Lower your expectations
It’s been a stressful week. And for many, December will be a stressful month. A busy weekend working at the Emergency Department with some challenging cases ended at 2am on Monday morning – when I left the hospital without my cellphone. Fruitless searching until 3am and another search later in the morning yielded no Dr Tom iPhone. Meanwhile, I had to fly to Taranaki.
With no calls, emails or texts to deal with, it was strangely quiet – and eerily relaxing – at the airport as I waited to board my plane; however, I knew the messages were backing up.
Indeed, some of my contacts would be expecting instant replies and be getting stressed wondering where I was – or, more to the point, why I wasn’t answering.
Expectation is a major driver of frustration, stress and anxiety.
If we don’t get what we expect it sends an electrical discharge down our worry circuit and activates the ‘‘grumpy unit’’, our amygdala. This alarm centre is activated when people don’t behave in the way we expect them to, or act how we would act. We have a belief that people should behave the way we would. The reality is that we would prefer that others act like we would, but everyone has a slightly different set of values and rules about what they think is acceptable or normal.
How people might behave in traffic, at work Christmas parties, and on Christmas Day is the result of many factors, not at all to do with our expectations and assumptions. We often put pressure on ourselves and others with unrealistic expectations. We can get trapped in an analytical linear model of thinking that demands deliverables and outcomes. A more relaxing state for many is free-flow thinking where we go with the flow and see where we end up. It’s not one or the other, you can choose both and realise you have options and choices.
As a rule, children spend more time in free-flow thinking.
The pressures of Instagram, marketing and our digital age imposes expectations on our children that were not even dreamed of a generation ago. Our compulsive desire and need to plan often forces us to catastrophise about Christmas and what is termed the silly season. ‘‘It would be terrible if…’’ and ‘‘I can’t stand it when…’’ become self-fulfilling prophecies that fire up the grumpy unit like a false alarm in a full carpark.
What are your expectations for Christmas and the New Year? Are they rational, realistic and achievable? What happens if the days don’t go as you planned? Will you be able to adapt and enjoy the ride wherever it takes you? This is the time of year where we are frantically trying to clear the decks so we can switch off our phones, disable the wi-fi and focus on traditional fun activities, like family, fishing and freedom.
I believe there are no problems, only solutions and sometimes the solutions find you, but sometimes they don’t and you have to go looking. Life can be like a childhood treasure hunt if you let it: one clue leads to another or down a different path.
One thing you can expect though is that things won’t always go as you planned. For me, 123RF my phone solution was to claim insurance and get a new one. I was offline for maybe 10 hours, but I survived.
As I walked in early Monday morning, retracing my steps to find my phone, I saw a lot more unfortunate people than me being wheeled into the Emergency Department.
Losing your health is far more catastrophic than your phone, so be careful out there. You probably don’t expect to end up in hospital this festive season but you could.