Verified by 
The whirlwind of the holidays can make it easier or harder to maintain a healthy perspective on who you are and your place in the world. This is the third in a series of three posts I wrote this week on maintaining perspective. The first one focused on political perspective, the second one focused on giving and receiving gifts, and this one is about having a healthy perspective when it comes to expectations
A few years ago my friend guiltily confessed to me that she had been disappointed by the diamond earrings she received from her boyfriend for Christmas because she’d been hoping that the little black box held a diamond ring. Have you ever felt disappointed by a really nice gift because you were hoping it was something different? Or maybe a holiday you had been really looking forward to that didn’t quite live up to your dreams for it?
Every day we create expectations for how certain events or moments will play out. Unfortunately, when we have unrealistically high expectations especially if we fail to share them with our close others, we can find ourselves let down in the moment rather than enjoying it as we imagined we would. I tend to have this tendency. I imagine in detail how an experience will go. It brings me a lot of joy in advance, but often leads to a disappointing reality when the experience doesn’t hold up to my imagined interpretation of it.
During the approach to the holidays expectations often take wings, painting lovely pictures of happy family moments, giving and receiving perfect gifts, laughter by a warm fire, and meals that are cooked without any disasters. And then when the holiday finally arrives, someone is sick, it’s a spare the air day, you don’t get the gift you were dreaming about, and the turkey is overcooked. The holiday feels like it’s been ruined.
How can we avoid this situation? One way may be to lower our expectations. When we expect something, we feel resentful when that expectation is not filled. If instead we don’t expect anything, we feel grateful for what we do receive. For example, some research shows that we feel resentful when a family member doesn’t help us out (and little gratitude when they do) because we expect help from family. However, we feel a lot of gratitude if a stranger helps us out (and little resentment if they don’t). We have no expectation of help from a stranger.
So to make the most of the holidays this year:
1. Temper your expectations. Expect things will go wrong, that you will feel tired after staying up late wrapping gifts or hanging out with friends and family. Figure out what exactly your expectations are and decide whether or not they are realistic. Let go of the ones that are not.
2. Set expectations only for yourself. You have no control over the weather or the moods of your family members. Setting expectations for others or uncontrollable events and basing your happiness on them will only spell disaster. Instead choose to focus on what you can control—yourself and your attitude.
3. Focus on the positives. When setting expectations for yourself, focus on the positives. Choose to avoid conflict, approach your holidays the right way, and be kind to yourself and others (even when you don’t want to be). Kindness is so simple, yet so effective.
4. Create little moments of joy whenever you can. There will be negative moments even on the best days, and the key seems to be having a large number of positive moments to help balance out the unpleasant ones.
