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expectations

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Minimalist Packing, Like the Name Says – Simplifying Expectations

Posted on January 15, 2017

This week in Portland, Oregon we got hit with a whammy of a snow storm.IMG_1218 All this snow has given us a lot of indoor time and aside from playing chess with my work schedule (seeing which clients could come in when), sitting by the roaring fire and playing competitive games of Qwirkle we have also been dreaming a lot about our travel plans.

In the planning for our trip, I am taking a lot of notes about some of the subtler areas of preparing for travel that may not be as exciting (although I find it tandilizing) as a destination search but, certainly just as important for a successful trip. Two areas I have been reading about are in the packing and minimalism.

I want to be a better packer in any of my travels. I don’t like spending time worrying that I am missing something and therefore, can’t really tune into my experience. You know what I am talking about; the FOMO (fear of missing out).

I first heard about this at The World Domination Summit that I have attended for four years. An amazing gathering of like-minded individuals that want to live “an exceptional life lguiueqplhw-inbal-marilliin a conventional world. I would recommend learning more about this gathering and community here through Chris Guillebeau’s website. I am certain I will write more about his community and work as we go along  but, I digress.

Two things I am excited about are these travel helps aka hacks. Smaller bags and unique packing tools to help one take everything in on a carry on (I have yet to master this) as well as help you find things more easily. Diane Smith of Kid   has some great suggestions in her 8 Hacks in Traveling with Kids. Their website Kidtripster is a fun overall site to visit. Who would have thought the travel cubes would be so helpful! Also, love the silicone liquid carriers.

The other awesome resource is Tsh Oxenreider whose site The Art of Simple has some fun places to poke around in to feed your desire to become more ‘simple’ as well as soothe your travel bug. I really like her list on a packing list for women.

Tsh and her friend Stephanie Langford gave a great presentation at the WDS Academy last summer on how to travel for six months or longer. fhblheica-k-clem-onojeghuoI was so inspired by their work I came home and told my husband about the possibility of changing our trip of a year-long move to Brussels to a Yeear Long Round the World trip. And here we are planning it all!

Thanks Tsh and Stephanie! I am sure I will reference them again but, here I tip my lightweight, crushable travel hat to them! More to come!

 

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Leaning into the Discomfort and Looking for Respect

Posted on November 23, 2016

I have an interesting job for this time in our culture. Over the years, as a therapist, I hear people talk about their varied concerns.  These last two weeks, I have more about the same subject, the election. Thoughts, concerns, worries, musings, humor, fear, agitation and indignation.

Living in a Blue state in a metro area, it is not surprising that most of the people I hear from are talking about their shock, sadness, anger and dismay. images-3.jpegPeople have various ideas on how to proceed with their feelings; get involved, avoid the news, protest or barricade themselves at home.

In the last weeks, I have heard the some words repeatedly; echo chamber, the bubble,  phone bank, the media, donation…among others. One thread I am following is confusion and desire to know and understand. It slowly comes out that we need to talk more and that doesn’t just mean to the people whose answers we already know. It is time to lean into the discomfort.

The weekend after the election, I was at a locally owned store we frequent and the owner and I have a friendly banter. I asked him if we was one of the 59 million who voted for Trump. He looked at me a bit sheepishly and said, ‘I don’t talk about it much for fear of being judged’.

I stood back in took him in. ‘Oh, okay’, I said. ‘Tell me, how did you decide?’ He told me it was for his business and thought that change is needed at the higher levels of governing.images This man has a disability and has family member that is also disabled. Somewhere, he feels disenfranchised with the current system.

I nodded, thinking that this seems like a reasonable, political point, especially if you are fiscally conservative. That being said, I asked, ‘Well, okay, but can you explain him to my kids?’ as I pointed to my boys who were hovering nearby. He said, ‘That part is harder. I don’t like the behavior of this man..’ and he trailed off. We spoke a bit more and moved on to other topics.

