Expectation Hangover, with Christine Hassler – Episode 87 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

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.

About Christine:

Christine Hassler is a Master coach, spiritual psychologist, facilitator and speaker with 20 years of experience. She is the best-selling author of three books, most recently Expectation Hangover: Free Yourself From Your Past, Change your Present and Get What you Really Want and is the host of top-rated podcast “Over it and On With It” where she coaches people live on the show. Christine is the co-founder of Elementum Coaching Institute, a premier coaching certification program. She also holds in person retreats and teaches online courses on relationships, calling in love, healing your inner child and personal mastery.

Christine is known globally for her ability to identify what is holding someone back and compassionately guiding them to clarity. Her journey to this work began after leaving her successful job as a Hollywood agent at 25 to pursue a life she could be passionate about . . . but it did not come easily. After being inspired by her own unexpected challenges and experiences, she wrote her first book, “20 Something 20 Everything” in 2005 and then “The 20 Something Manifesto” in 2008.

Today, she leads seminars and workshops to audiences around the country and she supports clients in answering the questions: “Who Am I, What do I want, and How do I get it?” Christine is a master coach who combines life coaching with the principles of spiritual psychology. She is passionate about supporting people out of limitation and into fulfillment. Her superpowers of intuition and compassion help people break through challenges that at one time seemed insurmountable. Bottom line: she helps people get “over it and on with it!” with love.

Christine’s passion for coaching was born at the age of 23 when she met her first life coach, Mona. She thought she was just going to get some advice about the challenges she was having with her boyfriend and questions she had about her career, but she ended up seeing and studying with Mona for over a decade. The work they did together was life-changing. Most notably, Christine was able to get off antidepressants and other medications after being on them for 20 years.

Her thirst for personal development continued as she dived into self-help books, attended seminars and retreats, got trained in NLP and eventually pursued her master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology with an emphasis in Consciousness, Health and Healing from the University of Santa Monica. As a student and eventually faculty member, the principles of USM are foundational to Christine’s life and work.

Christine has appeared as an expert on The Today Show, CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX, E!, Style and PBS, as well as various local television and radio shows, speaking about generation diversity, millennials, resilience, leadership, life balance and “Expectation Hangovers®” – a phenomenon she identified and trademarked.

Christine grew up in Dallas, graduated cum laude from Northwestern University and received her master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica. Christine loves living a healthy lifestyle and is obsessed with human optimization. She currently resides in Austin with her husband and daughter.

Learn more at ChristineHassler.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
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.

Christine Hassler
Oh, I’m equally as excited. Thanks for having me.

Host
So can you clarify, like, what exactly is an expectation hangover, and how did you kind of come up with that term?

Christine Hassler
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.

Host
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?

Christine Hassler
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.

Host
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?

Christine Hassler
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?

Host
Alright, so I want to go back to overcoming disappointment for a second. How do we overcome those disappointments when they do happen?

Christine Hassler
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.

Host
What are some of the common, like, emotional mistakes that you see people making over and over again?

Christine Hassler
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.

Host
Wow. Expectation Hangover is the title of the book, Christine. Where do you want people to go to learn about you?

Christine Hassler
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.

Host
Awesome. Well, this was super insightful. Thank you for making some time here, and we wish you the best.

Christine Hassler
Oh, I thank you so much.