Glen left his job as a corporate executive at forty-seven years old to pursue his lifetime passion of teaching. A year into teaching he reported feeling a little depressed and wondered if he had made the right choice as he faced dealing with difficult students and a much different salary. He kept thinking about the VIP privileges, recognition, and money that came with his previous job. Once Glen removed the rose-colored glasses he was using to view his past and reminded himself of the pit he had felt in his stomach each day that no amount of money ever filled, his depression lifted. He began to shift his awareness into the truth that he loved teaching and was far more fulfilled than he had ever been at his corporate job, which freed up more mental space to create effective ways to motivate challenging students.
Another extremely common example of past-hacking occurs during breakups. I am astonished at how common it is for people to completely forget how miserable they were in a relationship once it’s over. Perpetual thoughts about how great things were keep us from thinking about how much better things are and can be.
“I had to stop sacrificing my current happiness for an idealized past. The dream of ‘what could have been’ made me blind to what could be. I learned that the past is no place to linger. The present has to be dealt with and recognized as the foundation to building a successful, fulfilling future.”
—Thomas
Stop romanticizing what was — tell yourself the whole truth about your past, not just the things you miss or liked. You can let go of the person or situation and, in the future, re-create the beautiful experiences you had. Write out a detailed and accurate assessment of what you did not like or what was not a fit regarding whatever situation or relationship came to an end. Use Horseback Rider Rx to guide your awareness out of your right brain, where we create fantasies, and into your left brain, where you can get a helpful reality check.
TRANSFORMATIONAL TRUTH
Expiration Dates
Having the expectation of forever — be it a lifetime on a career path, a special someone to share life with until “death do us part,” or anything else we believe will have no end — puts us at risk of judging ourselves as failing if something ends. Some relationships, jobs, and situations come with expiration dates, and when we reach them, it is time to move on. This can be particularly challenging if we expected that something was going to last forever (or a lot longer than it actually did).
Say you bought a carton of yogurt with every intention of eating it. It was the flavor you desired, and it satisfied a craving. You scooped out some for breakfast every once in a while, but it reached its expiration date before you finished the entire carton. Now, you could just leave it in your refrigerator. It wouldn’t really do any damage, but would you want to eat it? No! The window of opportunity would have passed, and it would be time to buy a new yogurt or move on to having oatmeal for breakfast.
My marriage, something I vowed would last forever, had an expiration date. In our six years together, it was very clear that we were supposed to be with each other — but not forever. Shortly after our wedding, we both faced huge Expectation Hangovers that had nothing to do with each other. My husband was 100 percent the best person to support me during that time, and I was 100 percent the best person to support him. We both were launching our careers as entrepreneurs, and we were each other’s biggest coaches and cheerleaders. But once our personal issues were resolved and our careers were moving forward with great momentum, it felt like we were done. As much as we both tried to make it work, the directions in which we were headed were not aligned. Making the choice to separate was incredibly difficult, but it was also the best thing for both of us.
Kirk was a pastor for fifteen years and loved serving his congregation. He came to see me when he began to feel tremendous guilt over feeling apathetic regarding what he thought would be his lifelong profession. Despite his consistent prayer and efforts to reignite his enthusiasm, it was just not happening. When I offered Kirk the possibility that his current job may have reached an expiration date, he reported feeling relieved yet petrified. This was his life plan — how could it be over? At the same time, he could not deny the inner calling to grow in a different way. When he accepted that his current situation had reached an expiration date, it became clear to Kirk that he no longer wanted to be confined to one community — his call to service felt more expansive. It was time to leave his comfortable and certain role. Kirk had the fulfilling opportunity to mentor a young pastor to take his place and then left the country on an international tour of preaching, volunteering, and uplifting, growth-inspiring experiences. I still receive emails from Kirk in which he shares how grateful he is that he did not stay in a situation just because he thought he should.
Just as we cannot allow our need for certainty to keep us in situations that have reached their expiration date, when something stops feeling right, we can’t just chalk it up to an expiration date. Most of us enjoy new stimuli. This can drive us to jump out of situations prematurely when they have become boring and unchallenging. Every relationship and job requires reinvention and dedication. We have to be willing to put in the effort, especially when things get difficult, rather than allowing our desire for variety to lead us to mislabel something as having reached its expiration date.
That said, the expectation of forever creates tunnel vision that can be limiting. Our life curriculum is diverse, and just as we moved from one grade to the next in school, we often move from one relationship, job, or other situation to the next in our lives. You do not have to linger in the unpleasant symptoms of an Expectation Hangover when you know a situation is complete. It may be time to throw away the yogurt.
Future-Tripping: Treating Anxiety, Fear, and Worry
Now let’s discuss what to do when your mind takes a trip into the future. Future-tripping reinforces anxiety, fear, and worry. Living in anxiety will only intensify the symptoms of your hangover. Not knowing can be downright terrifying, but worrying about it is not going to help you figure it out. Moving into fear will either paralyze you from moving forward or push you into a place of panic, which is likely to lead to another hangover.