Seems like we are going to have more and more of these conversations. Many likely at the Thanksgiving table this year. I am not picking sides (yes, I am left leaning) but, it seems we all know what our ‘peeps’ will say. We need to lean in ask the tough questions of ‘why and how’. The open-ended, curious questions that show we are not just waiting to talk again but, we are listening. We all want to be heard.

Now, I get it there is a lot of extreme rhetoric out there and it’s hard to know who believes what from a glance but, also we can’t assume. If someone has an opinion we need to ask ‘why?’  Myself, I work hard to teach my kids how to be good citizens and that means a lot of explaining about differences, privilege and the varied things that make a person and I don’t have all the answers. images-2I don’t always get it right. Sometimes I really screw it up but, I try to circle back and revisit the best I can.

While living in a progressive, lefty city, I grew up in rural Red State where Reagan was a God and my Dad was the preacher. My Dad was not a religious man by any conventional standards but, he was definitely the spokesperson (and financial contributor) for the importance of the Republican party. He had many flaws (like all of us) and one if his big ones was that he didn’t have room for discourse.

There was no space for an exchange of pluralistic views at our dinner table and many times he called me a ‘tree-hugging, fish-kissing’ liberal. Whether that label was a friendly jib, earnestly or not, my exploring views were not well tolerated in his presence. So, I stopped sharing them.

We moved on to less political topics and we rarely opened the door on these thoughtful, provocative topics. We played it safe. I believed I knew him and his rhetoric and I imagine he thought I was crazy or at least misguided. We didn’t ever say, ‘tell me why you think that way’ or ‘help me understand’.

Sound familiar? Again, we can find the people to agree with us but, to sit through the dialogue of those with which we disagree, that is the hard part. There is no guarantee that it will feel good or we will feel heard.images-1 That part is called vulnerability, as Brene’ Brown says, ‘it’s scary and brave at the same time’.

I don’t have the solutions, the method or the way out of our conflicts but, I am a listener of others and I see that when we respectfully listen people usually feel heard. When we feel heard we can then move on to problem solving. We  obviously have a lot more conversations about how to deal with racism, homophobia, the haves and have nots, the 1%, equity, xenophobia, and that is just a start.  Let’s start with leaning in.

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An Experience of Grief-Elections

Posted on November 13, 2016

All over the world we still are talking about this election. It took me until today to feel like I could write something down. I wondered about why it has taken me so many days to write as I have a lot buzzing in my head and then, I realized, this is because I am still going through stages of grief. Several stages a day even.

In my work, my clients and I frequently talk about grief. We discuss that grief can be not just the loss of a person but, the loss of an experience, an opportunity, a thing or an idea. images-3The example I use is by looking at your dead car battery.

Say you wake up in the morning and get ready for school or work, go out to your car to get to work and the car battery is dead. The first thing you do is to try to start it again. You are in denial that it won’t start. ‘Of course, it is going to start”, you think to yourself. It hasn’t passed your mind that anything is wrong. You think, the car is starting and you’re going to do whatever it was what you were expecting to do. It would function. You shake your head, ‘huh?’ you think. You try to start it over and over. You don’t really believe that it won’t start.

Then you move into bargaining. You plead with the car to start, you beg and you coax. You may say that you will take the car to get high-octane gas, go to church next Sunday, anything to get the car to start. You may even fiddle with the air, music or other levers in the car to see if that will change the outcome and help it spring to life.

But the battery doesn’t start and then you move into anger. You are hitting the dashboard and yelling at the inert engine to start. You are pissed. You use choice words either under your breath or loud enough for the neighbors to hear and yet, the battery is still dead.

Sadness comes next. You moan, collapsing in your worries about how the day has gone to pot and if you don’t get to work or school on time everything else is also is going to fall apart.

Then, acceptance. You pull out your phone to get AAA, a Uber or race off to catch a Trimet bus to get going. You get it and understand the battery is not going to come to life and fire up the engine.

