Trading Expectation for Appreciation

There’s a quote that I love and I’ve shared before by Tony Robbins that goes like this. “Trade your expectations for appreciation and your world changes instantly." Think about it for a moment while I tell you a little anecdote about my relationship. 

Deryk and I work opposite shifts. He’s a high school music teacher so he works days and I’m a server at a restaurant and I work 4 nights a week, plus Sunday's. We both LOVE what we do and there’s a lot of overlapping time together and we spend it together as happily as possible. 

But sometimes, I’ll get in my head about what I’m doing around the house compared to what he’s doing around the house. And, I know I’m not alone on this. We can easily get caught up with negative feelings when we think things like “it’s not fair” and “I do everything around here”.

I actually had a talk with a friend about this recently and she reminded me to think differently. She said her way to overcome this daily, and it’s a daily practice, is to not have any expectations about what her husband will be doing.

So when you let go of what you expect and stop comparing the lists of what you do to his list, you can fully live in the moment and appreciate what’s right in front of you. 

If was a good reminder for me for sure. 

I’ll be totally honest.  I’ve wondered at times if it would be easier to be a single mom. Then I could look forward to time off as a parent. To sleeping in a couple of times a week. I’ve even in the past mentally moved out. But that’s when I’m in a negative mind space and not really thinking clearly.

And when those moods come up I truly work to get back to being present. And being grateful. I love my partner Deryk. And we have a vision of where we see this family going. And when I can focus on that, that’s when things can really change.

Trading my expectations for appreciation helps me to do that. 

I may take care of a lot of things around the house, the appointments with the girls, the dishes, baking and cooking but I also don’t clean the fish tank or the hamster cage or do the bulk of the laundry. And daddy does the bath and bedtime routine every night. Those are all amazing contributions. They're just different from mine. 

We both have our strengths and we keep our house running the best we can, together.  We keep our family running, together.

So let this perhaps be a reminder that when you let go of expectations, things change.

You begin to appreciate what is being done around you instead of judging it and getting upset. You lose your lack mentality and you get back to attracting abundance. 

We truly can be happy. 

Sometimes a simple perspective shift is all we need. And a friend to listen and bounce ideas off of certainly helps too.