Aim for a few enjoyable moments

How to avoid disappointment

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Good Morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is to just aim for a few enjoyable moments.
If you are in a situation that is likely to

(00:25):
be challenging, keeping your expectations low can keep you from
telling yourself a story that everything is terrible. Every summer,
I make a summer fun list. These are things I
want to do to make summer feel like summer, to
create memories and enjoy the season. I knew we would

(00:48):
be taking a family trip to the Virgin Islands this summer,
which was going to be a big adventure, but traveling
with a toddler in particular is always challenging, so I
said that my goal was to have at least a
few enjoyable moments. With that as the bar. We definitely passed.

(01:09):
There were several genuinely enjoyable moments. There were also some
rough patches, and I am sorry if you happen to
be sitting near me and my toddler on the flight
from St. Thomas to Newark, and I particularly extend my
apologies to the cleaning crew who had to deal with
the bag of goldfish crackers that he dumped on the
plane floor. If I was aiming for total bliss, being

(01:33):
up with a toddler one night from two am to
four am in my hotel room could leave me despondent.
Here I am on vacation and I'm miserable. Life is
horrible and terrible. But since I was just aiming for
a few enjoyable moments, I could think about seeing fish

(01:54):
through the clear bottom of a kayak one night, and
going on a sunset cruise one night, and seeing a
giant turtle while snorkeling. The narrative need not be all
good or all bad. It's just life. I have learned
that sort of stoicism over years of having little ones,

(02:16):
but I realized that sharing that mindset might be helpful.
When I blogged about my trip, our reader wrote that
she had been very unhappy about her recent family vacation
because of some rough spots, but when she saw that
my goal had just been having a few enjoyable moments,
it changed her perspective about the trip. Did her family

(02:39):
have at least a few enjoyable moments in the course
of their multi week road trip, Well, yes, yes they did.
They also had some tough spots, of course, but neither
needed to define the narrative. If you are going into
a situation that is theoretically supposed to be one but

(03:00):
might be challenging, it might help to set this as
your goal too. Just aim for a few enjoyable moments.
Maybe it's a family wedding. It's supposed to be fun,
but it's quite possible that the airline will lose your luggage,
and the bride's uncle will do something inappropriate, and your

(03:20):
kid might start screaming in the middle of toast number seven.
If you are not careful, these points of evidence can
lead you to a story that the whole trip was
a disaster. But if you aim for just a few
enjoyable moments, you will probably succeed in seeing those. The
cake was uncommonly good for a wedding cake, there was

(03:44):
a beautiful sunset at the reception. You enjoyed talking to
the bride's other uncle, the one who was not so terrible.
Those things happened too, and so all is fine in
any case. As we often say on this podcast, low
expectations are easy to meet. Reality is what It is.

(04:10):
Better to have low expectations and wildly exceed them than
to hope for perfection and be constantly disappointed. We often
can't change reality, but we can change our mindset and
it really does make a difference in the meantime. This

(04:32):
is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making the
most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to hear
from you. You can send me your tips, your questions,
or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook

(04:53):
and Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod that's B the number four,
then Breakfast p o D. You can also shoot me
an email at Before Breakfast podcast at iHeartMedia dot com.
That Before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters.
Thanks so much, I look forward to staying in touch.

(05:18):
Before Breakfast is a production of I Heart Radio. For
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