This week millions of people of all diversities and majorities have been progressing through these stages. I kept refreshing my screen to the 538 website which I had been using as my barometer to help balance my stomach clenches over the last couple weeks. Tuesday morning, I thought that a 70.2% certainly of a Hillary win was pretty good. Then when the numbers fell and the states were too close to call I was definitely in denial. I couldn’t compute in my head that this could actually be happening.images-2 As I cuddled with my boys on Tuesday night, as per our ritual, I cozied up to my seven-year old’s sleepy form while hoping against hope that the next time I refreshed my screen it would show better numbers. It did not. As I lay in the dark talking to myself in my head, I really thought that it was just a bad moment, denying that anything could really go wrong.

That night, I stayed up holding my phone, listening to NPR and watching CNN until I heard that Clinton had called Trump. As I kept switching sources, I felt I was truly watching a horrible crash that I couldn’t tear my eyes away from. I willed the outcome to be different. I went through bargaining, anger and a lot of sadness. I woke up my husband to tell him the news and we held each other, we talked and I cried for the better part of two hours. images-1We scrambled our approach to tell our boys the outcome in the morning. The night had started out with us having a civics lesson on coloring in a map of America was the states were called out for the electoral college numbers. Those red states are still stained on our dry erase place mat as a reminder of a bad night.

I went back to hanging out in bargaining for a while on Wednesday since all the votes had not yet been tallied and was trying to convince myself that maybe, just maybe the electoral map could change. I have a problem with chronic optimism when faced with bad odds. Later I sunk back down into sadness with smatterings of anger and, I suppose, acceptance. I know what has happened is true but, I really can’t stomach processing it all.

The rest of the week I was the witness of several client’s experiences of grief in the process. Emotionally washed up at night, I took to baking, listening to musicals and treating the radio like a hot potato. imagesI would turn it on for a bit and then suddenly flick it off.

So, here we are five days later and we are all still processing. I think if Hillary had won there would be another 50 million or so going through their own experience of grief. We are a nation in conflict and grief. It will take more than a support group to help us get through this. I want to be hopeful but, my well is a bit dry. Today was #WorldKindnessDay and I checked in with a couple of friends who had big events in their lives and that felt good.

Over the weekend, we watched Les Miserables and Fiddler on the Roof. I explained to my children the grief of those stories and it helped me to see them confused by such horrid behavior, racism and anti-Semite rhetoric in the story lines. They, who have grown up with the only president they have known being a man of color, were shocked to learn that pogroms existed for decades and not too long ago. I felt I took a little of their innocence in explaining these stories, however, I also loved that they instinctly knew that it was not okay to act like this as a human today. This gives me hope.

In my grief, and this week they have seen me process a lot of it, my boys have supported my new acceptance in ways they don’t know yet. Yes, this has happened but, the story does not end here. We have work to do to continue to teach, learn and practice empathy. They don’t know it but, my boys are already guiding me in this process.

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My Brush with Political Change, 27 Years Ago as the Berlin Wall Fell and Hope Grew. What Will This November Bring?

Posted on November 6, 2016

I am socked down with a cold that is like a very unwelcome houseguest. It needs to go! When I am sick, I realize how mindful I can really be. Sad that I don’t do this more when I am feeling tip-top but, it makes sense that I am acutely aware of the goings on within my body as they are abnormal; breathing is different, labored and stuffy. My thinking is foggy, less efficient and I am losing my train of thought. It wavers more than a sleepy driver on a long stretch of highway.

So, I am loaded up with medications that help drain my sinuses yet, provide a plastic like feeling of awareness in my brain. It feels clearer but, fake. Yet, in these times I do find that my mind drifts to other times. My daydreaming comes back in waves. I get a mind hook on a thought and suddenly, I am plunged down into a wormhole of memories that I haven’t accessed in a while. I kinda like it at times as it brings up thoughts and memories I haven’t visited in a while.

This is where I have been this week, being ill and watching autumn in full splendor I am tripped back to my memories of living in the Netherlands in the late 80s and early 90s. In particular, the date of November 9th comes into focus.fullsizeoutput_828b The day the Berlin Wall fell. That fall of 1989, I was on an exchange program living in Northern Netherlands attending University of Groningen or more formally, Rijks Universiteit of Groningen.

