Hey, my friend what's up, and welcome back to Do Life Big! I am so excited to have you here today listening because today's episode is going to be awesome. And probably also have you laughing!
If you're listening to this right now, as I'm recording this, I have just returned from a nine day cruise with my entire family. So my husband myself, my three kids ages 10, eight, and three, and my parents who are about to be 75 years old. Oh, boy, oh, boy. Is this a juicy episode today? Because let me tell you, you know, let's talk about having high expectations for things going really well. And then it's like one thing after the next ends up happening, and it ends up turning out to be nothing like you ever imagined it to be.
Have you ever had that happen? Because let me tell you, I am just living through this over this past week while we went on this cruise, I had all of these high expectations, right about how this cruise was going to go. This was the first time that we took the kids on a cruise we've only ever cruised just either with my parents or just Nick and myself. Totally different when you cruise with kids.
We did the Royal Caribbean Harmony of the Seas. And we're about to get on, they take your picture, because it's attached to an ID. And they go through and they take everybody's picture and everyone's going great. And they get to Keegan, my three year old, who then proceeds to have a major tantrum meltdown, freaking out covering his face kicking, screaming, crying, the guy's trying to get the pitcher, he finally got the pitcher, the meltdown continued the whole way up into the ship, he finally calms down, we get things under control. And we're trying to really just enjoy. Wow, like look at how big and massive the ship is. Look at how incredible it is like we're walking into it now. And the kids are just completely blown away.
We finally make our way into the elevators and we get up to our room. And we had two adjoining rooms, two connecting rooms so that the kids could be in one. And my husband and myself could be in another with Keegan and his pack and play. Yes, he's three and he still sleeps in a pack and play. So I am grateful for that. And we had balcony rooms. First mistake guys. If you have toddlers, you may not want to invest in the balcony room. We get into the room. We open the sliding doors. We look out. Keegan is right there with us. And what I didn't realize was that he was holding his blankie that he sleeps with and carries everywhere with him almost instantaneously within 30 seconds of being out on the balcony from over the railing and it lands three floors below us on one of those big life boats. Do you know what I'm talking about? If you've ever been on a cruise ship, they have these safety boats that are attached in case of thing frickin goes down.
Anyways, it was laying on the edge of the boat on the top of it. Well freakout city, Nick runs down three flights of stairs down to level five we were on level eight. Yes, the security guy flags them down. Oh my gosh. My three year old through his blankie over the balcony. It's laying on top of the security boat. Is there any way that you can get it? Like we really need this thing. So I'm up on the eighth floor on our balcony looking down at the blankie on top of the life safety boat, and all of a sudden I I see this big, long, gray pole with a hook, go up through the top, and reach all the way across and I see it, grab Blinky. And thank the Lord, it's a miracle, we were able to get blankie back because honestly, it was about to blow away, and we were getting ready to depart.
Right after this, I kid you not. Keegan walks in from the balcony, and throws up all over the floor, he had caught a stomach bug that we had caught from just a friend from a couple days before on Thanksgiving, this was literally all within a matter of 45 minutes to a max an hour of being on the ship.
So when I say you have these high expectations of how things are going to go, you really are hoping that they go a certain way, you can just see it in your mind working out. So perfectly right? I pictured myself just like walking on, we're all so excited, we're all so happy, everything goes great. And then boom, one thing after the next. And when that happens, and things don't go the way that you're planning on them going. So you know you're in your first reaction, when things don't work out, the way that you want it to, is just stress, anxiety, maybe even a little bit of anger, definitely disappointment. But you can probably relate, maybe you've had this happen before.
I mean, this was happening to us on this trip. And it was just one thing after the next from the taking of the picture to the blankey he goes overboard, and he throws up and get sick in the room.
Then we went down, we had heard that the ship had this incredible daycare area for all the kids to go so that way you could have some adult time and have you know your dinners with the adults that were late night and enjoy them without the kids. And we did not realize that in order for Keegan to be in one of the rooms with a three to five year olds, he had to be completely potty trained, we did not know that. Otherwise, we would have really pushed the potty training issue before the trip. And so we get there. And we find out that he has to be in the nursery with six months old, up to three year olds, and you're not allowed to just drop them off. So once you are in that three to five year group and above, you can just drop your kids off anytime you want. You don't have to make a reservation or anything with the nursery, they're only allowed to take a certain amount of kids and you're only allowed to block off a certain amount of hours, 10 hours for the first few days. And then you have to wait a couple of days until the trip goes on. And then halfway through the trip, you're allowed to book more hours.
So we get there and find this all out. And we're like, oh my god, I can't believe this. And then they had nothing available for him for the first three days of the trip. And so we have that. And then a couple of days in right to the trip.
After all of this when we finally were arriving at our first island of Labadee. I got the stomach bug so bad that I was in bed the entire day. I didn't get to make it out to that island. I was so violently ill it lasted a good 36 hours. And it was just one thing after the next Have you ever had that happen? Where you're just like, oh my god, I really saw this going another way. Like why are all these things happening? This is this cannot be real.
After that happened. Keegan was still sick, he was coughing. He was losing his voice. And we were like, Oh, my gosh, something must be wrong, we he should probably go down to the clinic and be seen what if he has strep throat, he goes there. They do a COVID test. They do a strep test, they do a flu test. They do all these tests, everything come back negative. But it doesn't matter. The ship rules are that you have to quarantine in your room for 24 hours, then come back down and take another COVID test and be negative in order to go out on the boat and do things. And so at this point, Keegan was quarantined to the room while we were in Aruba, which meant he couldn't get off the boat in Aruba. And we really couldn't explore much of it either.
