A Personal Story About Expectations

Sitting in my office, I was struck by how different starting my business has been compared to what I expected.  Maybe it was how I thought my day might start, maybe it was what aspects I thought I might be in control of or how much better I would be at controlling the things I wasn't so good at before (note to self, paperwork is not my forte!)

Now, don't get me wrong, as much as there have been emotional ups and downs (expected), fear (expected) and the feeling of empowerment (hoped for), it has been great - just different. It made me think about last July (2012) when I had the opportunity to take my family to Disneyland in Hong Kong.

The Magic Kingdom

We were fortunate to have the whole family together and we took advantage of a stopover in Hong Kong to visit Disneyland on a trip from Singapore to Toronto. I was so excited to for the trip, perhaps even more so than my kids (7, 3 and almost 2 at the time), especially since this would be the first time for the younger two.

Hurricane Vincente

On the day of our arrival, we were advised of a pending tropical storm.  Although we had the opportunity to enter the park the first morning, all of the outside rides were closed and the rain started in earnest after lunch. Traipsing three wet kids back to the hotel, we all hoped that the weather would pass quickly.

As it turned out, we ended up in the most severe storm in the past decade with a Storm Signal Number 10 Typhoon (the highest rating by the Hong Kong Observatory) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYRDHr1fwFc.

For two and a half days, we were confined to the Disneyland Hotel.

Expectations Crushed

What I expected of our trip was smiling faces, pictures with Mickey, going on rides, swimming and lots of other great family memories. Now what? We had paid a lot of money, planned and packed, flew to Hong Kong and now we were stuck in a hotel with cranky and wet kids.  We did the only thing we could, we adjusted, adapted and created with whatever we could.

Project Rainstorm

We transformed one of our two hotel rooms into a giant tent city. We had (running, jumping, crawling) races (tag, hide and seek) in the hallways. We probably visited the hotel gift shop about three times a day, sometimes to explore, sometimes to rack up the credit card. We booked the kids into the kids club where they coloured, made crafts, climbed the castle and rowed the boat. The kids crashed pylons and bounced in the Mickey Castle that was set up, complements of the hotel. We ate breakfast with Daisy; dinner with Mickey and Goofy. My daughter got her picture taken with Sleeping Beauty (her favourite - she wears pink).

Yes, we were confined to the hotel (thank you for that last minute decision to splurge on Disneyland accommodations). No, the trip did not go to MY expectations. But, we had smiling, giggling, messy faces, we had pictures with Mickey (Goofy, Pluto, Daisy, Minnie, Princess Aurora), we went swimming (indoors) and created so many special, unique memories.  Had things not gone the way they did, we would not have experienced the trip we did. When I finally let go of the Disneyland trip of MY dreams, I realized that we actually had the Disneyland trip of my families dreams.

Adjust your Expectations, Change your Outlook

The moral of my long story - don't get caught up in the expectation of achieving a goal or an idea of what you want to be... in your job, relationship, financials, etc. Not that you shouldn't aspire and create the vision of where you want to go, just focus on getting better and being better rather than a single point of achievement. Let your expectations go and experience the joy and excitement of living in the moment. You will find more energy and peace when you are where you want to be and you can then leverage that energy and internal power for even more.