Expectation Hangover

by Christine Hassler

  “When I was launching my business, I felt torn between thoughts that got me excited about my vision and thoughts that completely sabotaged me, which came from being terrified of bearing responsibility for the destinies of the people who would be counting on me to lead them. It was a risky venture, so I was unconsciously reverting to past conditioning because my parents were intellectuals who always reinforced the need to be realistic and pragmatic. I learned that between the time we set an intention and the time we send it out with expectation, a lot of counterintentions pop up. They pop up in order to be released; they are actually just signals that in order to create something new, we have to get rid of old baggage.”

  — Tabitha

  TRANSFORMATIONAL TRUTH

  The Problem with the Law of Attraction

  Perhaps you have heard of the law of attraction, which states that “like attracts like” and that by focusing on positive or negative thoughts, one can bring about positive or negative results. The common flaw in our understanding of this law is that we believe all we have to do is think about or visualize something to manifest it. It is true that we attract at the level of our own vibration and that our thoughts and words are extremely magnetic. But the most powerful attractor is our belief system. You can create beautiful poster boards full of images of what you want and affirm every day that you are available for an incredibly successful, passionate career or a loving relationship; but if you don’t truly believe you are enough, worthy, lovable, and deserving, then attracting a great career or relationship into your life may be more challenging. Consider what limiting beliefs you have that contradict your desires and upgrade them to beliefs that are in alignment with what you want to attract.

  I am not saying this to make you think you have created all your disappointment, but rather to empower you with an understanding of your story and how it influences your life. Your Expectation Hangover could be the very thing that is making you uncomfortable enough to change your mind about what you choose to believe and therefore attract. But how does one become aware of what has been a completely habitual way of thinking? It begins with an investigation of the thoughts that have become your story.

  “What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of events affect us.”

  — Rabih Alameddine

  EXERCISE

  Your Storyboard

  Before you can create new results in your life, you need to get familiar with the old story you have been carrying around like a heavy backpack for decades. When we buy into the beliefs of our story, we are buying into misunderstandings that perpetuate Expectation Hangovers on the mental level. Breaking free of your story takes conscious attention. To do this, you are going to investigate your personal storyboard.

  1.Find a quiet, comfortable place to sit where you won’t be interrupted. Begin by making a time line of your life. Draw a horizontal line across a sheet of paper and write “Birth” at the far left and “Today” at the far right.

  2.On the line, mark down significant life events that were challenging for you and the corresponding age. For example: “Age 6 = Parents divorce,” “Age 14 = First broken heart,” “Age 18 = Did not get into college of choice.” These events are where most of your limiting beliefs come from.

  3.For each significant event, list the beliefs you formed because of the event. For example: “Parents divorce = I am not worth fighting over. I am not loved because one of my parents is leaving. I cannot trust love. Marriage is not forever.” Do this with each life event. Do not breeze through this exercise. Thorough investigation is crucial to bring limiting beliefs to your awareness.

  4.Think about what you currently want in life and look for any limiting beliefs you have been carrying around. When we say one thing but create a vastly different result, you can be sure there is a belief at work that conflicts with what you’re saying. For example: you want a life partner because that is how you believe you will be happy, but you hold the conflicting belief that you can’t trust love. Write down all your conflicting beliefs.

  5.Look at each of your beliefs and write down the expectations you formed as a result. Notice that you will have both positive and negative expectations. Using the above example, there is the expectation that being with a life partner would create happiness, and there is the expectation that love may create hurt.

  6.Review all the beliefs and expectations you have formed along the way, and look for common themes. You will begin to see a story about your life emerge. Get out your journal and take some time to write down the story you have been telling yourself.

  Acknowledge yourself for your honesty in this discovery process. Save all these insights; you are going to return to them later when you get to rewriting your story.

  TED’S STORY

  I worked in corporate America for ten years, chasing the highest positions and money — and working really hard along the way. It did have its perks, but ultimately, I did not experience the on-top-of-the-world feeling I expected. Although I felt a strong urge to quit, I fought it because I believed I would only find security and an ability to provide for a family of my own in corporate America. When I did my time line, I realized that this belief came from a story I constructed as a teenager when I saw my father lose all our money as a serial entrepreneur. Even though I always felt the entrepreneurial gene in me, I believed working for myself was too risky, which is why I went into corporate America, the “safe zone.”

  Once I connected these dots, I saw that the story I created in the past about what would keep me from disappointment was actually creating my Expectation Hangover. Finally, I got out! I quit with no job in sight, only faith in myself and a new set of beliefs about what being an entrepreneur could be like. It’s now three years later, and I’ve started my own company. I have never been happier because I’m adding value to the world by living my passion under my rules. I learned that identifying beliefs that were no longer serving me and writing a new story about my life would take me to that on-top-of-the-world feeling I was searching for.