I was a 20-year-old with a backpack and new awareness of what it meant to be studying  in a European college atmosphere. There are no campuses for 300 year old colleges. The academic building are spread throughout the ancient city. Our housing was too. Due to some concerns the study abroad advisor moved several of us international students to a former academic building that was ‘transformed’ into house. Transform is a loose definition of what was set up.

We had portable showers set up in closets and our bedrooms were the former offices of academics, cozy and of varying shapes. Our kitchen was made out of the former library supplied with two hot plates and two mini fridges and a host of boxes individually marked to store our groceries we bought at the market a couple of times a week.

fullsizeoutput_8282

Sporting my serious look in front of the Berlin Wall four days before it fell. 

I learned the skill of buying on the day of when you were cooking and that most things don’t need refrigeration (I still adhere to many of these lessons today although, our American culture doesn’t. That is a story for another time).

There were nearly 30 of us living in this building. We had doorbell and one phone that echoed in a large, looming portico that was empty but for the table on which the phone sat. We might receive messages from people who called but, mostly they would be surprise discoveries on scraps of paper, “Oh, my mom called on Thursday! I wonder what she had to say. Who’s writing is this?’ Looking back, I am sure my mom was taking her Valium every time during the stretches she didn’t hear from me. This was before email, smartphones and even, the internet. Phone calls, the occasional fax and old-fashioned pen to paper were the means of communication.

My ‘housemates’ came from Belgium, England, France, Serbia, Canada, Germany, Italy and America among other places. We would marvel in the evenings dinners being prepared an aromatic lesson on culinary differences. The Belgian boys would spend no less than 1-2 hours a night preparing their dinners of spiced mussels and broth or country stews that simmering invitingly.fullsizeoutput_8288 My North American friends and I did alright, making a stir fry or a variety of breakfast for dinner. I learned to love my coffee, several time a day. The absolutely civility of having a coffee break in the middle of class made me feel like a grown up as our lecturers would mingle with us next to the automat Koffie machines offering us a cigarette as we continued the talk of the lecture. This was not an American experience.

I remember that fall of learning about olie bollen (fried dough balls) from a street vendor and still warm and stroopwafels fresh from the press while we talked about Germany. Two American friends and I had gone to Berlin the weekend before. We marveled in this very cold, industrial, exciting city. We went through checkpoint Charlie to the East and found we didn’t have the right German Marks to buy food or cigarettes and wound up sitting on an empty street offering Western cigarettes for Eastern marks so we could buy dinner.

I spent one afternoon walking from Checkpoint Charlie to the Reichstag and in fascination of the existence of the Berlin Wall, I wrote down all the English quotes I found on the wall in my journal. I added my own. U2 lyrics from I Will Follow from the album Boy

I was on the inside
When they pulled the four walls down
I was looking through the window
I was lost – I am found

Walk away, walk away
I walk away, walk away – I will follow
If you walk away, walk away
I walk away, walk away – I will follow

We saw a demonstration of reportedly 500,000 people in West Berlin asking for better travel rights. The next day, travel rights granted, our train ride back to the Netherlands we were faced with the fact that every seat had been sold four times so, we sat in shifts. fullsizeoutput_828dPeople were not upset or phased by this. Instead, we talked with people who had never been in Western Germany and had their entire families packed in to go visit a long unseen aunt or other relative somewhere. I spoke with a young, idealist Eastern German man who told me he thought it was the age of Aquarius. As the train bustled along and we shared cigarettes I felt a jolt of excitement and hope surge through me.

Days later, in the Netherlands, we heard the news that the wall had fallen. “What?!?!” We bought all the newspapers we could find to read about the dramatic changes and trying to understand through our very poor Dutch, French and German what was happening. We gave money to our Canadian flatmate to go back the following weekend to take pictures and bring us a piece of the wall. Four days and a world changed. I was there in the margins. fullsizeoutput_829b

And then I am back from my daydream…to our current reality. I am aware of my phone buzzing with the latest evaluation of the most recent polls and political dissection of this election. Thinking if I refresh the screen I just might know a bit more information. I can google parts of Berlin, webcams showing realtime video. I can send a message to any number of people in various places around the earth in a minute or even a second. At times I yearn for the simpler, less complicated times. We were left with our own thoughts.