We create the experience of anxiety in our body when we are thinking about something that hasn’t yet happened. I am certain you will find that almost anytime you experience anxiety, it is because your mind is anticipating some future event. I caution you from buying into the belief that if you figure out what is next for you, you will cure your Expectation Hangover and the anxiety that comes with it.
If you are seeking certainty, you can find it in the present moment. You can be certain of the now and that there will be another now right after it and another now right after that. Think back to a time when someone was deeply present with you, when they looked in your eyes and you felt there was nowhere else they’d rather be. You know how calming that experience is. Hold that space of powerful presence within yourself. Use the Horseback Rider to whoa your mind back to the present moment. In the now, everything else falls away. In the now, all is well.
The most effective route back to the present moment is to take a deep breath. Nothing brings our awareness back to the here and now better and faster than our breath. Try it now. Take a deep breath and notice your mind settle. From this place of presence, the Horseback Rider can rein and steer your mind in the direction you would like to head.
Meditation is the best way to practice being in the present moment. If you are thinking, “I can’t meditate; I’ve tried, and I cannot stop my thoughts,” that is all the more reason to meditate. The purpose of meditation is not to have no thoughts; the purpose is to be mindful of how you respond to your thoughts. Sharon Salzberg, cofounder of Insight Meditation Society, explains, “We say all the time in teaching, ‘What comes up is not nearly as important as how you relate to what comes up.’ So you might have extensive bouts of thinking exceedingly nasty thoughts, but because you are relating to those thoughts with mindfulness and compassion, that’s considered good meditation.”
You have meditated before, even if you think you never have. Recall a time in your life when you have had a clear, relaxed focus. Perhaps it was when you were playing golf, gardening, painting, dancing, singing, making love, or building something. You have had moments of meditation, and you can use those as reference points. Meditation is not just some hip thing to do — it is an investment in your overall mental clarity. Try to imagine hearing the sound of the ocean while a jet engine flies over you, or tasting the sweetness of chocolate while your mouth has been numbed, or smelling the delicious aroma of freshly baked cookies in a room full of trash, or seeing a breathtaking sunset through a dirty and broken window. In these cases, your senses would be too overpowered by the distraction to fully experience your hearing, taste, smell, and sight. Similarly, when our mind is overpowered by thinking about our Expectation Hangover, we miss out on the more subtle ways our senses communicate with us. When the sea of the conscious mind is calm and clear, you alleviate mental stress and become more receptive to thoughts and insights that will move you out of your Expectation Hangover.
“I incorporated meditation into my everyday life and finally shut up for long enough to hear my loving self speak up. I listened and heard encouragement and unconditional love instead of doubt and negative talk. Confusion lessened when I sat down and asked for guidance. The best thing to come out of my Expectation Hangover was the practice of listening to that nicer voice during meditation, which allowed me to find the courage, drive, and willpower to make my biggest dream come true.”
— Rita
GUIDED VISUALIZATION
Connecting to the Present Moment
You can download the audio version of this exercise at www.expectationhangover.com/bonus
The most important thing about meditation is to simply do it and release any expectations about how it should be. This visualization exercise will help you observe your thoughts and take dominion over them. 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.Rest your hands on your lap and close your eyes. Take three deep, slow breaths and bring your full awareness to your breath. Feel yourself in this present moment. Feel your seat on the floor or chair, the clothes on your body, your hands on your lap. Use physical sensation to bring you into the now.
3.Imagine that you have a blank, white movie screen in your mind, on the back of your forehead, that you can view with your mind’s eye.
4.Allow your thoughts to flow freely but instead of just thinking them, see them on the movie screen. Project your thoughts onto the screen.
5.Practice simply observing the thoughts. Just let them be, floating across the screen like rolling movie credits.
6.Notice that you have choice over which thoughts you want to engage with, take further, obsess over, or respond to. You may not always feel like you have control over every thought that comes in, but you do have dominion over which ones you choose to latch onto.
7.Continue projecting your thoughts on the screen and practice just letting them appear on the movie screen of your mind.
8.Set the intention not to mentally grasp onto any thought. Loosen your grip on the thoughts that float by — just see them move across your mental screen.
9.Continue bringing your awareness back to your breath and repeat inwardly, “All is well.” This is the voice of your Higher Self, who resides in the comforting knowledge that all is truly well in the present moment.
10.When you are ready, slowly open your eyes and bring your awareness back into the room.
Use this process to turn down the volume of the anticipatory thinking that produces anxiety and turn up the volume of your Higher Self, which produces peace. Another suggestion that many of my clients have used is to wear a piece of jewelry, or even a rubber band around your wrist, that you deem your “presence piece.” Any time you feel your mind future-tripping to an undesirable destination, touch your presence piece and take a deep breath.
