Ellen's blog: Act Quickly to Avoid Disappointment

Last week our 3-year old son brought home a teddy bear called Gulliver, along with a scrapbook labelled “Gulliver’s Travels” which was full of photos of Gulliver on his various week-long trips to the homes of some of the other children in the class. Until that moment, I was unaware of Gulliver’s existence, and was therefore not expecting his visit. A quick glance through the scrapbook revealed that he had just come back from a holiday in Portugal during the Easter break, and had previously enjoyed a weekend in Copenhagen, and two West End shows, to name a few. In the latter example, he had been photographed with a 7-ft Shrek.

Unfortunately he’d arrived a week late for our family holiday to Devon (shame - I think he would have enjoyed visiting the former home of Agatha Christie (National Trust), or Dartmouth Naval College, and certainly the Pirate Day in the seaside village of Brixham, which has a pub called “The Lusty Wench”).

Since my husband and I are at work during the week, we could only really use the weekend to entertain Gulliver, so we took some pictures of him peering into the cot of my friend’s 6-day-old baby (never done before, in the history of the scrapbook) and a few more of him climbing a tree, feeding the ducks on a pond on Clapham Common (Auntie Clare’s idea) and having a pizza (with glass of wine - another first).

Late on Tuesday evening (due to mis-calculation re realistic departure time from work) I prit-sticked the photos of Gulliver’s time with us into the scrapbook, and on Wednesday morning, as soon as he opened his eyes I briefed my 3-year-old on what I had done, (so as not to create the appearance to the school that the parents had done the homework…even though he’s 3 and therefore can’t yet write, so I suppose they don’t expect much in the way of contribution from him to the overall output)

My husband asked me why I was making such a fuss about it, and I could only respond that I wanted our son’s first school project to be at least as good as those of the bear’s previous host families. He thought this was competitive and slightly nonsensical, but I just didn’t want our little boy to feel disappointed or embarrassed, probably because of my own recent experience of both, in a professional context.

An opportunity recently arose at work for me to broaden my experience by filling a vacant post on an interim basis; the role was a good match to my skill set, and would have given me an opportunity to broaden my experience and raise my profile within my firm. I thought about it very carefully, and consulted some trusted advisors before proposing to my boss that I put my hat in the ring. Too late, another colleague had submitted a detailed proposal outlining his suitability for the role within a day of it coming up. I don’t know who would have been chosen had we both applied at the same time, but it would never have occurred to me to get in there so fast. Just as it would probably never have occurred to him to wait and get some advice before putting himself forward.

I was obviously disappointed, but felt overwhelmingly embarrassed that I had suggested myself for a role, and not been successful. I didn’t want to make a fuss, and possibly as a result, it has been suggested that I take a personal development objective for the coming year of taking steps to address (rather than avoid) difficult or potentially embarrassing conversations and situations. I’m going to accept this challenge, because there must be some happy medium between concealing one’s feelings of disappointment, and lashing out at the people who have contributed to them! As soon as I find out where that tipping point is, I’ll be sure to share it with you.

Ellen has two boys aged 5 and 3 who are both at school (although the youngest is in the school’s nursery). She recently joined a brokerage firm in the City following a 6-month career break which marked the end of her involvement with the banking world, after 15 years. She has an au pair to help out at home.