Now that when I looked back, I felt that perhaps this led me to be less aggressive.