Who Are You When You Don't Get What You Want?

On integrity, disappointment, ambition and the man you become when life doesn't go your way.

I've met some extraordinary men in my life.

Ambitious men. Generous men. Men of faith. Men who love their familie wholeheartedly, work hard, build businesses, create opportunities and genuinely want to make a difference.

The truth is it's relatively easy to be the man you want to be when life is giving you what you want.

When people agree with you. When business is going well. When your generosity is appreciated, your loyalty reciprocated and your efforts recognised. What a wonderful world.

But what happens when that’s not the case?

When somebody you believed in disappoints you. When a business arrangement doesn't go your way. When someone you've helped says no. When another man wants something different from what you want.

What happens to your kindness, respect, patience, faith and integrity?

Are those things part of who you are or privileges other people enjoy only while they please you?

I believe one of the greatest challenges of becoming a genuinely successful man is learning to remain the man we want to be when we don't get what we want.

When a good man stops giving you what you want

A man can be generous, attentive and encouraging for years. Then someone declines an invitation, disagrees with his plan, refuses an opportunity or takes a different direction.

Suddenly the descriptions change.

Yesterday that person was loyal and admirable. Today he's selfish, difficult, ungrateful or "not the man I thought he was."

Sometimes that judgement is justified. People really do lie, betray trust and break promises. We mustn't romanticise bad behaviour or ask men to tolerate it.

And sometimes the only thing that has changed is this: the other person stopped choosing what we wanted him to choose.

Did his character change? Or did his usefulness to us change?

It's can be an uncomfortable question, especially for those of us who take pride in being generous and loyal.

We're allowed to feel disappointed. Of course we are. The question is what we do with that disappointment and whether our opinion of somebody's entire humanity now depends on a single decision that didn't suit us.

Do we now decide get to decide if he is a good man or not based on his cooperation?

Not everybody who disappoints you has wronged you. And not everybody who disagrees with you is against you.

Life is give and receive. Not give and take.

I don't believe life should become an endless negotiation of what we can extract from one another.

Life is give and receive. What is received should be freely given, never grabbed.

I deeply believe in the law of fair exchange.

Give your time. Your attention. Your effort. Your word. Your affection. Your encouragement. What you genuinely have to offer.

And learn to receive what another person freely chooses to give.

Never manipulate it out of them, create guilt until they surrender it, or treat yesterday's generosity as a down payment on tomorrow's obedience.

A freely offered gesture is a gift. Attach an invisible invoice and you've changed the entire exchange.

Now, let's be sensible. Mutuality counts. Our needs deserve our consideration and effort. Healthy relationships cannot survive indefinitely on one person's giving and the other's taking.

You can ask clearly for what you need. You can expect promises to be kept. You can decide that a friendship, partnership or relationship isn't working. You can also say no when you need to.

Somebody else's freedom does not end where your desires begin.

The fact that you would have given something doesn't necessarily mean another person owes it to you.

Give generously. Receive gratefully. Ask honestly. And learn to hear no without losing your mind.

Never hide your intentions

I have sat in far too many meetings where people concealed what they actually wanted.

Not just business meetings, social gatherings as well where the other persons intention was pure extraction and manipulation.

There was a pleasant conversation. Everyone smiled, agreed that it sounded exciting, and left the room apparently happy. But beneath that conversation were intentions, conditions and expectations that nobody had the courage to put on the table.

Then, weeks later, somebody was disappointed. Suddenly you were expected to honour an agreement you never knew existed.

You cannot hold somebody accountable to an agreement you never made with them.

If you want something from me, tell me. If there's a condition attached to your generosity, be clear about it. If you expect something in return, say so while we can both make an informed decision.

And I owe you the same honesty.

There is nothing shameful about having an agenda. We all have things we're trying to achieve. The problem begins when we disguise our intentions, hoping the other person will somehow arrive at the answer we want.

A hidden expectation is an unfair test. The other person cannot knowingly accept, decline or negotiate something they haven't been told.

In business, that means speaking plainly about objectives, money, responsibilities and boundaries. In friendship, it means saying what you need instead of silently keeping score. In our closest relationships, it means allowing people to know what we're really feeling and asking for.

Show people who you are. Tell them what you want. Give them the dignity of an honest choice.