Maybe you've had this happen before, right? Where you've had these expectations about how something would go or even expectations right about someone that you know, maybe a friend or a spouse or a relative. You just have these expectations for how you would assume and expect them to act. And then they disappoint you and you're let down because you expected so much more of them. Or you've had disappointment about maybe a breakup or a job or maybe even something health related. It happens to us all and we all experience disappointment and things just not quite going as we planned. And, you know, when this happens, it's totally okay to let yourself feel the disappointment, right? Like, definitely acknowledge it.
But then get perspective, really try to see the bigger picture. And sometimes you have to just have a little bit of faith that even if things aren't working out exactly how you wanted them to, that they're working out the way that they're meant to. So when I was going through that whole debacle, and it was one thing after the next on our cruise over the past nine days, in the big scheme of things, it's really not that big of a deal.
After all, I was with my family, both my parents are alive and with us on this cruise. And hello, I'm on a cruise, right? How lucky am I right now, to be in this moment, and to have this opportunity and to be able to even take a vacation like this with the family.
I think it's important too, that you not compare how things were in the past, for example, me constantly thinking of how it was when I went on a cruise in the past, and it was just Nick and myself to cruising now, with kids. Like, of course, cruising with another adult is not going to be anything like cruising with three little kids. We can't compare those two things. So it's so important that when you're going through this, and you're having these times of disappointment, that you don't look back and compare it to past times, because this is this time, and there's no two times that are exactly the same, right?
So you kind of have to take it as as it comes in, if you're disappointed with someone, or somebody has let you down somebody's disappointed you, the best thing that you can do is to just talk to them about it, you know, so many people are afraid to communicate, but just communicate with that person, let them know how you're feeling, you'll get so much more clarity. And the same thing.
If you're disappointed with how a situation went, even talking it out with someone is going to help you don't just let it stew in your mind. You don't want to let it fester. Because then it's just going to lead to more anxiety. Because you're just going to be keeping and repeating the same negative things and the things that are going wrong over and over and over on repeat in your mind. So here's the thing, when we set these high expectations for events, or people in our lives, we're only focusing on all the things that will go right.
Think about that time that that happened to you, where you set the bar high, and you had these expectations of how you thought it was going to go. We don't even see anything negative happening. And so then if something doesn't go, well, we don't even know how to deal with it. Because all we saw was it all working out well the entire time. So with every disappointment that we have in life, we've got to remember that it's always an opportunity to gain perspective, to gain clarity, and to use it to learn from it and to grow from it. Disappointment is really just, it's just an inevitable part of life. Right? Like it's going to happen. It happens to every single one of us. And it's okay.
There's so much power in the way that we handle these disappointments, I think this is probably one of those golden nuggets of this podcast episode is how are we handling these situations or these people, when they disappoint us, you have control over that piece, you have full control over how you're going to react to it, how you're going to handle it, what you're going to do, and I can tell you one thing, the best thing that you can do is find some sort of an outlet, like some kind of positive outlet that's gonna get you to kind of shift your focus, shift your perspective and get you out of that negative headspace because I know it's super easy to constantly have on repeat in our mind, all the things that are going wrong, like I could have easily done it and stayed stuck in it on the chat and the entire cruise that I was on, I could have kept talking about these things and thinking about the things that were going wrong over and over and over again, I could have kept focusing on how I couldn't get off the ship to go check out and explore Labadie with the rest of the family. Or, you know, we didn't really get to explore Aruba. We were only able to really go get a lunch, right.
Instead, I said you know what? It's our right that I was sick. I mean it sucked. I was violently ill for like 24 to 36 hours. But you know what? I'm so glad that Nick and the kids were able to get off the ship and they were able to do the longest zipline over water in the world. And they were able to enjoy the beach and Keegan was able to get it and do that too. And even though we didn't get to really explore Aruba, because everybody talks about how beautiful Aruba was, I'm thankful that we were able to even get off, thanks to my parents, and be able to go and enjoy lunch at this really cool Caribbean, little lunch place that was right off of the ship. Just shifting that focus, having these expectations about how things are going to go. And then them not working out and being okay with them not working out the way that you expect them to.
Even with this podcast, I am the consistency queen. And every single Monday morning is when my podcast drops. So you can listen to Do Life Big. And this was the first week that I had to say, hey, you know what, I wasn't able to get it done. Because I was busy and I was on that cruise, it's going to be one day light. It's not going to happen all the time. But just giving yourself some grace and being okay with it not working out the way that I want it to. It's totally okay. So find some sort of an outlet when you go through these disappointments in your life, anything like going for a walk, just putting some earbuds in listening to some good music. Just even myself when I was on the cruise, just we can hope being able to finally get Keegan into the daycare for an hour to two hours and just sitting down in the lounge chair in the adults only section and watching the waves, just out the front of the boat.
Do a kickboxing workout, something that's going to get you to refocus, that's going to get you out of that negative headspace. Try to let go of the need to be in control. And I tell this to myself all the time.
This is really hard for me, because I tend to be a major control freak. And if you know me, you know, I'm a major control freak. But I'm really, really, really working hard on it. I'm really working hard to try not to be in so much control over all these little things and to just be a little bit more go with the flow. Because we all know that things are going to happen out of our control all the time. The trick is to really always identify a positive, something positive, I missed any stressful or disappointing time that is happening out of your control and it's out of your hands. That's really the key.
Look for that one little positive thing that you can focus on. Really, a secret to happiness is letting every situation be what it is, instead of what you think it should be. So I hope that you enjoyed today's podcast episode. You know, I love you keep crushing it. Have an awesome day. And I will see you the next time. See you later.
