ļ»æWelcome to Running to Myself. Iām Trisha Stanton. Life and mindset coach, running coach and host of Running to Myself.
16 years ago I ran my first marathon. The process of training for that first race changed my life. This podcast is my opportunity to share some of the lessons I have learned through the many ups and downs of life during my almost 2 decades of running and learning more about who I am. It is my hope that through my stories maybe you will see a bit of yourself as well and find a nugget of truth and inspiration to take with you. Letās get started.
Welcome to Episode 22 Unmet Expectations
Last week I shared how being willing to be flexible in my expectations around the holidays helped me be able to create feelings of connection with my loved ones no matter the circumstances and enjoy the holidays even if they didnāt look like what I had imagined they would. This week I want to continue the theme of what to do with unmet expectations by sharing with you my favorite Christmas memory of all time. It has absolutely nothing to do with running, but it is a story that MUST be told.
When I was growing up, our family had several Christmas gatherings that we kids looked forward to each year. Christmas Eve at my Aunt Carolās house was the kick-off and for many years the highlight of the seasonās festivities. The day would start with waiting hours upon hours for our out of town cousins to arrive, Then the party could start. Aunt Carol and Uncle Johnās Christmas Tree was the tallest I ever saw as a child, towering over us in their two story great room. And listen, in my young mind, having a 2 story greatroom added onto your house was the height of sophistication back in the day.
The Christmas Eve menu was always the same. Sloppy Joes (which I did not like, but was obligated to have on my plate), potato chips, green jello pear salad, grandmaās homemade Christmas fudge and if I was extra lucky, cheesecake. There was also always RC cola and if you were really lucky, you could have a whole can to yourself and not have to share one with your little brother. I can assure you that there were lots of other delicious food items to choose from, but those are the ones imprinted on my memory because those were the ones that filled my plate each year. I can still picture it all spread out on the dining room table where we would make a line, buffet style, and fill our plates. As a child, the food was important only because no presents were opened until after the adults were done eating.
We kids were always anxious to get through that part so we could get to the main event. Opening presents. And we all knew there was only one gift that really mattered. Aunt Carolās gift. Oh the anticipation! The tradition was that we all received the same gift. Selecting a gift that will please all the kids was no small feat. But year after year she wowed us all with the BEST gift!
Keep in mind, this would have been late 70s through the 80s. These were the days of the annual Sears Christmas catalogue along with the lesser known Montgomery Ward Catalogue and Service Merchandise catalogue for the extra fancy people. Hours upon hours were spent studying the toys in the Christmas catalogues, cross referencing between catalogs so that no possibly desirable toy would be missed. Pen in hand to carefully circle each item that would be added to the Christmas wish list. If you are a Gen Xer, you know exactly what I am talking about. These were the good old days.
There was no internet to order from. Amazon did not exist. Our town did not have a Walmart- I donāt even know if Walmart existed then. KMart was the only big box store I remember at the time and it was in another town.
And yet our special group gift from Aunt Carol did not seem to come from any of the options mentioned above. It was almost as if she had special, direct line access to the North Pole for gifts you would never think to ask for, but would absolutely love. What she did have, I would learn as I got older, was the local auction. The specifics of how it worked are still unknown to me, but she and my Uncle John enjoyed going to the auction where it just so happened that unique items could be purchased in multiples. This is the era before Costco and Samās club and bulk purchasing of items was the norm. In my young mind, they were on the cutting edge of fancy people with secret access to gifts inaccessible to regular folks. There were two years in particular that raised the bar of our Christmas expectations.
Amazing gift number 1 was the blue sleds. It is possible that the blue sleds may have been one of the original gifts originating from the auction years. When I was in 6th grade we moved into a house that sat on a hill. It was the perfect sledding hill. We spent more time outside in the winter than we did in any other season sledding down that hill and then running back up to begin again. My brother loved it so much that he would go out and sled in the morning before school. I donāt know if we were all that excited when we were initially presented with the blue sleds, but once we got them out in the snow, their status of legendary gift was immediate and everlasting. Those sleds FLEW down any hill you put them on. The blue sleds were epic.
