“The final exam was not what he expected.” Ever feel that way? Me too. Your expectations are one thing, reality is another. What do you do? Most of us spin our wheels trying to make reality or “what is,” conform to what we expected. Rather than shift our expectations, or accept what is before us and deal with that, we try to change what is to fit our expectations.

The classic case is the parent with a child with different interests and passions than the parent wanted. For the dad who expected his son to be an athlete he could share Monday night football games with, but gets a son who likes academics and music instead. Or a father who’s a major academian, and looks forward to intellectual pursuits with his son, but gets an athlete who is set on attending college on a sports scholarship, not an academic one. Cliche, but you get the idea.

Maybe you have a spouse who likes to stay home, but you like to go out. One partner loves to travel, the other thinks setting foot off the property is overrated. Instead of whining and wishing the other person would change, learn to accept what is.

We all have expectations - of our job, our boss, our coworkers, our friends. And those are okay. They provide us with the base we need to understand our boundaries and what our needs are. I have friends who are passive aggressive. I know they can’t and won’t express their needs because they don’t know how. Rather than risk feeling criticized or rejected by expressing their needs and being told “no,” or not having the person agree to their request (because mom and dad never did) they manipulate - “punishing” by withholding, sabotaging or procrastinating.

I have clients who have a variety of personalities, demands and needs - often ones I don’t find out about until well into a project. Rather than complain about how they ARE, I try to find a way to work with who they are.

There’s an old joke about the man who died and was greeted by an angel and a devil. He was told he would be given a tour of both heaven and hell, then allowed to chose where he wanted to spend eternity. He went to hell and saw that people either spend their days on beautiful golf courses or tennis courts, had access to an open bar and at night partied away the evening with beautiful women. He went to heaven where people mostly strolled around on clouds, sang hymns and led a quiet life. He came back and said, “I think I’d like to go to hell.” So the devil whisked him back to hell. But when he walked in he was stripped, given a shovel and put to work shoveling coal to fuel the fires of hell. This was to be his eternity. “But what about the golf courses! The women!” he protested. The devil looked at him and grinned. “Oh that. That’s our recruiting tour. This is what hell is really like.”

I’ve been give that recruiting tour before accepting a job, and I’m sure you have too. Once the golf courses disappear, you’re left with shoveling coal. Do you complain about the diversion? Or learn to shovel coal? Well, I say you learn to shovel coal while you’re plotting your escape. You deal with what is, and that involves making more decisions - like what to do next. You’ll just burn up energy and emotion by fuming about what is not being what you were promised.

If you ever ordered something through a catalog, online, or out of a magazine - and the item was far less wonderful than it appeared in the picture, you’ve known frustration. At that point you can decide that the item will work, even though it’s not what you imagined. Or you can return it. Fuming about it not being what you ordered, or ranting about dubious business practices, you deal with what is. Is it worth what you paid? Will it work? Or should you return it? Deal with the reality, not with your expectations.

When you lose your job, the tendency is to imagine “what if?” and to begin imagining all sorts of dire future events. “I’ll lose my car, I’ll lose my home, I’ll lose my friends, I’ll become homeless.” If you do that, live in the future, and in your expectations, you’ll be very depressed! But if you look at what is, “I have x number of dollars and can survive on my savings for three months. I need to get a job in the next month.” That’s dealing with the reality. You’ll take the fear and energy out of your life by dealing with the reality, not your fears and not your expectationsof what something will be like.

When my coworkers were laid off after 40 years of working at one job, they were devastated. It was, they told each other, “The end of the world.” They immediately painted a worse case scenario, raged and stormed and cried. Yet six months later they admitted it was the best thing that could have happened. Their severance and unemployment gave them time to reassess what they wanted to do. They got a three month vacation of sorts, spent time with family, re-evaluated their assets, their savings, their lifestyle. They rested. They took time looking for new jobs and they found jobs they loved so much more than the “coal shoveling” type job they’d been laid off from. What they learned was that by accepting what had happened, not dwelling on the “wrongness” of it, but moving forward, accepting what was - was how they were able to change their lives for the better.

The “final exam” may not be what you studied for. You may want to change careers after having studied for one or worked in one job your whole life. You may want to go to school, or drop out of college. Don’t wallow in what you didn’t study or prepare for, but deal with what is in front of you. It’s the first step to getting ahead.