  “If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?”

  — W. Somerset Maugham

  ROLE-PLAYING Rx: THE HORSEBACK RIDER

  As much as we want to change our thoughts during an Expectation Hangover, sometimes it feels as though we just cannot get a grip. This is why we need the role-playing prescription of the Horseback Rider. Imagine a horse running free in a field. It would certainly be challenging to catch and contain it! But a galloping horse is steerable and stoppable when a person is riding it. The rider holds the reins, which the horse will learn to respond to. Our mind is similar to a galloping horse in that it seems to run away with us during an Expectation Hangover. We forget that we have thoughts but are not our thoughts. The job of the Horseback Rider is to “ride the mind,” observing its pacing and direction, reining it in and redirecting it when necessary. This role helps us achieve greater mastery over our thoughts. Knowing that we hold the reins to our mind and learning to have greater dominion over our thoughts are key to treating our hangover on the mental level.

  Throughout this chapter, I am going to be sharing several concepts and tools that stop, or shift the direction of, your thoughts. I invite you to visualize the Horseback Rider — see the reins slowing down or guiding your thoughts — so you become more and more aware of the power you have to alter your response to your thoughts and literally change your brain. Changing how and what you think will become easier as you practice using the Horseback Rider technique and the tools that go with it.

  “I feel like I have lost my sense of self, and I am desperate to figure out how I fit into the world after this unexpected turn of events. My mind races through thoughts faster than I can follow, and they often keep me awake all night. I am confused, uncertain, and easily distracted. I have a hard time concentrating on work because my mind seems so out of control!”

 
— Heath

  TOOL

  Whoaing

  Your mind needs to be surprised a little with some new sounds because during an Expectation Hangover, it usually sounds like a broken record of the same fear-based thoughts. All of us recognize the sound “whoa” and understand that it means to slow down and come to a stop. In my research with clients, people find this sound calming as well. Just as you would say “Whoa!” to a horse to get it to slow down or stop when it is off and running in the wrong direction, practice saying it to yourself. Try it now: just say it to yourself and see what you experience. Can you feel it bring you more fully into the present moment, where all peace resides? When you notice your thoughts are like a horse galloping wildly in a bad direction, rein them in!

  Anne always considered her younger sister her “true soul mate.” After Anne supported her sister through a rocky, abusive marriage and divorce, she felt certain that her sister would be supportive of her as she started a new business. Yet she found her sister to be cold and distant, which created an Expectation Hangover. Anne says, “My mind was ruminating, thinking the same hurtful thoughts over and over again; analyzing; finding new ways to explain why she was doing this; being defensive; having inner dialogues with her (where I always won the arguments); and on and on. I knew this kind of thinking was leading me nowhere.” She began whoaing whenever she would catch herself thinking hurtful thoughts about her sister. She’d say, “Whoa! Stop, Anne. This is not the direction you want to head.” Anne noticed she began to feel more inner peace whenever she used whoaing, because it stopped her from going into a mental downward spiral. Mental rumination does a great deal of harm and only leads to bad moods, depression, and lack of energy.

  EXERCISE

  Instant Whoaing Technique

  Whoaing can be challenging in the midst of an Expectation Hangover, but here is a handy technique you can use to instantaneously whoa your fierce inner critic. Find a picture of yourself as a baby or small child, and carry it with you or put a photo of it on your phone. If you don’t have a picture of yourself as a child, you can use any picture of a baby that evokes a feeling of love, as a representative of the little one inside you. Whenever your inner critic is getting loud, take out the picture and look at it. Connect with your original innocence. Know that the person you are being mean to or critical of is that precious child. Look into your own eyes and feel the love that you are. Choose loving yourself over being hard on yourself. You wouldn’t be mean to a child, would you? Doing this will immediately shift your energy back into love and help you remember the truth of who you are.

  Rewiring Your Brain

  “If you can get more control over what happens between your ears, you can transform yourself to become happier, stronger, more resilient, more loving, more able to help yourself and others.”

  — Rick Hanson

  Your mind is incredibly creative. It can come up with some pretty believable stories. The mind is also malleable. With a greater understanding of the brain, it will be easier to use techniques to better control your thoughts and literally rewire your brain.

