Such a great pic right?
I wish I had taken it.
I had actually taken four different pictures of one pretty cranky goose that day.
A couple of days after our visit to the marina, my nifty Google photos app alerted me to some new activity. Apparently, that kind of creepy digital "assistant" of mine turned my four pics into this really cool panoramic image and left me wishing this was really what I had captured that day.
Sad to say, this actually happens to me quite a bit: not the digital assistant pics, but the deflated expectations. Boo.
To say I have a vivid imagination would be a massive understatement.
When I concoct a plan, I can see, hear, and smell EVERYTHING about the experience I hope to have before we ever arrive. The problem with this is that I get uber excited in the wait and if reality does not match what my imagination has conjured I end up rather disappointed.
And that's kind of the direction our dates went for this month.
April was my month for date planning. Our "cheap" date was going to be a jaunt around an incredible farmer's/craft market and our "big" date was to be golf with a phenomenal dinner afterward...and Jason was going to super impressed and in awe of my all of my amazing plans.
It kind of happened that way and it kind of didn't.
Don't get me wrong. Both dates turned out to be all around "good days", but the cheap one did not happen due to schedule conflicts and instead became a coffee date and the golf date, well...
Let's just say that although the weather was great and the course was beautiful, maybe the hubs did not have his best golf game and was feeling a little frustrated.
Maybe.
We're lucky that ball didn't roll right off of that retaining wall and take him with it...
And maybe the marina we went to was absolutely gorgeous and maybe we will try another restaurant next time.
By the end of the date, I was feeling pretty deflated and declaring that I will no longer be planning our dates and that he will take charge EVERY month.
And in his amazing wisdom, he reminded me that being open to adventure sometimes means making room for disappointment and being okay with things not always turning out the way we hoped.
We have just started this life of intentional adventure.
We are in the midst of planning our very first real vacation together right now and have a massive list of places we want to go and things we want to see beyond this first trip.
And if we go into this life without the flexibility to allow for things to not always look the way we imagine, we may not enjoy this very much.
But, if we remember the goal is to experience new things together, enjoy each other's company and take the right attitude with us we will always have a great time.
Yes, we can have some semblance of what we would like to see and do, but we can't allow our expectations to hold us prisoner and thereby rob us of the experience if things do not always go as planned.
Honestly, I had a tough time even knowing where to start with this blog this week. But, upon reflecting on J's great advice, I decided to reframe my approach. So, I sat down, stared out at the rain for a bit, turned on some great French music and decided to lay down my expectations of what I thought it should be in lieu of just sharing my own experience with you and I'm kind of happy about it.
"Trade your expectation for appreciation and the world changes for you."
~Anthony Robbins
No comments:
Post a Comment