Amazing gift number 2 was a beanbag chair for each of us. Again, this was the 70 or early 80s. Gaming chairs were still decades away. The bean bag chairs were a perfect gift for all of us! I still picture a photograph that was taken that night with all of us reclined in our bean bag chairs. Gosh we loved those things.
And then came the gift that will forever live in infamy. The gift that ended it all. The final group gift. Iām not sure if that is accurate or not, but it is the final group gift in my memory. And it has been talked about more than any other gift ever given or received in our family. Each gift had proven itself to be quite useful. We used the sleds each winter for years and years until the plastic cracked open from the weight of years of bodies racing down snowy hills over and over. We dragged those bean bag chairs all over the house to lay in. I had mine up until it somehow developed a puncture wound and began spilling beans everywhere. Making it an annoyance to mother and father and also much less comfortable to snuggle into.
This gift, the one that lives on in infamy in our family lore, was arguably the MOST practical, and useful of all. My Aunt Carol still makes that claim to this day. And since I was able to locate mine 39 years later in the process of writing this episode, I would have to say that she is not wrong. The anticipation was high as we waited to see what the surprise would be this year. Surprised is the perfect way to describe what we were when we each unwrapped our brand new WEBSTERāS DICTIONARY. You heard me. We went from fast as lightning blue sleds, to amazingly comfortable and versatile beanbag chairs to each receiving our own personal dictionary. At first we thought it was a joke. It was not. As you can imagine, we were quite surprised by this gift. I can still picture us each looking at our brand new dictionary and then silently looking at each other, not sure what to say. Itās too bad no one yet had a camcorder on hand to record our reactions. Iām pretty sure we could have made the finals of Americaās Funniest Home Videos that year. In that moment, that night was the epitome of unmet expectations. We tried not to be rude, but we were disappointed. This signified the end of the road for the best gifts ever given.
And yetā¦.
Sometimes unmet expectations carry a gift in disguise. A gift in a different form for later.
This was certainly the case with our dictionaries. There is no single story told and retold through the decades with my cousins than our individual versions of the year of the dictionary. Iāll have you know, I did go on to use mine and my cousin Carla has confirmed that she used hers as well. My brother has likely never used a dictionary in his life, but when I asked him if he still had his, he confirmed that he does. My other cousins profess to have used theirs in more unconventional ways, such as holding a window open in an unairconditioned bedroom. No other Christmas gift throughout the history of our family Christmass has been talked about or laughed about more. One moment of unmet expectation exchanged for 39 years of laughter and retelling a story that rekindles the closeness of our youth.
When viewed from that lens, I would say the dictionaries were the best gift she ever gave us.
Letās sit for a moment with the idea that unmet expectations can carry a gift in disguise. Can you think of a time when you didnāt get what you wanted, but NOT getting what you wanted opened the door to something so much better? The way this happens is not usually immediate. There is disappointment and maybe even pain in the short term, and once you get through that you may even forget about it for a while. Then, when you least expect it, doors open to new opportunities or relationships that are better than you could have expected. Later, as you reflect, you begin to realize that this new, perfect (for you) opportunity or relationship would not have been available to you if your original expectation had been fulfilled. If you are in midlife, like me, you can likely string together several examples of times when you had unmet expectations and it felt like the end of the world at the time, but turned out to be working for you in the long run. Looking at the past from this lens, helps us with perspective in new situations that arenāt coming together the way we thought they would or want them to.
My challenge for you this week is to look for the gift in disguise of unmet expectations from your past and use that perspective to shape your thinking the next time you have unmet expectations, large or small. Find the gift in disguise.
Thatās all I have for you today, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Running to Myself. You can find previous episodes on apple podcasts and spotify or on my website www.trishastanton.com. New episodes are released each Monday. You can subscribe on Apple or Spotify to automatically receive each new episode as it comes out.
If you know someone who you think would enjoy this podcast, please share it with them! I will be back next week to share a little more about my journey on the road to discovering my truest self.
In the meantime, if you want to know more about my coaching program or have questions about one-on-one coaching or life coaching in general, please visit my website at www.trishastanton.com or my Facebook Group The Simple Truth Coaching. I would love to hear from you!
Have a great week and remember, Mindset Matters!