That sort of clarity may cost you a deal, an opportunity or somebody's approval. It also saves you from building relationships on assumptions that will eventually collapse.

A genuine no creates room for a genuine yes

And that brings me to a word more men should learn to respect: No.

Say no when you mean no. Say yes when you mean yes.

A reluctant yes, offered to avoid discomfort or secure approval, often becomes resentment later. A vague maybe can leave people investing time and hope in something you already know you don't want.

A clear no gives everyone something incredibly valuable: THE TRUTH.

It lets the other person make a new decision. It frees time, energy and attention for people and opportunities that genuinely align. And it makes your yes worth trusting.

A no creates space for a genuine yes.

Now here's the harder part: be a man about it when somebody else says no to you.

Don't punish their honesty. Don't withdraw basic respect. Don't make them responsible for the disappointment you feel because they chose differently.

You may wish their answer had been yes. You may be frustrated. You may need time to process it. That's human.

But think about what their no gives you. You now know where you stand. You can stop guessing, stop persuading and stop investing in an outcome the other person doesn't freely want.

An honest no is often in your favour, even when it isn't the answer you hoped for.

And if you want men to be honest with you, become someone who can hear an unwelcome answer without making them regret telling you the truth.

Does your integrity have terms and conditions?

My dad Hannes always says: never do business with a man you know needs a written contract to keep his word.

Do you need a contract to keep your word?

I believe in contracts. Good contracts clarify expectations, protect both parties and provide a fair basis for resolving disagreements. That's responsible business.

But a contract should never be the only reason a man acts honourably.

What happens when you could exploit an ambiguity and get away with it? When honouring your word costs more than you anticipated? When the person across the table has less negotiating power than you?

Can you make a sound commercial decision and still be fair? Can you protect your interests without misleading another man?

Of course you can.

Yet I've heard the phrase "business is business" used as though it excuses conduct a man would be embarrassed to defend at his own dinner table.

Business is business. It requires commercial judgement. Not every deal can work, not every employee can stay, and not every request can be accommodated.

But business decisions don't happen in a moral vacuum.

You cannot outsource your character to the circumstances.

The man signing the agreement is the same man going home to his family. The man negotiating the deal is the same man speaking about his faith. Different roles demand different decisions, guided by the same values.

One man. In every room.

I've come to think of integrity as wholeness.

A man isn't five separate people: one for business, one for family, one for friendship, one for faith and one for the moments nobody sees.

He is one person carrying different responsibilities into different rooms.

Honesty may look different when talking to your eight-year-old son than when negotiating a major deal. But both conversations deserve real honesty.

Love doesn't require you to indulge every request. Kindness doesn't prevent you from being firm. Grace doesn't mean abandoning consequences.

Integrity means remaining accountable to the same underlying values wherever life takes you.

And none of us gets this right all the time.

I've made mistakes. I've responded from frustration. I've found myself expecting people to understand my intentions while struggling to extend the same generosity to theirs at times.

That's precisely why I don't want to write about character as though it's a trophy some men earn and then display forever. It’s like brushing your teeth daily. 

Character is practiced, especially when we're tired, afraid, ambitious, wounded or disappointed.

Your values are not everybody else's instructions

Here's where this becomes more complicated.

A man starts working on himself. He builds discipline, clarifies his values, deepens his faith, takes responsibility and sets meaningful goals.

Wonderful.

But then he starts measuring everybody around him against the blueprint he's created for his life.

If another man isn't as ambitious, he's lazy. If he chooses a different path, he's wasting his potential. If he disagrees, he's unsupportive.

Without realising it, self-development can become self-righteousness.

Your values are a compass for your conduct. They don't give you authority over somebody else's journey.

Different men have different responsibilities, hopes, histories, burdens and dreams. Some will want to build enormous companies or die trying. Others will want quiet homes, ordinary afternoons and enough time with the people they love. Some will have beliefs or priorities different from yours.

You can have strong convictions and still admit you don't understand every chapter of another man's story.

My faith is central to how I live. And part of what I understand through it is that people have dignity beyond their usefulness to me.

Being made in God's image is not an award someone wins for agreeing with my plans.

I can recognise somebody's worth as a child of God while disagreeing with his decisions. And I can respect his path without making it my own.

A small circle can be wise. Keep your worldview generous.

