Five
A HOLISTIC PRESCRIPTION FOR TREATING YOUR EXPECTATION HANGOVER
“If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Even before your Expectation Hangover hit, you might have been creating external results and achieving success in certain areas, but still not feeling a sense of fulfillment. Nothing felt terribly wrong, yet nothing felt particularly right either. Then, once an Expectation Hangover hit, you felt out of balance and like a lot was missing. To me balance is about harmony between our emotions, thoughts, actions, and soul. We feel out of balance whenever there is an excess or deficiency in any of those areas.
The treatment plan offered in this book is a holistic approach to creating harmony even in the midst of the chaos of an Expectation Hangover. It’s not enough to engage in thoughts or actions to try to fix the symptoms; you also have to address the emotional components of an Expectation Hangover. Similarly, it is not effective to focus on our emotions and not engage in any behavioral changes or seek deeper understanding. Most of us learn and adopt highly ineffective ways to deal with our emotions, manage our thoughts, take action, and connect with a Higher Power. When it comes to our negative emotions, we develop ways to avoid and suppress them. When it comes to our thoughts, we allow our mind to control us, tell us things that are not true, and make us worry, obsess, and overanalyze. When it comes to our behavior, we operate out of habits based on stories we believe about ourselves and the way the world works. And when it comes to our spiritual life, we may be uncertain about faith, focusing more on our physical reality and only reaching out to God when we need something.
This treatment plan will help you leverage your Expectation Hangover, not just get over it. You will learn how to express and release your emotions in a healthy way. You will begin practicing mindfulness by knowing that you have dominion over your thoughts. You will begin creating different results in your life by shifting your actions and changing what drives your behavior. You will identify or deepen your connection to a Higher Power and begin to understand your life from a spiritual perspective — which is liberating!
You have emotions, but you are not your emotions. You have thoughts, but you are not your thoughts. You have a body, but you are not your body. You have relationships, a career, and belongings, but you are not your relationships, your career, or your belongings. You are a spiritual being having a human experience. Even if you do not believe in God, you are aware that there is a bigger picture in life. You have felt it at times in nature, when your child was born, when a prayer was answered, or when you’ve truly felt love for another. If you feel resistance at any time to the truths and tools I share, ask yourself if the way you are reacting to your Expectation Hangovers is working for you. Do you feel peaceful? Fulfilled? Accepting? Connected? Loving? Loved? Purposeful? If the answer is no, it’s time to stop letting resistance run the show.
HILARY’S STORY
I was a checklist kind of girl, with my life mapped out before me. I was a people pleaser and wasn’t listening to my intuition. My hangover hit when a relationship ended unexpectedly. Everything began to unravel after that, as I had put so much of myself into an idea, a projection of a thought, that I didn’t know how to hold myself up while the walls of my expectations were falling around me. Little did I know this experience was the beginning of my awakening to myself. I made what felt like an impulsive but intuitive decision to move to New Zealand and try to make a go of my teaching degree. I had no job, no home, and no one to go with me; I just knew that this was what I had to do. My year there was the most transformational experience I have ever had.
Letting intuition and faith guide me, I found a home, a family, and a job at a Montessori school (until then I wasn’t even aware that alternative schools existed). I reconnected to my love of teaching and truly got to understand what education can be and what kids deserve out of learning and guidance. Traveling and immersing myself in an entirely new environment, with new people, allowed me to get out of my head and enabled me to begin feeling again. I started to eat healthier and ran to the ocean almost every day. I talked to Spirit and my intuition, expressing my feelings and asking for guidance. By the end of my year abroad, I felt completely healed.
My time in New Zealand opened me up to a world where anything is possible, where life is not a matter of checking off a list, but a journey of continuously learning, challenging myself, and accepting the forks in the road as gifts of fulfillment. I know now that happiness comes from within and that it is expectation-less. The word expectation will have little relevance in my life. Intuition and love are the things I build my life with now.
You are your own greatest ally in navigating through your Expectation Hangovers. No one knows what is best for you other than you. You have forgotten that, because you’ve been so busy trying to live up to all the expectations you feel. You cannot hear the voice of your intuition because your expectation-driven thoughts are too loud. You have been looking outside yourself for answers. They are not out there. It is by going within that you find out who you really are. It cannot be discovered in a job, a relationship, or any other external thing. Part of the way your Expectation Hangover serves you is by removing something external to reorient you back to your own internal compass, which will always lead you in the best direction.
| GUIDED VISUALIZATIONConnecting to Your Internal Compass |
You can download the audio version of this exercise at www.expectationhangover.com/bonus
You’ve been conditioned to look outside yourself for direction. Now it’s time to reorient. This visualization exercise will help you connect to your internal compass — the part of you that always offers you the best guidance. Read all the directions so you understand them, then take yourself through the exercise.
1. Find a quiet, comfortable place to sit where you won’t be interrupted.
2. Close your eyes and take five deep, slow breaths. Bring yourself into the present moment by focusing your awareness on your breath. Feel each inhalation and exhalation.
3. After you feel more calm and present, visualize some kind of volume control device located in your mind that goes from 1 to 10. Maybe it’s a dial, a lever, a knob, or a touch pad. Whatever you see is perfect. This volume control represents the level of noise of your thoughts. What number is it at now? If your thoughts are loud, it’s probably at 9 or 10. Wherever it is, is perfect.
4. Next, in your mind’s eye, visualize yourself turning down the volume of your thoughts. See the dial, lever, knob, or touch pad decreasing the volume of your thoughts, 10, 9, 8. Keep focusing on your breathing, seeing each number as you go down, 7, 6. Soften your belly even more, 5, 4. Your thoughts are getting quieter. Increase the volume of your breath as you decrease the volume of your thoughts, 3, 2, 1, 0. Feel the stillness of your mind. Experience the quietness of presence. Hear the sound of your soothing breath.
5. Bring one hand to your abdomen, just a few inches above your navel. Breathe into that part of your body. This is your internal compass. Your internal compass will offer you directions that will come in the form of a sensation, a feeling, an image, or even a word or phrase you may hear inside. At first you may not feel anything; but as you practice this exercise and establish this connection, you will. For now just spend some time experiencing how it feels to be a little more out of your head.
6. Your connection to your internal compass is anchored by the hand you have resting on your abdomen. Take one more rich, deep breath into this place so you can feel your hand rise. Inwardly, say, “I always know what is best for me. I trust myself.”
7. When you are ready, slowly open your eyes and bring your awareness back into the room.
8. Take some time to reflect on this process in your journal.