Are Your Expectations Creating Stress?

Expectation. We all have expectations. They are natural, normal and a part of our common humanity. There is nothing wrong with expectation, however, we do need to manage it. I recently had two moments that provided starkly different pieces of advice on expectation. One, I believe to be true. The other, I believe to be ridiculous.

Managing Expectations

When I initially had my daughter, I went through the normal six week marathon of sobbing and questioning my life. Once my hormones returned to the ‘regular human’ setting, I became the normal high-strung, anxious person I always was. Whew. During that time, my aunt wrote me an email and said that one of her biggest life lessons had been to manage her expectations. I took it to heart and apparently, listened but did not apply that advice to my actual life. I thought of it as theoretical advice.

Many years before that, my meditation teacher did a talk on stress. We watched a hilarious video of a woman who discussed stress and walked around her house naked and in high heels. My teacher (a male) said he had tried it and loved it. He encouraged us all to do the same. Just imagining him in high heels was good enough for me to feel totally stress-free. The video was about the trend of martyrizing being busy. I wrote on this topic quite some time ago; that our busyness martyr awards need to end. It’s not inspirational to see people ignore their own health and work themselves into the ground.

Expectations, Parenting and Emotions

I have been pondering expectation and the layers of polarity within it. I reflected on expectation in the context of parenting and relationship with emotion. I suppose you could say that these two categories are tightly meshed; parenting elicits the widest range of emotions I have ever felt.

I take my daughter to yoga practice with me at 6:30am. We practice until 8am and then go to work (and daycare). She has been attending since she was three months and has worked her way up from car seat nap time, to sitting on a mat (surrounded by blankets), to sitting without blankets and eventually where she is today. One week away from her second birthday, able to do about five poses and somewhat able to stay on her own mat. She migrates over to my mat, I migrate to hers, she returns and then I begin doing yoga anywhere in the room that is not occupied.

I have lost all attachment to doing yoga on a yoga mat and will move to any surface in order to finish a Vinyasa peacefully. Often I walk in downward dog, as fast as I can, to the other side of the room so that I can finish the series without my toddler crawling under or over me. I would rather do a headstand on concrete than do one with a toddler searching for my belly button. Yes, sweetie, I have a belly button just like you (FML).

Stress!

What you thought would happen and what actually happened.

Crawling on me doesn’t cause tension or stress. I expect her to crawl on me. I have a wonderful teacher who encourages her to back up if I’m in a handstand or twisting so that I don’t hurt myself and she has a very special connection with my daughter. They are even birthday twins!

Today Yogi Smalls decided to suck on my face while I had my legs over my head in lotus. I responded by giving her a lotus hug; lowering my tightly knit legs on to the back of her head, gently locking her in a lotus face plant until she began forcefully yanking her head out like a struggling turtle. No more kisses? Hope you enjoyed that Lotus Lockdown, kid.

The place where I notice my expectations are not met, and therefore I become stressed, is when she causes disruption. These disruptions include touching things in the studio, taking Kleenex (excessively) and attempting to leave. I expect her to stay on a mat and read her book. I expect her to have a snack and have her water. I expect her to look around and see that all the other students are silent.

Unmet Expectations Own Me

Recently at practice, she attempted to escape for about thirty minutes, she touched every single thing I told her not to, she took off her clothing (I opened my eyes and a naked baby was running about) and repeatedly folded my mat over my face when I was lying on my back, saying “MOMMY DONE. DONE MOMMY“. I pretended to be asleep. She yelled “MOMMY A YOU SLEEP? A YOU SLEEP MOMMY?” Yes. Fuck. I am asleep.

Another lovely and kind student helped her put her shirt back on, I cried from my unmet, unrealistic expectations and she continued to act…well…like a toddler. It is a bit of a paradox because as a single parent, I really need to do yoga in order to practice my patience, focus, sanity and resiliency. I have no one to care for my daughter and so she’s always come with me. I’ve been so lucky in that the community is more than welcoming; she loves everyone and it is such a healthy place for us both. However, the paradox of using yoga to practice patience while trying to keep my cool with my toddler is, somehow, the most goddam impossible thing I’ve ever done. And here I am. Still doing it. Still practicing.

