You may have heard the saying, “Happiness is reality minus expectations.” Our expectations often influence our perception of the world. These “prior beliefs” influence how we interpret present events. Unrealistic expectation is often the main villain in my personal narrative. I’ll have these Kodak moment images of how things should be in my head, and when reality doesn’t reflect that perfect image, I’m disappointed—sometimes bitterly so. Expectation is premeditated disappointment, plain and simple. I know this. I know better. And yet, I still can engage in expectation traps if I’m not mindful.
Disappointment is the gap that exists between expectation and reality.
—John C. Maxwell
This was particularly true with the birth of my firstborn. I had all these images of how beautiful and magical the day would be. I’d played the Hallmark movie version several times in my head. Instead, my water broke eight weeks early, and I was helicoptered (trauma-ridden and by myself) to a county hospital across town—supposedly because that hospital was known to have the most advanced neonatal care in the area.
As I was being wheeled in, they asked me if I spoke English, very slowly and very loudly, may I add, as if being a brunette (back then, anyway) had addled my senses in addition to whatever other biases they were operating under. A number of my compatriots there were pregnant female inmates from the local prison in wheelchairs with shackles and police escorts. The birthing room had cockroaches. The nurses told me I was just lucky there was a working TV with two channels. Dim, dismal, and somewhat dilapidated, it wasn’t exactly the birthing suite I was expecting.
After I gave birth to my precious four-pound baby girl, the medical staff rushed her to emergency to check her vitals. My family, of course, went with the baby. Not thinking, the nurse turned off the light. I laid there in the dark, temporarily paralyzed from the waist down, by myself, not even having held my baby before they took her away. Talk about surreal. WTF had just happened? Was this a nightmare? Did I even really give birth?
Did you ever see Poltergeist, where the teenager Dana comes home at the end of the movie, and the entire house is being sucked into a crazy, demonic vortex, and she just starts screaming over and over again, “What’s happening?!” That was me in my mind. I almost couldn’t process my reality versus my expectations.
Days later, I was discharged without my baby. She spent a few more weeks in the NICU. Every night, I sat in her empty nursery and just cried. This wasn’t how I’d imagined it to be. Long story short, despite the fact that my daughter was discharged from the hospital with a clean bill of health not long after, I couldn’t stave off the postpartum depression, and that rift—the deep chasm between my expectations of my birthing experience and its reality—played a huge part in sparking that depression, not to mention my elevated-to-epic-proportions anxiety over a delicate preemie baby, risk of SIDS, etc. Thank goodness for therapy and medication.
Moral of the story? Expectations can really f*ck you up.
Think of all the expectations you have operating at any given moment. Expectations of your significant other. Coworkers. Children. Expectations of events. Holidays. Birthdays. Date night. There’s nothing great about expectations. It’s a psychological setup that you perpetrate on yourself—setting yourself and others up for failure because, God forbid, reality doesn’t meet your expectations. It’s the Should Shitshow. Do yourself a favor and remove “should” from your thinking.
How do you avoid the expectation pitfall? Again, the first step is awareness. Always check in with yourself. What are your expectations of this person or situation? Are they realistic? What are they based on? Communicate instead. People aren’t mind readers or privy to your laundry list of expectations. Instead of getting mad at your partner because they “should” have taken out the garbage, simply ask them to please take out the trash. Instead of being disappointed with birthday plans, express what you’d like to do. We expect people to be mind readers and then get disappointed when it turns out that people can’t read minds. Why be an intentional saboteur? You, too, can be an emotional archeologist and happiness architect. It’s a choice.
Have you ever heard the phrase “choose your hard”? It’s prevalent in social media, and I’m slightly obsessed with it. It’s a quick filter tune-up that works when I need it the most.
Marriage is hard. Divorce is hard.
Choose your hard.
Obesity is hard. Being fit is hard.
Choose your hard.
Being in debt is hard. Being financially disciplined is hard.
Choose your hard.
Communication is hard. Not communicating is hard.
Choose your hard.
Life will never be easy. It will always be hard.
Choose your hard.
—Anonymous
You get to choose: your response over a reaction; acknowledgment over being right; communication over expectation. When you’re mindful and aware, you choose the right hard.