I am struggling with the political mood our country is currently in. I felt so much hope then and now, merely tension. So, I am enjoying the cold-influenced daydream to a time when we rooted for change and the rhetoric was more polite, if impassioned. When we believed things would get better. Here’s hoping this November we can take a page from history and root for peaceful political change.

 

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The Cat is Out of the Bag!

Posted on October 21, 2016

Last week we revealed our plans to my mother in law and our kids. Different reveals with different reactions. Just to get you up to speed, we are planning a round the world trip with our boys starting in the summer of 2017. My husband will lose his job of the last 12 years and we are taking advantage of the timing and age of our boys to plan a trip away. A long time away and many long distances away.

Travel has been a part of my life since I was a teenager and my husband found his own travels through work in his 20s and together we have found some new paths and memories. Since our kids were born we have not traveled interationally together. This trip holds a lot of excitement as well as trepidation. I feel very soothed when planning trips even if for an overnight getaway.

Travel is a big part of my life and a ‘must’ that I need to feel sated. There are a lot of travel stories in my head that I want to share with our boys but, even more so, I want to create travel experiences with them so they too will be shaped by exposure and immersion in new cultures.

So, our plan. In August 2017 we will take off heading to Southeast Asia and soon thereafter Australia. We have dreams of going to destinations in Eastern Africa as well as South Africa, Israel, Croatia, several Western European countries where I have previously left footprints and have friends. Many of these freinds have kids in a similar age range of our boys. images-20The idea of connecting cross cultures for all of us in these ways feels exciting and a little bit nerve-racking. A bit like the night before Christmas or our wedding day.

In the spirit of this blog, we are trying to figure out how to set our expectations in reasonable and achievable ways. As I have written about before, I see that we all struggle with setting some expectations too high and feeling a crash of disappointment and resentment many times in our lives.

I am trying to consider how to define expectations in three areas. Minimum, Reasonable and Achievable and Dream Scenario (also known as the lottery, bonus, gravy, pie in the sky expectations). Many of us set Dream Scenarios and are let down and stunned when they don’t turn out that way. We forget what we can and cannot control in the grand scheme of things and are deeply disappointed when we pin our happiness on the actions of others.

We all do it. I am not one that knows how to not to do it, however, I am trying to re-adjust those expectations so, that I can safeguard my wellbeing at least a bit. These travel plans will be a lesson and challenge in planning, awareness and life experience.

We have to plan timing, budgeting, where to go, how to school our boys as we go along, flights, places to stay, how long to spend places, how to keep in touch and document, how to adjust ourselves to another’s ‘regular’, how to pack, how to leave our comfortable and predictable life at home and return to it after our time abroad. These are not small tasks and not a comprehensive list of those tasks. unknown-3My husband and I have set up bi-weekly meetings with each other to tackle some of these areas and to process ideas.

I will note here how things are going, however, I really want to hear from others. I am putting the call out to folks to give us feedback on places you think we ought to consider, gems hidden or otherwise to unwrap and explore. Helpful suggestions and thoughts of our plan are welcome. Be in touch and please leave comments here to spark more conversation.

More soon. Be well now.

Audrianna Joy

 

 

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The Travel Plan Reveal – Trying to Make Something Enormous Simpler. What are the Expectations?

Posted on October 9, 2016

So, one of the reasons I wanted to start a blog was to document our family’s plan for world travel. Travel is such an important part of my life (my middle third especially) and I want to share it with our kids and create new memories in new places today. My fear has been that writing about something that has not yet happened is a bit out-of-order, cart before the horse, so to speak. images-11My fear would wash up inside and worry about being named as a non-doer, someone with all talk and no action and a tiny fear of superstition. If I write about it will it not happen.

Where do all these worries come from? My inner critics pushing their particular voice forward, reminiscing about previous times in my life when I struggled and when I failed and taking those moments and shoving them forward in my mind as if to show me.