Life Changes and Lessons

My teacher said today “maybe you need to change your expectations for practice”. This infuriatingly truthful statement is correct on every level. It is my unrealistic expectation that a two year old can be silent through a full yoga practice that causes me stress. It is my expectation that it’s ‘my practice’. It was my practice. And now, it is our practice. That shift has been incredibly difficult for me.

Yoga was a solace; a refuge from my mind. It may become that again, however, I need to do exactly as my teacher advised. I need to change my expectations so that the practice is our practice so that hugs, diaper changes, stopping in the middle of any pose and never finishing the series are ok. They are expected. More than that, I could even expect nothing. I could let it go (another tip I was given today – it’s almost like a pattern). I admit that I am struggling a great deal with my expectation of practice and of my emotion.

A Helpful Unhelpful Article

A very short time after practice, I was reading an article online. It was written by an author who has been in the Times, NBC and other very highly acclaimed places to be published. Far greater achievements than I have in my short time as an author. I expected (you can see I’ve already set myself up for a problem here) the article to be helpful, insightful and offer far greater advice on expectation than I could muster up in my head. The title was called “Self-Reliance Is The Secret Sauce to Consistent Happiness”.

I read the article and it began with a list of questions that determined whether you were self-reliant or not. Do you rely on your romantic partner for happiness? No, I don’t have one of those. Do you think your friends should always be there for you? No, I think my friends should be there for themselves. Do you call people stupid when they don’t buy your products or services? Well, I did just publish a book and like the good entrepreneur I am, I gave dozens of copies away and am deeply grateful for anyone who actually purchased my book. I was freakin’ elated when my mom bought it. What a fan!!! My services? Yeah. I mean I teach meditation a couple of times a month and here in the TR Club. I don’t charge anything. So really, it would be stupid if people did buy my services since they are free. But I wouldn’t call anyone stupid; I might issue a refund though.

Emotional Resiliency Dissected

In addition to discussion on self-reliance, a list was provided to become emotionally resilient. Items on this list included; master your emotions (on it), celebrate adversity (no one does this), separate yourself from everything (I did that once and almost died), live without regrets (I regret reading the article) and other outrageously impossible levels of cliché advice. There was insight that I found helpful in the discussion and I did my best to convince myself that this author is much more experienced than I am, therefore this must be true.

Thinking about the article and looking back on the advice of my teacher and my aunt brought me to a place of total polarity. I do believe managing expectations is one key to managing stress. Stress develops when our expectations aren’t met. If I had total freedom in my mind for every practice, my toddler’s chattering, spontaneous nudity and folding my mat on my face would be completely brushed off. Like a butterfly. They aren’t though. They are brushed off like a pressure washer on max power.

This brings us full circle. Manage or adjust your expectations. Self-reliance is the secret sauce of consistent happiness? In this full circle, there is one element that needs to be removed and one that needs to be expanded to complete the sphere. Self-reliance and managing your expectations lead to purpose. Not happiness. PURPOSE.

The Secret Sauce of Expectation

Self-reliance is the secret sauce of self-reliance. Sidebar – Isn’t secret sauce trademarked anyway? Happiness is an emotion. If you are looking for a consistent emotion, you will not find an answer. Self-reliance is wonderful and I believe I passed the little questionnaire and can confirm I am self-reliant. Am I consistently happy? No. Are you fucking kidding me? Is anyone? Am I consistently sad? No, I am not. Am I consistently any emotion? No! Because if you are truly self-reliant, you are likely self-aware and understand that you have a spectrum of emotion that needs to be felt. One is not more important than another other. Today I cried. I also smiled. My tears brought compassion, compassion brought happy tears, happy tears brought a reminder that I am cared for in this beautiful community at Ashtanga Yoga Winnipeg.