Choose your people carefully. Respect people broadly.

I'm a great believer in being intentional about who gets close to you.

Your closest relationships shape your decisions, habits, peace and direction. Build those relationships around shared values, mutual trust and personal responsibility.

Not everybody belongs in your inner circle. Not everybody is the right business partner, friend or confidant for this season.

You can limit someone's access to your life while continuing to recognise his dignity.

You can end a partnership without turning the other person into an enemy.

You can disagree without humiliating.

You can recognise incompatibility without inventing some moral failure on their side.

And you can be thankful for what a person contributed to one chapter without insisting they accompany you into the next.

That takes discernment, maturity and dignity.

Ambition without entitlement

Yes, men should have enormous value aligned ambitions. Build the business. Strengthen your body. Be the father, partner, friend and leader you intend to be. Pursue a life you can stand behind.

But ambition doesn't give us ownership of other people's choices.

Other people have their own stories, dreams and responsibilities. They have lives to build, too.

And sometimes their faithful pursuit of what they value will conflict with what we want.

We can negotiate. We can ask. We can persuade respectfully. We can adjust our expectations. We can accept that a relationship needs to change.

Disappointment is never a blanket permission to abandon our principles.

Build your life deliberately. Respect another man's freedom to build his.

 

When the income stops, which altar have you been serving?

There’s another form of disappointment that can shake a man to his core: when the security he’s worked so hard to build begins to disappear.

This is something I experienced personally when I came out as a gay man.

Our business suffered almost immediately. For some people, I was no longer quite the man they thought they knew. They needed time to process that, ask their own questions and consider whether our values still aligned.

I understood that. I also had to face what their uncertainty meant for our business, my livelihood and the future I’d worked so hard to build.

I knew who I was. Other people were reconsidering who they thought I was. And I had to trust God through that uncertainty.

There’s a much bigger story here, and one I’d like to explore properly in a future article. For now, it belongs in this conversation because it taught me something about faith, security and allowing other people the freedom to make their own choices.

The income slows. The deal falls through. The business struggles. A relationship changes. Suddenly the future looks nothing like the one you’ve spent years preparing for.

Sometimes we only discover what we’ve been relying on when the false god can no longer hold us up.

For many men, the altar we’ve been serving becomes visible the moment the income stops.

I understand the fear. Providing for people you love is a serious responsibility. Bills are real. Children need care. People depend on us. Feeling frightened when your financial position changes is deeply human.

But beneath that fear, another truth sometimes lurks: Where have I placed my ultimate security?

It's possible to love God, pray sincerely and speak about faith while slowly placing more and more of our confidence in money, status, a successful business or our own perceived ability to control outcomes.

These things can be good. Money allows us to provide, build and give. Success can create extraordinary opportunities. But even good things become false idols when we begin asking them to give us the certainty, identity and peace that belong to God.

Jesus puts it plainly in Matthew 6:24: “You cannot serve both God and money.”

And 1 Timothy 6:17 warns against placing our hope in wealth, which is uncertain, and calls us to place that hope in God.

I recognise this temptation in myself. When things were going well, it was so easy to think: Look! I'm doing it. I've got this.

And when they weren't, I carried the entire weight of the outcome as if everything depended on me.

Deuteronomy 8:17–18 speaks directly to that pride: the temptation to believe our strength alone produced our wealth, forgetting the God who gave us the ability to build it in the first place.

I've explored that illusion of control in my earlier article, Start Where It's Finished: How to Create a Vision for Your Life. I still believe in dreaming boldly and working exceptionally hard. And I'm learning that doing my part does not make me the author of every outcome.

The ego wants a guarantee. Faith teaches us to trust God while we do the work in front of us. Do your best now. That is all you can ever do. 

Follow the pillar when it moves

I love the picture of God's guidance in Exodus.

As the Israelites travelled through the wilderness, God led them in a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night (Exodus 13:21–22). When the cloud lifted, they moved. When it remained, they stayed (Exodus 40:36–37).

Imagine how uncomfortable that must have been for people who wanted to know exactly where they were going, how long it would take and what life would look like when they arrived.

They had to remain attentive to the guidance they were given.

When the pillar moves, move.

I take that as a powerful picture for my own life. I can make plans, build systems, keep promises and work towards enormous goals. I should. That's part of stewardship.