Fear is also something we create with our minds. We only feel the true physiological reaction of fear when something unexpectedly scares us and triggers our fight-or-flight response. Most of the fear we experience comes from asking ourselves what-if questions followed by an imagined outcome that is negative. The biggest symptom of Katie’s Expectation Hangover from being laid off was fear. Her mind was swarming with what-if questions like “What if I don’t get another job?,” “What if my money runs out?,” “What if no one will hire me because I got laid off?,” “What if I can’t pay my bills and I have to move back in with my parents?,” and so on. I explained to Katie that her fear was all in her head. There was not an actual physical threat to her, but she was going into panic mode, which was triggering a fight-or-flight response.
Your mind does not like unanswered questions. Imagine a three-year-old child tugging on his mom’s shirt and saying repeatedly, “Mom! Mom! Mom!” in an attempt to get her attention. The more she tries to ignore him, what happens? The tugging gets harder, and the mom-ing gets louder. But as soon as she addresses the child, the tugging and calling out stop. And usually, all the child wanted in the first place was attention and acknowledgment. This is what your what-ifs need when they are galloping away with your mind during an Expectation Hangover: to be acknowledged, addressed, and redirected.
“Asking a question is the simplest way of focusing thinking…. Asking the right question may be the most important part of thinking.”
— Edward de Bono
EXERCISE
Answering Your What-Ifs
When you notice your mind swirling with a lot of worrisome what-if questions that are creating the experience of fear, use this exercise to rein your thoughts in a direction that calms your mind.
1.Find a quiet, comfortable place to sit where you won’t be interrupted.
2.Get out your journal and allow your mind to bring forward all the what-ifs in your head until you begin to experience fear. Write out all the what-ifs that come to mind.
3.For each what-if, write out everything you are afraid might happen — even go to worst-case scenarios because sometimes the mind simply needs to acknowledge the biggest fear you are facing.
4.Use the Horseback Rider technique to whoa your mind and redirect your what-ifs away from something you are scared of and toward something that feels neutral or encouraging. Here are some examples of redirected what-if statements (taken from my work with Katie):
What if I get a job I like better in three months?
What if I can use the money from my layoff and actually take a month off, which I really need?
What if getting laid off from this job opens up new opportunities for me?
What if the time away from the stress helps me finally address my thyroid problem?
Can you see how much more empowering these redirected what-if questions are?
5.Each time you feel fear tugging on you, acknowledge that your mind is looping through what-if statements and generating worst-case scenarios. When you notice this, immediately whoa, rein in, and redirect.
“What if . . . ?” is a question that evokes a feeling of wonderful possibility or dreadful panic. Choose possibility over panic!
MELLESSIA’S STORY
I suffered a massive stroke one month after my thirtieth birthday. I was a healthy, active, vivacious woman. Literally overnight, I lost many physical abilities, including standing and walking, along with my career, boyfriend, friends, apartment, smile (my dimples disappeared on the left side), and confidence. It felt as if my independence and optimism had been taken away. I had to move back home to Indiana to be cared for by family, which was humiliating (losing the ability to bathe yourself does that). I went through a phase of depression, refusing any medications, believing I could beat this thing that had taken over my life.
I withdrew into myself to dig deep, and many friends and family members could not understand. Mentally, I was in the war of
my life and was not going to surrender. The reintroduction to the world after being in a hospital and rehab facility was the most difficult test of my confidence and sense of self. As a young woman with an “invisible injury,” I got a lot of strange looks and comments. Overcoming the negative thoughts about my future was very difficult. All the what-ifs and unanswered questions consumed me. What if I can’t ever walk and shower on my own? What if I am unable to return to work? What if I am not able to have children? Will a man ever love me with these deficits? Will I be able to braid my future daughter’s hair, the way my mom braided mine? My salvation was to focus on one day at a time to get through those thoughts and say to myself, “What if God has put me on a new course in life for a really good reason?” That question brought me peace.
“I have learned to see the world through my heart, not my mind, because my mind can be like going behind enemy lines sometimes. My heart holds the truth.”
— Gretchen
I reframed how I was thinking of my stroke by choosing to believe that my life had been paused for a reason. Today, five years later, I am so full of gratitude for the stroke I survived. I have learned to embrace the change it brought into my life. I keep a perspective of positive vision for my future and hope for all survivors by encouraging others, via social media primarily. I have come to see the stroke as fierce grace. A miracle has occurred in my life because I changed my entire perspective.
The valley was so painful, but the other side has proved to be more than I ever imagined for myself. Ironically, I feel much more beautiful and confident now, in my thirties and poststroke, than I ever did while fighting with myself in my mind during my twenties. I have finally let go of those painful expectations I had. Before my Expectation Hangover, I was rigid and never thought there was any other way. Today I understand the concept of “come what may.” I don’t worry so much about having a defined purpose or path because all the little detours have provided me so much scenery. Perspective is everything; changing my mind has literally changed my life!
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