MY EXPECTATION HANGOVERS

"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing."

— Agatha Christie

I am no stranger to Expectation Hangovers.

Before the ink was dry on my college diploma, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue my dream of working in the entertainment industry. I was driven by a tremendous expectation of myself to be wildly successful to compensate for the insecurity I had been plagued with since childhood. By the ripe old age of twenty-five, I had an office with a view, an assistant who answered my phone, an expense account, a real salary, power lunches, television industry screenings, clients, and business cards. I dated and attended industry events. I even spent New Year's Eve with George Clooney — now there is a midnight kiss I will never forget! From the outside, it looked like I "had it all." There was just one problem: I was absolutely miserable.

Where were the happiness and worthiness I thought all my goals would deliver? Every day, I tried to talk myself into liking my job. I felt obligated to stay because I had worked so hard to get there, but I dreaded each day. I started getting migraines, rode up the elevator to work with knots in my stomach, and was irritable all the time. To save myself from a total meltdown, and others from the bitch I all of a sudden was becoming, I quit.

Leaving my prestigious career changed my external circumstances, but I still found myself miserable. Burned out and craving a total change of direction, I became a personal trainer — I thought it might be my "passion." Wrong again. I then had nine different jobs in two years, constantly searching for something that would make me feel better about myself. During that time, I went into thousands of dollars of debt; got diagnosed with an "unknown autoimmune disorder"; stopped speaking to my mother after I made a decision that did not fit her expectations of me; and got dumped by my fiancé six months before our wedding. So there I was, now at twenty-seven: heartbroken, in debt, sick, at odds with my family, and lacking direction in my career. Nothing had turned out the way I expected, despite my meticulous planning and overachieving. Major Expectation Hangover.

One pivotal night I found myself, for the first time ever, contemplating how I could end my life. That was a terrifying thought, but I felt so incredibly hopeless and lost I did not know what to do.

And then something happened.

Suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, a wave of unconditional love and compassion flooded over me. Time stopped. My pain was replaced with comfort. I knew that everything was indeed happening for a reason. Unlike the past, when people used that cliché on me and I felt like punching them and screaming, "Well, I don't know what the freaking reason is, and this sucks!" this time I knew it to be true — even if I did not yet know the reason. The feeling of peace and connection only lasted an instant because my mind came in to try and figure it out; but the impact of that moment will last a lifetime. For the first time in my life, I felt like I experienced God — and I had my Expectation Hangover to thank for it.

At that point, I made myself a promise to dig in, look at my life, and figure out who I really was, what I really wanted, and how I was going to get it. I opened my mind to the possibility that somewhere in the midst of this Expectation Hangover there could be a blessing. The first blessing revealed itself two days later when I woke up with the idea for my first book, which launched my very unexpected career as an author, professional speaker, facilitator, life coach, and spiritual counselor. My biggest Expectation Hangover was the catalyst for stepping onto a career path that I absolutely love.

My quarter-life crisis was behind me, and I believed I was on my way to creating the life I wanted. I broke free of debt, healed my relationship with my mom, and regained my health. After years of searching, I found my true passion in terms of work. And after recovering from a broken heart, I married a man I loved deeply. My thirties were looking the way I thought they should. I finally "had it all." (Ha! How cute of my ego to think that.) Then another Expectation Hangover began to emerge. Everything I expected to make me happy had manifested, yet I still felt a deep sense of longing for something I couldn't define. It was a thirst that could not be quenched by a job or a man or a paycheck or a trip to Bali (I've taken three). This Expectation Hangover had a deeper message for me. I embarked on a journey of learning how to leverage disappointment — a journey that shook me to my core.

The most notable fallout of this shake-up was a divorce that catapulted me further into the Expectation Hangover, which became the most severe I had ever experienced. I agonized over whether to get divorced so much that I lost half the hair on my head. But in my heart I knew our marriage had an expiration date (you'll learn more about those later in the book).

When I was going through my divorce, someone said to me, "Christine, milk this time for all it's worth." That was one of the best pieces of advice I received. The thing about an Expectation Hangover is that it is never just about the issue we are currently feeling hungover about — it triggers all kinds of juicy stuff from our past that has not yet been resolved.

This thirty-something Expectation Hangover included the perceived failure of a marriage, financial insecurity, and having no children despite hearing the loud ticktock of my biological clock. But I milked it for all it was worth. While grieving the demise of my marriage, I dived back into work at an accelerated speed, sold the home I had renovated with my husband, and moved into a place of my own — all the while showing up for people as a coach and inspirational speaker, which was not easy in the midst of my own Expectation Hangover. I was dealing with the shame I had about my "failed" marriage and had to quiet the "Who am I to give advice when my own life is not turning out the way I planned?" judgments. What I realized is that I am one of the best people to be teaching about Expectation Hangovers because I learned how to move through each one and walk through those doorways of transformation that were opening all around me.

When I wrote previous books, I felt I had proven techniques for overcoming...