Christmas and the holiday season are perhaps the time of greatest expectation.
We expect great things of ourselves and others and we want a reward for all our hard work in the form of the perfect Christmas: perfect food, home, partner, friends and presents… not to mention family members!
Whilst it is wonderful to have high standards, expectations put enormous pressure on everyone and I’m not so convinced these expectations help. In fact, I think they deeply hinder.
“An expectation is a resentment waiting to happen” – Old saying
Whether it’s waiting in a queue (“This is taking FAR too long, I’ve got places to be!”) or listening to our mother complain (“I’m the daughter, she’s meant to be comforting and guiding me!’) our expectations of how life should be interrupt our experience of things as they actually are, creating dissatisfaction, resentment and anger.
When we are in the expectation of something, our focus goes on trying to make life fit the picture we have in our head and control the externals such as people, places and things. But by trying to control the uncontrollable, we drive ourselves crazy! It also means we miss what we do have control over i.e. ourselves!
“Expectation is at the root of all heartache” – Shakespeare
Acceptance is actually the solution to expectation. Accepting people, place and things as they are grants us peace and serenity. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous puts it succinctly:
“Acceptance is the answer to ALL of my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation- some fact of my life- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.” – Alcoholics Anonymous, Big Book, p. 417
EFT is excellent for clearing the emotional difference between where we are and where we want to be, and the frustration we might be experiencing with things not being as we want them to be – then we can come to acceptance! With this in mind I have created a FREE and fast tap-along audio to clear the pre-holiday expectation tension and bring you back to centre.
Listen along here