One Thing Guaranteed to Wreck Your Day

Today was a gong show of a day. I have more accurate words to describe this day - or to be fair moments of it. Long moments. More colourful words. But I'll leave it at It. Was. A. Day. 

Everybody was losing their ever loving minds! Myself included. As I tried to get a grip on myself, I started analyzing, trying to figure out what had got us here. What had derailed our day? Is there a common thread with other days that leave me feeling frustrated and resentful? And then I saw it... the thing that has triggered these feelings time and time again. 

Expectations. Or rather, UNMET expectations. 

 Initially I noticed it in my daughter first. She had an expectation of how her day would start and when a thing or two deviated from that she immediately reacted with frustration, anger and sadness. She could not let it go. 
Her reaction completely derailed our morning and then it was my turn to react to my expectations being flushed down the drain. It was not pretty my friends. 

I realized that we were both struggling to deal with our unmet expectations. Even my son struggled because he expected a calm, quiet school environment and it was anything but. 

I was feeling some big feelings. In the derailment, part of my reaction was to enforce more expectations on how we should deal with this unexpected turn of events and how we should push through. I was praying (not calmly but through gritted teeth and a racing pulse) for some type of direction or intervention and the most random song lyrics started running through my head. 

"You gotta know when to hold 'em
know when to fold 'em 
know when to walk away
know when to run..."

Are you singing along with me? Nothing like a little Kenny Rogers and The Gambler. Holy Spirit has quite the sense of humour evidently. 

In these words though was some solid wisdom on what I needed to do in that moment. 



Here's the thing, I am a "hold 'em" type of person. I am a "we can do hard things", lets learn to push through, take things head on, if it's worth doing it's worth doing well, battering ram, kind of person. And here I was in a situation where nothing was working for one child (the other escaped to another room and got everything done), where there were tears and frustration and the perceived inability to move on and everything in me said "HOLD 'EM". Do not back down. Help her push through. Do not give up. They need to learn persistence. 

Do I want my children to be people who persevere? Yes - I'm realizing that it is one of my highest values. But Holy Spirit today was all like...

"You gotta know when to hold 'em
know when to fold 'em
know when to walk away
know when to run"

So I asked myself, what do I need to let go of here? Do I need to fold? 

I did. So against everything in me I decided to give folding and walking away a try. I even told myself that maybe it would just be an experiment. Let's see what happens because my hold 'em mentality was not always serving us well. 
I folded on ALL of the things I wanted done before we left the house for a homeschool outing. I communicated that I still wanted them done today at some point and I chose to give space to calm down and time to talk through emotions my child was having. 

I asked a lot of questions about her expectations. I got answers. I shared my expectations. We both identified that we really struggle when our expectations go unmet. We agreed that we both need to get better at letting things go.



Here is how expectations at times wreck our day:

1) Unrealistic Expectations - My name is Monique and I have unrealistic expectations. If math goes smoothly for a few days I get cocky and decide that I can take a shower while my kids do math on their own. I expect that they won't pest each other, won't need help, and will stay on task even when they hit a snag and I'm not there. It's maybe worked one time. Ha. 
I realize that I often have unrealistic expectations and then I'm super frustrated when they don't go as planned in my head. I really need to examine my expectations more and realize whether they are realistic or not. 

2) Interruptions - interruptions can often derail plans and expectations. When I hold tightly to those plans I am frustrated with interruptions. I need to learn to be more flexible and let things go. 

3) My expectations are not my families expectations - News Flash, people don't have the same expectations as I do! They don't care about the same things, or value the same things and can not read my mind to see how valuable they are to me! What!? It's funny to me how often I expect my kids to expect the same things out of our day. When I realize that my expectations are my own and that others have not agreed to live by them I have a lot more grace for their individual reactions. 

I do believe that we should be able to have expectations of people, however an important life skill is knowing how to manage your reaction and emotions when those expectations go unmet. As much as I value persistence and being able to do hard things I am learning the value of letting go. Of letting some things slide. Of walking away from expectations. 



By 10 a.m. I realized that my day was not going to go as planned. School was not going to be as productive as I hoped, I was going to have to help process emotions that I quite frankly didn't feel I had the emotional energy to help with and I wasn't sure how supper would be made, the house would be cleaned and groceries would be bought. 

So, I let go of some school for the morning and most of it got done in the afternoon. 
I let go of some break time and had the kids do a tidy up of the main floor. 
I "walked away" from supper and ordered out instead.

The world kept spinning and we all were able to move on and let go rather than stay stuck in cycle of freak outs. I'm going to keep experimenting with this letting go business ;) 
On a side note... I'm really good at folding when it comes to cooking supper. If I had a choice I'd let that go every day. Ha. 

~ Monique

Every gambler knows
That the secret to survivin'
Is knowin' what to throw away
And knowin' what to keep
'Cause every hand's a winner
And every hand's a loser...

Take 'em to church Kenny!


I'd love to hear your stories! Are unmet expectations a struggle in your life? How do you manage them?