Best-selling author, keynote speaker, and master coach Christine Hassler drills down on combatting the burden of expectation, adopting a miracle mindset, releasing emotion instead of recycling it, and throwing healthy adult temper tantrums, and explains the distinction between form vs. essence, sympathy vs. empathy, and why strength is overrated.

Christine Hassler is a life coach with a counseling

emphasis known for catalyzing radical self reflection, but

also while offering practical direction, she has really

created this roadmap for life and for people of all ages,

which is kind of about self discovery, self acceptance, self

forgiveness and clarity. And she is a cum laude graduate of

Northwestern University, and she also has her master's degree in

spiritual psychology from the University of Santa Monica. Her

book is called Expectation Hangover, Overcoming

Disappointment in Work, Love and Life, and it's really the

guidebook for how to treat disappointment on the emotional,

mental, behavioral and spiritual levels. And so Christine, it's

great to meet you. Thank you for being on the show.

Oh, I'm equally as excited. Thanks for

having me.

So can you clarify, like, what exactly is an expectation

hangover, and how did you kind of come up with that term?

Yeah. We may love the phrase, but we don't

like having them. I came up with it after having so many of my

own. And basically it's when it's disappointment, but how I

break it down, it's when one of three things happen, either the

desired outcome or plan or result that you work so hard for

doesn't happen. Things don't turn out the way you planned. Or

you get the goal, you have the result, but you don't have the

feelings you thought you would have from it, like you get this

great job, and then you're like, Wait, where's the pot of gold at

the end of the rainbow? Where's the happiness? Or life just

totally throws you an unexpected curve ball. You lose a job, you

get sick, someone dies. You know those kind of unexpected curve

balls. So what I noticed about expectation hangovers is that

they are similar to hangover symptoms from alcohol, in the

sense that your head is hurting, maybe not physically, but all

the thoughts and thinking and obsessing that happens when we

have an expectation hangover, we just get really in our head. We

lack motivation. There's a sense of regret. We're spinning and

confusion. It's just a feeling we want to get over. And people

really just want to get out of disappointment, and they'll do

anything to basically not feel it. And what I notice is that

most people use coping mechanisms that involve

suppression and numbing, anything from drugs and alcohol

to overworking really super being busy looking for the next

best thing. Even in kind of the personal growth community,

there's something called a spiritual bypass, where people

just try to jump to the silver lining or meditate their way out

of it, and don't really feel what's happening. And I'm really

passionate about helping people leverage disappointment, because

when we talk about disappointment and change, those

things are the catalysts that create the most personal growth

inside of us. You know, most people have their biggest leaps

when it comes to growth when something kind of surprising or

bad happens, that's usually what motivates us to do the work that

really changes our life. And I've noticed that the most

suffering people have is when their expectations don't meet

their reality. But there's a real healing opportunity inside

of that.

Do you tend to find that the disappointments that we

have, are they based on expectations that usually come

from the outside, that people put on us? Or are you talking

more about expectations that we have, that we created for

ourselves and then things not living up to them?

It's absolutely both. You know, we

have the double whammy of expectations, all the societal

things and checklists that we buy into in terms of our belief

system, and then this incredible pressure we put on ourselves. I

noticed that people, especially really intelligent, successful

people, they motivate themselves by being hard on themselves and

placing massive expectations. And the tricky, kind of sneaky

thing about that is, it works, you know, like I used to

motivate myself by being very hard on myself, and I kind of

didn't even realize it, you know. And I'm not talking about

being hard on yourself, like you're a loser, you suck, like

it's not doesn't have to be that severe, subtle, like you could

have done that better, or your friends more successful. Or, why

did you say that? You know, just these subtle things that are

this critical voice inside of us, and it's effective. You

know, we get things done that way, but we have these massive

expectations and standards that A, we may not live up to, and B,

once we do live up to them, then we consistently keep raising the

bar. And so when is enough enough? Like, when are we there?

When do we finally accept ourselves as enough? And that's

the problem we run into when we live a life driven by

expectations versus values and vision and really accepting and

acknowledge our acknowledging ourselves for who we are and the

unique impact we're here to make.

How do you balance that? Is there a middle ground that is

kind of what we're seeking? Or is it something different than

that?

