WHEN my daughter failed her driving test she couldn’t hide her disappointment.

She wailed like a wounded animal, letting out her frustration.

“Get over it,” I told her. “You can do it again in a couple of months.” But she was so distraught she clearly wasn’t going to forget it in a hurry.

Having succeeded at almost everything in the 18 years she had been alive, it was her first taste of failure and she found it hard to overcome.

Disappointment is difficult to deal with and some people are better at it than others.

I advised my daughter to put it behind her. “In the scheme of things it doesn’t matter,” I said, adding that failure was “character building.”

How I wish I could practice what I preach. Having not suffered a major disappointment for a while I’d forgotten how it feels.

I was upset and angry after losing a court case we had brought against some neighbours whose dog almost killed our cat while running loose in the street, costing us a fortune in vet’s bills.

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Like my daughter, I felt the disappointment acutely. I wanted to scream at the injustice of it.

That’s what a child would have done. Children will tantrum and cry and yell until the anger runs out and they are ready to move on. Ten minutes later, it is all forgotten.

For adults, it takes longer. “If only I hadn’t done that,” “If only I had done this instead,” we wail, going over and over things in our minds, imagining a different outcome.

Yet disappointments are good for us. To sail through life with only successes would an arrogant human being make. Confronting and dealing with disappointments makes you stronger on the other side.

My daughter is a case in point. She was certainly a little on the arrogant side until the driving test, which was closely followed by a second failure (third time lucky, thank goodness).

She now says that, having lost a certain complacency, she no longer takes success for granted. She tackles things differently and appreciates any accolades all the more.

Expectations play a key role in disappointments, and if they are unrealistic you will end up permanently angry and depressed. Maybe I shouldn’t dwell on the fact that Brad Pitt chose Angelina Jolie over me, or that my Euromillions numbers were all just one digit out.

One of my friends tackles disappointment in a different way. “Always expect the worst so anything else is a bonus,” she says, although not in exactly those words. That’s going to be my way of thinking from now on.