Ep 121 - Grieving the Imaginary

There's a specific kind of loss that doesn't get talked about, and that's the loss of a future you thought that you were building toward. Hi, this is Jordana, the CEO of the Recon Network and host of the Embrief Podcast. And today we're talking about disappointment, not the kind that comes from failing at something you tried, but the kind that comes from realizing that the life that you're living isn't the life that you imagine. We're going to talk about why that disappointment is very real and how to hold on to both the loss of what you thought would happen and the possibility of what comes next. This is In Brief. Let's get to it. Let's start with the moment you realize it. You look at your life, the job you're in, the city you're living in, the relationships you have, the routine you're running, and you think, this isn't what I thought it would be. No, it's not terrible, and it's not that you're failing or that things aren't working. It's just not what you wanted. It's smaller in some ways or harder in others, and it's nothing like the vision you had in your head. When you were still planning what came next. And that gap, the space between what you imagined and what you're actually living, creates a quiet kind of grief that sits underneath everything. A lot of people don't have the language for it, so they just push it down. They tell themselves to be grateful that things could be worse, but none of that makes the grief go away. Why do imagined futures feel so real? Because they do. You spend months or years building a picture in your mind, maybe even before you decide to leave service— what your career will look like, what kind of person you'll become, what your days will feel like, where you'd live, who you'd be surrounded by. And that picture isn't random. It's built on expectations. And when those expectations don't materialize, when the trajectory shifts and the life you end up with looks nothing like the one you imagined, It doesn't just feel disappointing. It feels like loss. That's because to your mind, grieving something that never happened is still grief. Doesn't matter that the future you imagined wasn't real yet. It mattered to you. You invested in it. You oriented your life around it. And when it didn't happen, something is lost. And that loss is real. And it's disappointing. But it's important to realize that disappointment is not failure. It's just what happens when reality doesn't match the expectation that you had for it. That's not a flaw in you or a sign that you did something wrong. It's just what happens when life doesn't go according to plan. That in and of itself can feel hard, but it gets harder when you admit that you're disappointed and someone comes along to tell you to be grateful. They might say, look at all you have. You have a job, you have a roof over your head, you have people that care about you, you're alive, you're healthy. And all of that may be true, but gratitude and disappointment aren't opposites. You can be grateful for what you have and still mourn what you don't, just like you can appreciate your life and still wish that it looked different. So what does it mean to mourn an imagined future? Well, first, it means that you let yourself feel it. You let yourself admit that this isn't what you wanted or what you envisioned, and that you wanted everything to be different. You don't rush to fix it. You don't immediately pivot to gratitude or silver linings or everything happens for a reason. You just let it be true for a minute. This is where it comes into play that we embrace the suck, right? We've all heard that. This isn't the life that you planned, and you're allowed to feel that. Now, when you do that, that disappointment doesn't disappear, but it stops taking up so much space. You don't have to let go of the grief before you're allowed to move forward. You just carry it with you. And over time, it gets lighter, not because the loss is less real. But because you've made space for both the grief of the loss and the drive to move forward anyway. You're allowed to be disappointed. You're allowed to grieve the life you thought you were building. You are allowed to wish things had gone differently. None of that means you're ungrateful or pretentious. It just means that you're human. And a human who knows how to manage grief, not evade it, is one that can lean into the bends and turns of life without getting thrown off. So here's a small practice of something that you can do if this is something that you are struggling with. First, write down the vision of the life that you had imagined for yourself, the version of yourself you thought you'd become, the future that you were counting on. Write all of it down in detail. And then underneath that vision, when you're done, write this. That future didn't happen, and it sucks, but I'm okay. Now, after you do this, you don't have to share it. You don't have to do anything with it. Some people like to burn it or tear it up, but the simple act of writing it out makes it real. It's almost as if you're talking to yourself. That future didn't happen, and it sucks, but I'm okay. That making it real is what lets you start letting it go. So yeah, maybe this isn't the life you planned, and that doesn't have to mean failure. It's just a fact. And once you stop fighting the fact that your life didn't go according to plan, you can start engaging with the life that you're actually living. And that life, the real one, not the imagined one, might surprise you. Not because it's better or it's closer to what you dreamed of. But because it's yours. And when you're in control and can move forward with or without that grief, you can be unstoppable.

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