“See, you can’t do this. You’re a fool to say these things out loud. Someone will reveal that you have failed in the past. Don’t involve others in your dreams until they are real and countable.”

So, my own expectations are tangled with worry, fear, excitement, hope, joy, trepidation and uneasiness. My point of this blog is to explore the challenge of having really high expectations dashed by reality unfolding. However, this is not a blog about images-13holding back our dreams, choosing the slow and safe lane, redirecting our wants toward the loudest naysayers opinion.

I have already made a lot of choices in my life that were non-conventional at the time. Traveling, studying and living overseas for a collective five years of my life didn’t match the norm of my contemporaries. At no point in those travels did I regret being where I was.
Yes, I struggled at times, feeling extraordinarily lonely and
left with only myself for company.

Which sometimes my own company was not great awash with some self-defeating judgements or thoughts. However, I didn’t try to come back ‘home’. I tried to figure out what was happening and how to make it a little bit better. Often hoping to make it much, much better.

Ironically, those moments are the ones I learned the most from. I think particularly about my time living and working in Hong Kong in 1993-1994. images-17Yes, what seems like a lifetime ago. I arrived in this big, neon city with my Dad as he had me connected to a business partner of his to do some work. We flew business class. I think it might have been the first time I had spent 11 hours sitting next to my Dad.

While flying into Hong Kong, I remember the how close the plane was to the buildings in the city as we circled to land at the airport. To me, the buildings looked like hundreds of matchboxes tipped up on their ends balancing precariously next to each other, almost feeling like I was looking at Dominos on a table top. My worry was that one might fall over.  Looking back, I may have been reflecting what I felt inside myself.

I had willingly left my safe haven back in the States to move to a new place. This wasn’t a new move for me. images-16At this point in my life, I had left my home country for foreign places several times but, landing in Western Europe each time. There, I could find a way for my caucasian self to blend in with my English and weak Dutch. I could be on a train and most would be none the wiser until I ordered a coffee, even then I could tilt and soften my accent to draw away from my American self identifiers.

In Hong Kong, I wasn’t going to blend in. I was, what my co-workers later told me was ,a ‘gweilo’. A ghost face. I could try to mix in but, my skin, eye color, the general way I held my body and my illiteracy in the various Chinese languages showed me for who I was, a stranger in a strange place.
Yet, I so wanted to blend in. When I travel, I am one to carefully hold the map inward, cautious to avoid too much attention. I want to be in step with and nearly anonymous in the community I am exploring. One to one, I don’t mind meeting new people and, actually, quite love images-15it but, I don’t want to be painted with the brush or spotlight of FOREIGNER where ever I go.

I was acutely aware of the ‘ugly American’ that would travel about the world, bumbling into people, cultures, languages, cuisine without an awareness of or care about the ripple effect of their wake. I may have kept to the shadows to my own detriment at times. As in Hong Kong, I found it not only very hard to blend in but, also to make friends. I didn’t connect to the ex-pat community. Back then there was no internet, Facebook, email list to join so I could safely explore my options in the comfort of my own computer before walking in a room and hoping to make a friend. I also didn’t want to make friends only with foreigners in this strange place with me. It would have probably helped a lot but, I was stubborn. I wanted to find my own way. And it turned out to be a very lonely path.

That Hong Kong travel experience was one of my darkest but, it taught me a lot. I can get through things. Most everything is in motion and we don’t get to stand in one place for very long. I look at my own kids and see that. Are they really seven and nine? What happened? The hard times move on and the good times move on. What we have control over is maneuvering ourselves towards better, healthier, happier times. This doesn’t always work as we don’t control anything but, ourselves. images-18However, perhaps we can point ourselves in the direction we want to go. Like a boat on a stream…there are plenty of obstacles but, we can navigate.

My husband and I are preparing to navigate ourselves into the greater world outside of our comfort zone in Portland, Oregon with our kids in tow. We want more experiences, unpredictable and hopefully, joyful. Yes, we will experience heartache, frustration, headaches and differing opinions but, we will be living and learning. We plan on leaving on a year-long journey in August 2017. What comes here is further exploring, planning and navigation of our life and dreams. Please stay tuned.