Yes, so both complacency and overdoing come

from a place of sort of lack of self love and insecurity and

trying to compensate for something and not feeling enough

in some way. You know, we put these high driving standards on

ourselves because, on some level, we don't feel like we are

enough and we have something to prove. And on the opposite end

of the coin, like when we are get complacent and like we stop

doing. Then again, that's coming from a feeling of like not not

feeling enough or worthy enough of pursuing our own dreams. So

at the root of this, really, is our relationship with ourselves

and how we perceive the world, and how we perceive ourselves in

that world. So what it comes down to, in terms of that middle

point, is really investigating, you know, how do we define

success like, what's our definition of success? Is it

externally based, or do we have a definition that's more

intrinsic? And the biggest thing from expectation hangovers that

I've learned is that it reorientates people, myself

included, from an outside in perspective to an inside out

perspective. We start to realize that coming from our own values,

our own, what I call superpowers rather than expectations, is not

only more balanced way to live, but it just feels a whole heck

of a lot better. So it's more of a reorientation and a pivot in

terms of how we perceive our life and how we take action than

it is trying to balance between the two I love that, you know,

we're so destination, obsessed in our world and getting there,

and it's like, actually, what we truly, you know, enjoy the most,

if we allow ourselves and stop putting so much pressure on

ourselves, is the process and what we learn about ourselves

and the qualities that come out of us while, while we do things

and and, you know, the feel, because we think We're after

form, but what we're really after is essence. We're chasing

feeling more than we are outcome. But because we kind of

don't know that, and because our society, or even our educational

system, is so goal based, we lose connection with that. How

do you want to feel? Let's not worry about the form. You know,

the universe, God, whatever your spiritual belief system. It

will, it will take care of that. But if you really focus on the

feeling of what you want to experience in life, and get an

energetic alignment with that feeling, then the form takes

care of itself. I mean, it's people all ask me all the time,

like, how I've built my career, and it's truly been, you know,

the work I've done on myself and being really clear about my

values and what I want to feel, and looking at the things that

have gotten in my way, limiting beliefs that don't work ways

I've tried to compensate. You know, in the book, I talk a lot

about compensatory strategies, and my biggest one was, as I

mentioned, overachieving. And the reason why that developed is

because I was teased and bullied a lot as a kid. I had this this

belief that I was unlikable in some way, something was wrong

with me. So my life was about proving myself, and that was

great. You know, as a straight A student, went to great college,

moved out to Hollywood, because if you're insecure, you move out

to Hollywood and have this really successful career at a

young age, was making all this money. And like, it was like,

when does a happy feeling come in? When does a confident

feeling come in. And I had a in a year, I had a lot of very

severe things happen, where I ended up on my knees, kind of

just going, like, what, what do I do? And had what I call a

spiritual awakening that wasn't like super it wasn't like this,

like angels coming down, or anything like that. It was just

this internal realization of, wow, like all the things I'm

looking for on the outside, could they possibly be inside of

me? That was when I, you know, had the pivot. So I think it's

just like we get So sort of hypnotized by the way we've been

conditioned. And to me, the process of awakening is really

about looking at our programming. Because the great

thing about our brain is it's totally malleable, and we have

the potential to change it, and to do that, we have to change

our thoughts, and we have to change our perception. And I

love one of the definitions of a miracle. It's a change in

perception. So even if you're in an expectation hangover right

now, are you willing to bring a miracle mind to it by just

changing how you look at it?

Alright, so I want to go back to overcoming

disappointment for a second. How do we overcome those

disappointments when they do happen?

Yeah, absolutely, you're going to be

disappointed, because you are human. We all are human. And the

thing about the human experience is we learn through contrast.