  Let’s start with some very basic neuroscience. Repetitive thoughts form what are called neural nets in our brain, which are clusters of chemically connected or functionally associated neurons. What that means is that if you think the same thought or type of thought over and over, it forms an actual physical cluster of neurons in your brain. Over time these neural nets create “grooves” in your brain that your thoughts gravitate toward. For instance, if you repeatedly think, “I’m not good enough,” you create a neural net around that limiting pattern of thought. Once the neural net is formed, it becomes habitual to think in the direction of “I’m not good enough.” Thus you will tend to see things that occur in your life through the lens of “I’m not good enough.” Since repeated patterns of neural activity change neural structure, you can use your mind to change your brain. This is called self-directed neuroplasticity. Bottom line: neurons that fire together, wire together. You can learn to stimulate different parts of your own brain, which will improve your well-being and functioning.

  This will make more sense if I give you a metaphor. Visualize a house in the middle of a really overgrown field. See yourself in a truck that is a football field’s distance from the house. Your job is to drive the truck to the house. On your first trip it’s a bumpy ride, as you have to get through all the weeds, bushes, and rocks. You are holding on to the steering wheel tightly and are highly focused on your destination. Now imagine you take the same route day after day. Over time the wheels create a path in the field, and eventually, the truck will naturally gravitate toward the path you’ve carved by driving the same route over and over. It would not require much steering or effort at all. But say you wanted to create a different path to the house. The first time you steered the truck off the grooves of the path you already made, it would once again be a bumpy ride. You’d have to steer with focus to get the truck off the easier, well-worn path. But if you took the new route day after day, a new path would form that would eventually feel as natural as the first path you carved.

  Your brain is like the field, and your thoughts are like the truck. If you want to change the direction your thoughts naturally gravitate toward, you are going to have to consciously steer them off their natural course and create new neural pathways in your brain. As you mentally rehearse new beliefs, you install more neurological hardware and put new circuits in place — think of it as a better hardware system for your mind!

  TOOL

  Redirecting

  “Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.”

  — Benjamin Disraeli

  After reining in runaway thoughts with whoaing, the next step for the Horseback Rider is to redirect them in more positive, life-affirming directions to create new neural nets in the brain. Just as a horseback rider guides the horse to a desired destination, you can practice and learn to navigate your thoughts. Our reality follows our thoughts, so better thoughts create a better reality.

  Redirecting is particularly useful when it comes to negative self-talk. During an Expectation Hangover sometimes the only certainty we can find is in the judgments we have of ourselves. We can look back at what we did that got us to the unexpected place we are in and blame ourselves. Although it does not feel great, it does satisfy the mind’s need for certainty. We all have an inner critic who says things like “I am not good enough,” “It was my fault,” “I should be doing more,” “I am a failure,” “I’m not worthy,” “I need to be thinner,” and “Everyone else is better than me.”

  Perhaps you can relate to receiving compliments but only really remember the one terribly hurtful thing someone has said. Our mind latches onto negativity — it is fuel for the inner critic who has bought into the misunderstanding that being harsher to ourselves than anyone else ever could is a form of protection. Would you consider being in a relationship in which the other person is constantly telling you what’s wrong with you? Absolutely not! So why tolerate that kind of relationship with yourself?

  Or perhaps you think being hard on yourself is an effective way to produce external results because your negative self-talk drives you to get things done. However, using the voice of your inner critic to fuel you is like putting the cheapest gas into a high-performance sports car. The car would still start, but it would not perform optimally; and the cheap gas would wear the engine down over time. Does that mean filling your mind with pep talks will make it perform at its best? Not necessarily.

  Attempting to counteract your inner critic’s negative self-talk like “I am a huge failure” by going to the other extreme of superpositive talk like “I am a giant success” creates what I call “pendulum thinking.” Let’s look at an example: If you had a boss who consistently told you what you were doing wrong and then one day began praising you with compliments, would you be skeptical? Probably. However, you’d be more likely to believe your boss if he simply said, “I kno
w you are doing the best you can. I apologize for being hard on you.”

  Pendulum thinking creates expectations because we think we “should” be able to hear the voice of an inner cheerleader who fills our mind with positive thoughts, which is especially challenging to do during an Expectation Hangover. As you work with your mind more and more, your thoughts will naturally become more positive, but don’t expect yourself to go into cheerleader mode immediately. Instead use Horseback Rider Rx to redirect your thoughts to a more neutral place. Create a new pathway in your brain when you notice yourself engaging in negative self-talk, by saying, “Whoa, stop. This is not the direction I want to go.” Then redirect your thoughts by telling yourself some simple but powerful truths such as “I did the best I could — and so did everyone else,” “I didn’t do anything wrong,” and “I am enough.” Remember, the brain is predisposed to the negative, so grab the reins of your mind tightly and steer your thoughts to these more positive truths.