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Parenting, Marriage and Hopes and Dreams

Posted on October 2, 2016

As my husband and I approach our 14th wedding anniversary, I pause and look around me at the changes that have transpired and where we are today. I am struck at the difference of our family of four from the two of us, with our hopeful and shiny faces of yore. I was 33 when I got married and thus, look at my life in thirds.

The first third, infancy, childhood and young adult time. The next was the era of the single girl to woman phase with earning degrees, traveling and a host of poor decision making and the lessons that followed. Then to the last third, learning to create a life with another person with intentions of making the ‘right choices’ together, growing in our careers, succeeding in making a family and moving forward with parenting highs and lows.

I am struck, with a bit of fear, when I look forward to the next 15 year block. What choices will we or I make that have a ripple effect on the future. I am 47 now and in 15 years, I ‘ll be 62. The age my mom was when she died. A tiny piece of me worries that this may be my last series of chapters so, I better make them good ones. Every day I struggle with choices  that effect me; what I eat, what I drink and what I say. Questions of, Did I exercise? How much sleep did I get? How am I handling stressful situations so, they don’t bite me in the backside later?

With clients we talk about the HALTS; Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired and Stressed/Sad. These are things that we can control, in some measure, in our life. We often feel overwhelmed by events happening around us and we try, frequently, with all our might to control things we can’t: other people’s thoughts, feelings, actions, desires, words. In HALTS we can look at a situation and see what areas that we may be able to make some changes or at least, gain some leverage.

When I look at the next 15 years, I feel I do have a better understanding of what I can and cannot control. I also need to remember that when I am in a mood, I don’t always remember this helpful information but, perhaps I am more likely to access it having had some years practice. Read: we are all imperfect! So, coming back to that block of time. How do I want it turn out? Am I okay with the choices I making, big and small? I make mistakes but, do I feel okay about that as well?

I was struck by a review of a new book by Maria Semple called Today Will Be Different. This character, a mom, wife and professional tries to find ‘A Basic Amount of Dignity’. I love that sentiment. 9780316403436_custom-6f05dbe55c3c89ca57eaf0d25423b88bc014eade-s300-c85That the small choices we make everyday can have small but, longer effects. We often look around us in exasperation and think, “How did we get here?” and think of the roads or choices not taken. We think big change only comes from big changes.

Well, I’d like to think that small changes can have a ripple effect as well. If I have a green drink this morning, my body will feel a little bit better and I will feel that I’ve gotten a start on one of the many ‘shoulds’ that come up for me (eating enough fruits and vegetables every day). But, more I feel, at that moment, that I have made a small difference. I can be a tiny bit happy and satisfied that I made a healthy choice. Also, challenging the first of the HALTS – Hunger.

So, here is to change, the anniversary and next 15 year block (one of many, I hope). Also, here’s to green smoothies.

Disappointment Expectations

The Tough Lessons of Expectations

Posted on September 19, 2016

As a therapist, I frequently help people grapple with their emotions around expectations. Usually, it is about feeling let down and being left with a surprising, and frequently unwanted outcome. This realization can be, quite frankly, a giant bummer. And because I help others doesn’t mean that I have reached a place where unmet expectations don’t effect me. Ha! I am human. I wrestle with this on a near daily basis. Okay, truth be told, even at times, several times a day. 

This unmet expectation, or bummer (a clinical term, I assure you)  usually comes from a place where I thought I had set myself up for an outcome and I come to realize that I have really missed my mark. I so want to blame someone else for my feelings and passive-aggressively throw imaginary blocks up to keep me from connecting with or reaching out to that person and letting them know what I really wanted or how I am feeling.

However, while it is important to let others know our feelings and why we feel them, we can’t expect others to always ‘get it’ and then come round. unknownThis is a really hard place to find yourself. The wake up lesson is that we have put our happiness in the hands of someone else. They then hold the power to our moods and we feel powerless and, frequently, really pissed off.

