5 years ago, my husband and I celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary in New Orleans. It was a ton of fun. It was near the end of that trip that we started talking about, “What will we do for 15 years??”

Of course, 15 years felt like decades away at the time. And it kind of was. While 5 years is 5 years no matter how you measure it, the way the world has changed over the last 5 years feels like a lifetime of change at breakneck speed.  

5 years ago, we talked about how it would be so fun to celebrate our 15-year anniversary in Napa, with dinner at the French Laundry (a super fancy restaurant we had heard about through our restaurant industry friends.)  

This plan seems silly now. Spending that kind of money on a meal when my husband has been unemployed for months. And, even before his layoff, our priorities have shifted and evolved as the world has shifted and evolved.  

With so many unknowns, we had decided we would just go out to dinner at a modest local restaurant.  

And, it was perfect! It was exactly what we needed on that day. We didn’t need the thing we thought we wanted 5 years ago.  

While we once had these lavish expectations for this occasion, our reality called for something else. And that something else was exactly what we needed.  

That doesn’t mean that the lavish expectation isn’t still sitting with me. It is. But I have trained myself to let go of expectations because reality has shown up to laugh in my face so many times over the last few years. I know I’m not alone in this. I know most (all?) of you have also experienced this! 

So, as we navigate this world of managing our expectations vs. our realities, how do we sit with outcomes? In this episode, I share 6 outcomes I’ve experienced from sitting in reality when my expectations have been stolen, shifted, or flipped upside down.

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