I am learning a lot of myself and expectations. For my childhood I think my expectations on life was that it's all about me. If I didn't get my way I had a tantrum and stomped off to my room. As a teenager I started to learn that it is more than about me and I started seeing the World as the bigger place that it is today. In my 20's I think I reverted a bit back to my childhood in that I need to find a job, an apartment, friends how can I make myself happy all the time. Once I got married I knew marriage was about compromise and I was in with a partner for now on so clearly it wasn't about me but "us". Most of my life I expected life to be like the movies, painless, easy, happy, fun.... ALL the time.
Spoiler Alert: Life is not painless, easy happy and fun all the time.
The question I started thinking about is how can I make my life less hard. The answer my friends is....lower your expectations. Initially when I started saying this idea out loud "lower your expectations" it sounds like I am requiring less but that is not the case. If you are expecting life to be easy and like fairytale of course when things are not one will be very disappointed. An example, flying with kid: Flying with the kids is not like flying by myself where I can sit back and relax and read, watch movies and sleep. It's not fun or relaxing but I expected that if no one threw up on me, pooped on me, or needed to use their spare clothes than the flight was a success. The flight is a finite amount of time.
By readjusting one's expectations then when things don't go completely as planned one will be less disappointed, it's a fact-I've done research.
Today we started our second attempt at the first day of school. School wasn't working out for us as we had expected so we we made a new plan and today was our first day. I expected the transition to be hard, confusing, and to be met with resistance. There was a roller coaster of emotions expressed by our son even up until the moment we walked into the new school. I expected that if drop-off when ok (by ok I mean tearless) then the day will be great. We live near the school so I knew that if there was a real problem they would call me and I could be their in New York minute. I also knew what capable and confident teachers were there and my gut felt this would not be the case. The day was great. No tears, no tantrums, and we are going back tomorrow. Great expectations.
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