I have learned a lot from the parenting approach of ’empathy with limits’ often written about by Dr. Laura Markham. Her support at A-ha Parenting is soothing and calming. Her blog is a helpful oasis of parenting support when I am struggling with my inner child in full tantrum.

I try to really hear my kids when they are upset, even when I am wishing for magical ways to get them out of the door on time. I try to listen when what I really want to do is redirect them toward my demand. The directing may get results the same way that a passive aggressive response might get someone’s attention but, in the long run, the outcome doesn’t feel good. It feels punitive towards my children and ‘stompy’ or even ‘stabby’ towards my grown up counterparts. And then I am left with myself, usually regretting my impulsive response, having to send out embarrassed faced Emoji’s out to my confused friends or family members.

The setting of reasonable expectations is hard. Identifying those expectatimages-10ions can be really daunting too but, oh so helpful. When I realize that I have set a ‘pie in the sky’ expectation of a meeting or social event and I can go back and outline the ‘reasonable and achievable’ parts and even the minimum, often I can take a big weight off myself by recognizing my lack of control of others.
At times, I really want to choreograph someone else’s abilities, however, it can also be liberating to realize that I don’t have control over someone else and I can set out a reasonable path for myself to enjoy a day or event. I control me.

I often struggle with the people I am rather close to or have known the longest. My work to self talk myself off a ledge of unreasonable dream scenarios can be very soothing once I recognize what is going on inside me. Sometimes, I am a little late to images-8
the game. My awareness of my deep-seated wishes are being dashed and my feelings have already been hijack, however, if I can hand-hold myself back to safer territory of the realm of the possible and logical I can be soothed.

This is a tough subject because we are often taught to want or demand the best.
My redirection of my levels of expectations is not giving up or wanting good things it is identifying the reality of what I can and cannot control. This can be hugely calming in the face of an emotional eruption.

There is a lot more here to write about and I will get there eventually. Today is a day for soothing my ego and sketching out reasonable expectations. Thanks for reading.

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The pitfalls of ‘shoulds, oughts and musts’. 

Posted on September 9, 2016

I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of English friends who are winging it here from the UK as I type. I keep checking the flight arrival screen on my phone to see any new information. It has been 12 years since seeing these friends, which feels like a mini-life time. We have two kids now and they are married and have struggled with some health issues. 

As I scurry around the house to make it all ‘presentable’, which is loosely defined that way by me. I wonder aloud what I ‘should’ do to make it better, what I ‘ought’ to do to meet their expectations. What I ‘must’ do in order to make their visit ‘the best ever’. I realize I am falling for the trap of unachievable expectations – again! images-5

When meeting with clients, the ‘shoulds’ come up fairly quickly as people are describing their worries, challenges, dreams, hesitations and struggles. I may quip, “Be careful, don’t should on yourself”. It is so much easier to say this than practice it. The is the ‘we-are- all-flawed’ reality of all therapists, really.

I heard it so clearly when others speak it but, don’t always catch it when it falls from my lips. Partly because, the majority of time we are internally vexed with our worries and we don’t say them out loud.

There is a lot to be learned from writing down our own thoughts. In our digital world, many may scoff at the idea of hand writing down our worries but, there is something very tangible and defining when we are able to write them down and then they have boundaries around them.

Those ‘shoulds’ show themselves more clearly as high expectations that are often someone else’s values that we are carrying around with us as a compass for our choices. I find that when I do this, I guess incorrectly, meaning people really don’t need me to do things their way or I get resentful that I have assumedthat is what they want and have pushed my wishes aside.

In those cases, I find, that the empowerment I feel in rewording my statements from ‘shoulds’ to ‘would-likes’ certainly match my values better. I am more able to set boundaries around what is reasonable and achievable from the too-high dream scenarios.

So, as I dash off the airport, house still a dusty house, it is still our home. images-6I am feeling more calm that my friendship means more in the time we spend together than in their assessment of my housecleaning skills. I am slowly able to redefine my expectations and feel ready to enjoy our friends.