Manage Your Expectations in Order to Better Manage Your Emotions

Expectations—they shape everything they touch. They can poison our relationships, infect others, color the way we see our whole world. Instead of managing your partner, your parents, your kids—maybe try managing your expectations first.

I wake up to loud voices coming from the kitchen. Immediately I think, "they can't even go five minutes without fighting!!" Enraged, I race downstairs, reprimands already brewing on my tongue. I expect fighting, this triggers my internal negative voice that my fighting kids is a result of my defective parenting, hence I'm defective. Before I am even in the same room with my 3 children, I am armed and ready for a battle with them and fully tormenting myself about my own shortcomings. 

I enter the kitchen—and see that the three of them are crowded around their dad, watching a funny video on his phone of their two year old cousin. No one is fighting. Nothing is broken. No one is (visibly) defective. But my own expectations and perceptions have already colored the beginning of my day, starting me down a path that is painful and difficult to redirect.

Let's rewind and try that again, replacing my expectations that (1) kids should be quiet and (2) loud kids equal fighting kids with CURIOSITY about what I'll find when I get downstairs. 

I wake up to loud voices coming from the kitchen—get out of bed and wander down the stairs to investigate. On the way down, my curious human brain begins to collect data about what I can already perceive and form hypotheses about what scene I'll find. Listening, without expectation and therefore without big emotional responses, I find that no one is crying, no one is screaming, and I can hear my husband's voice narrating something. I round the corner from the stairs and notice, with my calm nervous system I am able to approach the scene without a negative feedback loop starting in my head. I don't find any hidden messages about myself in the sounds of their voices, and I'm able to observe that they are all laughing, cooing at the phone as they watch their cousin.

The moral of the story is so simple, and it applies to so many relationships and situations. LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS. If you know your mom is always late, remind yourself of that before you meet up with her and build it into your expectation. Not with resentment or hostility, but with curiosity, as if you are observing a specimen in a lab setting. 

I'm not saying this is easy. Lord knows, it is not. But especially in these difficult and pressurized times, bringing curiosity instead of negative perceptions into any situation can change our interactions for the better.

Sending peace, love, and fresh produce vibes.