And I must also remain willing to change direction, admit what I cannot control, seek wisdom, pray and respond faithfully when life unfolds differently.

Of course, every setback isn't automatically a message from God to abandon your plans. Discernment takes prayer, honest reflection, sound judgement and sometimes trusted counsel.

And trusting God isn't a guarantee that we'll never experience financial difficulty, grief or disappointment.

In Isaiah 41:10, God's reassurance begins with His presence: “So do not fear, for I am with you.”

There is real comfort in that. We may still have difficult decisions to make. We may have to rebuild, start smaller, work harder or walk through a season we never would have chosen.

We can do all of that while turning towards God.

Perhaps the moment my ego doesn't get what it wants is also the moment I have the clearest opportunity to live by what I believe.

To act with integrity. To give another man a genuine choice. To keep my word. To care for my family. To take responsibility for what is mine. To release my grip on what was never fully mine to control.

And to follow God into the next chapter, even if the path looks different from the one I imagined.

What about when you're the disappointment?

Now for the part that's easy to forget.

At some point, you will disappoint somebody.

You'll decline an invitation. Refuse a deal. Change direction. Choose your family over somebody else's expectations. Fail to live up to a promise. Make a mistake.

Sometimes you'll disappoint a person simply because you cannot give them what they want.

And sometimes you'll disappoint them because you've genuinely done wrong.

Two different situations, two different responses.

If you've broken your word, own it. Apologise. Repair what you reasonably can. Learn from the experience. Integrity includes accountability.

If you've made a considered, honest decision consistent with your responsibilities and values, another person's unhappiness does not automatically prove you were wrong.

You can disappoint somebody without betraying your values. And you can get everything you wanted while betraying them completely.

We all need the humility to examine ourselves and the courage to stand by considered decisions even when others disapprove.

The real work begins when things go sideways

So what does a man actually do when he's angry, hurt or disappointed?

First, recognise the feeling without handing it the steering wheel. Disappointment is information. You still have to decide what to do with it.

Then ask yourself a few straight up questions:

• What actually happened? Separate a broken commitment from an unmet preference. The real truth of what really happened.
• Was the expectation actually spoken? Am I holding somebody to an agreement we never made?
• Have I been honest about what I want? Could the other person freely say no?
• What am I making this mean about the other person? Am I judging their conduct or condemning their whole character?
• What am I genuinely entitled to expect? Was there an explicit agreement or an expectation I never communicated?
• Where have I placed my security? Am I trusting God while doing my part or demanding that a particular outcome make me feel safe?
• What would my values require of me here? Right now, while emotions, fear and uncertainty are running high.
• What boundary or decision is appropriate? Kindness and firmness can coexist.
• What part, if any, is mine to own? Am I prepared to extend the accountability I expect from others?

You won't always get a comfortable answer. That's the point.

The mature response may be forgiveness. It may be a difficult conversation. Sometimes with yourself. It may be enforcing a contract. It may be ending the relationship.

Whatever the decision, let it come from deliberate judgement rather than an urge to punish somebody for making you uncomfortable.

Be one whole man

Brother, build your empire. Chase your ambitions. Protect your peace. Choose your people carefully. Honour your word and take responsibility for the life you're creating.

Be honest about your intentions. Say yes wholeheartedly and no clearly. Give other men the freedom to do the same.

Do your part exceptionally well. Keep your eyes on God. And when the pillar moves, have the courage and humility to follow.

And remember that the world is filled with other men building lives as rich, complex and meaningful to them as yours is to you.

Some will walk alongside you. Some will challenge you. Some will disappoint you. Some will choose entirely different paths.

You don't have to agree with all of them. You don't have to trust all of them. And you certainly don't have to take all of them with you.

But you remain responsible for the man you choose to be in their presence.

A whole man isn't a “perfect” man. He's willing to recognise when his behaviour and his values have drifted apart and courageous enough to bring them back together even it the cost is high. 

Your character belongs to you. Your circumstances, your success and the people who disappoint you do not get to determine it.

Be one whole man. In every room. In every relationship. In every season of your life.

Especially when things don't go your way.

And ask yourself this:

When life doesn't give you what you want, are you still proud of the man you choose to be?

— Jacque Visagie