That is totally how we learn. And I think that people try to

avoid, sort of the dark, the disappointment. And I'm all

about leveraging it and milking it. I remember when I was going

through my divorce, one of my coaches said to me, Christine,

milk this for all it's worth. Don't just try to get over it,

like, really go in because there's there's gold here. And

that was that was really true. And with so much of the work in

terms of what became expectation hangover, because it wasn't just

about healing from the disappointment of the divorce,

it was everything that that triggered inside of me, and that

was one of the biggest growth opportunities of my life. And so

the first thing to answer your question is to move into

acceptance of it, rather than resisting it, rather than

judging it, rather than trying to control it, rather than

trying to change it, accept what is I love a quote from Byron

Katie, I might be paraphrasing a bit. But it goes basically

something like, when you argue with reality, you only lose 100%

of the time. So acceptance is, is not about, Oh, I love it, and

I have to, you know, have this positive attitude about it. I'm

not about that, but just going into, all right, this isn't

ideal, but I'm going to stop fighting. I'm going to accept

it. And then after acceptance, you move into really letting

yourself heal and feel on the emotional level. And I'm sort of

kind of taking you on a little tour of the treatment plan in

the book, because this is the order that I go in. And what

I've realized in my own life and working with 1000s of people at

this point, is people don't like to feel like to feel good. We

like to avoid the feelings of shame, of anger, of hurt, and

it's important to feel that emotion is energy in motion. So

when we suppress emotion, it's like trying to keep a beach ball

underwater. You know, you can keep it down for a while, but

eventually it pops up. And it might pop up in the forms of

irritability or a health concern or like not being able to access

your intuition, or whatever it may be like that suppressed

emotion is not good for us, mentally or physically. And so,

you know, I teach in the book How to release emotion rather

than recycle it, because most of us don't learn know how to

process our feelings. We tend to judge it, analyze it, want them

to go away. And there's ways to release emotion where you find a

place inside of you that's having the emotion, and you also

find a place where you have compassion and you just allow

yourself to feel without any judgment. There's actually a

process in the book called a temper tantrum technique, where

I'm sure you've seen a child have a temper tantrum. And the

thing is, children know how to feel, so if a kid gets upset,

like you'll see they get upset, they start to cry, then they may

be yelling and screaming, kicking, and then they kind of

start to whimper, and they kind of go into that, you know, and

then they start to slow down, and then they may rock a little

bit, and they start to soothe themselves, and then they want

ice cream, and then they're fine. They know how to ride the

wave of emotions. And as young people and our parents, you

know, did the best they could, but our emotions were kind of

interrupted. We were told, shake it off, big boys, don't cry. Or

we were like, soothes with food or something like that. And

then, you know, later in life, we try to soothe our emotions by

eating. So we found these kind of ways to suppress and as

adults, we have to look at all, right, how do I really release

my emotion? And so, you know, I basically teach you how to have

an adult version of a temper tantrum, so that you get the

emotion up and out. And there's also other techniques, writing

techniques and things like that, but the key is let yourself feel

without judgment. And this isn't about identifying with your

feelings. This isn't about sitting around and being a

victim, victim. Thinking gets us nowhere when we're like, why did

this happen to me and my life is so hard? It's not about feeling

sorry for ourselves. Sympathy and empathy are very different.

Sympathy has pity on it. Empathy and compassion has love and

forgiveness and understanding on it. So compassion, if we look at

the word, I'm well into the meanings of words. So passion

actually means suffering, and CO means with so it's really being

with suffering. It's the difference. And we can do this

with other people too. It's like how we, you know, in my work

with people, when I work with them on the emotional level, if

they're experiencing emotion, I don't console them, I don't try

to fix them, I don't go in and offer them advice. I just hold

this loving, compassionate space for them to feel with no

judgment. And learning how to do that for ourselves is key to

really overcoming disappointment, because we've

got to move through the feeling part.

What are some of the common, like, emotional mistakes

that you see people making over and over again?

Yeah, so one I briefly mentioned, which is

the victim being a victim. This happened to me. The world

happens to me. Like, I'm not going to get through that like

and identifying with it. And it even can be subtle, but it's

sort of like allowing the emotional level to get to that

place of just kind of feeling sorry for yourself and losing

hope and losing faith, because that's that's really paralyzing.

And the other one, in terms of the other extreme too, is being

strong, like I'm not going to feel I'm fine, like I'm just

going to push my way through that. And what that does is it

perpetuates what we talked about a little bit earlier in terms of

that inner critic, like, when we don't allow ourselves to feel

we're denying ourselves the truth of our experience, and

again, like, in some ways, that's rewarded. Like, how many

times have we heard, Oh, you're so strong and being strong is

overrated? You know, I'm a big fan of Renee Brown's work on

vulnerability. You know, vulnerability is not weakness.

It's authenticity. It's being real. It's like, this is really

what's happening to me, and this is what you know, I'm willing to

learn from it. So that doesn't work. And then distractions,

like distracting ourselves from it, and in the ways I mentioned

earlier, in terms of I'm going to overwork or I'm going to

watch too much TV, I'm just going to numb it out. I'm going

to drink more eat or whatever it may be. And then another thing

is to the kind of like spiritual bypass and pep talk thing, you

know, trying to get to whatever I'm learning and I'm growing,

and it's all fine. And it's sort of like being strong with sort

of like this positive attitude. And again, that gets rewarded as

well. And the key to all this is just not allowing ourselves the

authenticity of our. Experience and the truth to feel and know.

When I do retreats, can I take people to beautiful destinations

and help them overcome their disappointment? Because I'm

like, Well, if I can take them to like Costa Rica, maybe

they'll be willing to deal with some things in a beautiful

environment. And the biggest thing I see is just people you

know, are scared. They're just scared to feel. And if we don't

feel and the emotional levels is the first part of the treatment

plan. Next we have mental, behavioral and spiritually. But

you know, the emotional one is where I see the most resistance.

And here's the thing, if we don't feel the anger, the shame,

the guilt, whatever it is, we don't get to the other side of

that. We don't feel all the juicy stuff. We don't feel the

love, the joy, the creativity, the connection, you know,

especially for women, underneath our anger is our fire and our

passion and our zest. So many women suppress anger and they

end up irritable and they end up kind of emasculating men and

they end up just snippy, and that's not like who we are as

women. You know, we're warm and compassionate and loving and

creative, but when we suppress this anger, because we've been

told that we aren't allowed to be angry, and we don't really

have healthy outlets for anger. We're missing out on tapping

into our passion and our fire, and it's so important for us to

tap into that.

Wow. Expectation Hangover is the title of the book,

Christine. Where do you want people to go to learn about you?

Well, you can go to ChristineHassler.com and

you can get the book on Amazon, or lots of ways to connect. I

love connecting with people, so please reach out.

Awesome. Well, this was super insightful. Thank you for

making some time here, and we wish you the best.

Oh, I thank you so much.