I am consistently emotional. And because of my self-reliance, I acknowledge that looking to control your emotions is a dead end. Acknowledging, allowing emotion to unfold and not working toward any one emotion more than any other IS consistency. Consistency comes from emotional regulation. That isn’t looking for one more than another. It’s being able to acknowledge all emotion and therefore regulate the response.

The Spectrum of Expected Emotion

The expectation for consistent happiness is a set up for consistent unhappiness. Becoming self-reliant is wonderful. People who are self-reliant are capable of noticing emotion and reaching out for help when needed. Self-reliance means self-care. It doesn’t create a magical outcome nor does feeling independent create a consistent state of any emotion. Expecting any single emotion to dominate your emotional spectrum likely means you are not able to self-regulate your responses.

Who said we were supposed to be happy more often than sad, mad or neutral?

Who said that our emotions are indicative of how our lives are going?

Do you ever get up on the right side of the bed and think “OMG. Why the shit am I so happy this morning?! I JUST got up. This is ridiculous. What prompted this happy mood. I am going to overthink this and judge myself until I find an answer. Damn you, bed. You did this.”

You probably don’t do this because we allow happiness to come. We push away unhappiness because it’s unpleasant. Imagine if you approached all emotion with the same response as you do to happiness? Notice, perhaps. Allow. That’s it. It comes, it goes. You don’t ruminate over your unusually timed happiness. You just let it be.

Expect Life

As I said at the beginning, one piece of advice was helpful and one was crazytown. The advice given to me about my expectations was helpful. Manage your expectations. It doesn’t mean expect the worst and hope for the best. If you expect the worst, you’ll probably get that. It also doesn’t mean expect the best and prepare for the worst. If you do that, you’ll end up at ‘expect the worst’ during your preparatory process.

Perhaps a better way to approach expectations (because we all have them) is to allow them to change. Allow your expectations to be fluid. If I expect my toddler to be a perfect Yogi and somehow, for some weird reason, she decides to remove her shirt and suck on my face…well, a shift of expectation is a shift in perspective. It is not to be happy. It is not to be sad. It is to be realistic and present.

Instead of expecting happiness or working toward extended lengths of happiness, try to expect experience. I have heard a few individuals say they are officially ‘happy all the time’. They are blissed out. Happiness is always there. I believe this could be either a psychological disorder of some kind or training oneself to overvalue happiness to such an extent that other emotions aren’t noticed. Expecting an experience is truly the only realistic expectation any of us can have. You will have an experience. You may experience emotion. They are not permanent nor are any of them bad. Let them come, let them go and expect yourself to go through an experience.

The Key to Expectation

The clichés for a happy life never end. The key to happiness is about 300 different books. I should write one. I could make a list of advice that I am completely unable to follow and have finally realized that much of it leads to an unrealistic expectation. Advice that comes from the best of intentions can be a set up for unrealistic expectations and ultimately, stress. Expect experience. It’s your only guarantee. Even if you die, you still have an experience (unless you’re atheist – in that case, you do you).

Have hope. Have faith. Have fun. Have 10,000 sorrows and 10,000 joys. This is living. Your expectations can be managed by removing any emotional element from them. Expecting a particular emotion to emerge at a particular time or under certain conditions is a guaranteed way to allow expectation to lead to disappointment. Our predictions of emotion are terrible. Nothing is as bad and nothing is as good as our imagination would like us to believe. But everything is an experience.

Expect to experience everything. Then you will live a full life. Not a happy one. Not a sad one. Not one defined by any emotion. You will live a meaningful, deep and authentic life. Even if a toddler sucks on your face while you’re upside down. A small shift of expectation and it becomes the sweetest moment. Even with my parenting win – the Lotus Lockdown that followed.

Expect life. Then you’ll be consistently alive.

Do you have an unmet expectation that you can recognize brings you stress? Mine is….patience!