I’ve always thought that disappointment is bad.

It is.

The feelings it brings up are ugly.

And messy.

And unexpected.

It shakes our whole being and present moment. It shatters our hopes and dreams and makes us think we’re stupid.

There’s nothing helpful about that. Expecting something then getting something completely different is heartbreaking. The pain that stems from disappointment is so severe that it triggers feelings of insecurity and hopelessness.

I hate being disappointed, but I’ve gotten used to it. I no longer assume that everything will go perfectly fine because the truth is it won’t. As a practicing Buddhist I understand that I should accept life’s disappointments rather than fight or deny them.

One of the best things I have learned in Buddhism about suffering is that we can always transform it. Like a play dough, we can mold it, break it apart, and stick it together.

It sounds crazy, I know. How can we let something so painful and unpleasant transform us? How can we play so effortlessly with pain without letting it break us?

But maybe we must break. There’s nothing to fear about being broken, angry, sad, or disappointed. That’s exactly where transformation takes place—where we open our hearts. The moment we do that, our reality softens and we see the many unexpected benefits of being disappointed.

If we allow our hearts to break, we may discover the following:

We eventually make peace with disappointment. At the beginning of any painful event, we may resist our feelings and the disappointing situation. We fight and reject our current reality because it holds so much pain. At some point, our hearts start to open and we make peace with what is. We accept things as they are in this moment and stop resisting. Living with disappointment actually feels peaceful.

We let go of false hope. When we set the bar too high for others, we expect them to live up to our expectations. When they fail to do that, we get hurt and drown in misery. With acceptance and a little mental effort, we can transform that emotion and let go of false hope, inviting something into our life that’s far more concrete and beautiful. We invite wisdom instead of wishful thinking and awareness instead of despair.

We focus on self-growth. When the world disappoints us, we may naturally shift our attention to ourselves and focus on our own needs. We may disappoint ourselves every now and then, but we can always choose and prioritize ourselves again. Disappointment should teach us that the best relationship we can ever build is the one we have with ourselves.

We adjust our expectations. When disappointments break us, we need to take that opportunity to revisit our own assumptions. The truth is sometimes we break our own hearts, and the only way to create mental peace and maximize our happiness is to drop our expectations of others, ourselves, and life. If we can recognize our unreasonable expectations, we can build healthier and happier relationships—with ourselves and the world.

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