Any readers who have young kids know that traveling with them is always challenging. On a family vacation a few years ago, I well recall, my then-2-year-old screamed for long chunks of the flight, threw crackers all over the plane, and stayed up from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. one night, requiring Herculean feats from me to keep him from waking everyone else.
So it wasn’t exactly a week at the spa. Indeed, if I had seized on those points of evidence, I might have deemed the trip a disaster. Here I was, theoretically on vacation on a gorgeous island (and paying for the privilege!), and for many hours of the trip I was miserable.
But fortunately, I went in with a different goal than non-stop bliss. I know that non-stop bliss isn’t possible. Instead, my goal for the trip was to have a few enjoyable moments. By keeping my expectations low, and being on the hunt for those enjoyable moments, I was able to deem the trip a success.
Looking for the good stuff
There were definitely a few enjoyable moments on that trip. My husband and I got to go on a sunset boat cruise and we saw a double rainbow. I went night kayaking with one of my older children and saw lots of fish through our clear bottomed boat. I spotted a giant sea turtle while snorkeling. Since I was aiming for a few enjoyable moments, I made sure to note these, which is why I can recount them now. When I think of that trip, I do not only think of my toddler and my wee hours vigils. The sea turtle gets a spot in my memories too.
Maybe you, too, have something coming up in your life that is theoretically supposed to be fun, but might have its challenges. Maybe it’s a wedding where you’ll have to deal with a difficult family member. Maybe it’s a work event for your spouse where partners are expected to come along and then feign interest in random work details the entire time. Maybe it’s a parade or a bonfire or dinner out or a week at the beach or basically anything where you are going to be the primary caregiver for a toddler.
What if you went in with limited expectations? You know that the experience probably won’t be non-stop fantastic. But what if you aimed for at least a few enjoyable moments?
Reality won’t change; mindsets can
Most likely you would clear that bar. Perhaps you’d note that the cake at that family wedding was uncommonly good, and you enjoyed talking to the bride’s uncle, who managed to find all that unresolved family tension funny. Maybe you’d really appreciate the shrimp appetizer at the work event, even as you listened to your spouse’s boss tell that story about the rock band he played with in college again. And you’d pause and savor the two hours you got to read on the beach house porch while the toddler was napping. You’d appreciate these moments for themselves, and the joy they brought you, rather than losing them in the narrative of the whole event being underwhelming.
This mindset shift really can help. In any case, low expectations are easy to meet. Reality is what it is. It is better to have low expectations and wildly exceed them, than to hope for perfection and be constantly disappointed. Anyone can have a few enjoyable moments. We often can’t change reality, but we can change how we view it, and it does make a difference.
Note: This essay first ran at Vanderhacks, my Substack newsletter. Please visit and consider a free or paid subscription.
Whoa! This came at just the right moment! We have a short trip to visit both sides of the family, and I’m already stressing about how this will work out. Will the restaurant be too loud for the birthday luncheon? Will the high school reunion be a bust? Will the tight schedule make us crazy? Will my sister-in-law go on a big rant and hurt feelings? And..hopefully not all those things will happen. But life is life. We know some crappy things will happen (whether they are in my worry list or not). But I’m going to try to approach the whole time aiming for a few enjoyable moments, now. THANKS!
@Ann – glad it was helpful! All those things may very well happen! But at least you’ll probably still have a few enjoyable moments too, so you can focus on remembering those.
Aside from Three times a week makes a habit, this is the thing you’ve written that has most deeply impacted my life.
In 2022 we did a 3-week family roadtrip. The kids were fairly grumpy most days. Both kids had colds (in an era when COVID was still circulating). We travelled through an intense heat wave. In short, it wasn’t the most fun trip of my life. On the final leg of our trip we stopped at a gorgeous lighthouse and the kids starting fighting and I lost my mind and started sobbing. After 3 weeks and so much management of emotions and making sure people were hydrated and trying to find bathrooms in cities (WHY IS THIS SO HARD), I was just over all of it. We skipped all the other things we had planned that day and I went to our crappy hotel in Portland, Maine, and cried in the tepid shower. And then I came out and opened up Feedly and that very day you had posted an article about aiming for a few enjoyable moments. It was like a lightening bolt.
Yes, the trip hadn’t been quite as fun as I had imagined. Yes, the kids were sick and cranky. Yes, there was a heat wave. But, if I reframed the roadtrip in a way of looking for a few enjoyable moments, we’d managed to do just that.
I think of this often AND just last week was discussing a trip a friend was quasi-dreading and brought up this exact experience and how perfectly timed your article had been.
@Elisabeth – love it. Yes, I have sobbed after some terrible behavior at what was done only for young people’s pleasure/edification. But there are generally at least a few enjoyable moments, and if we get those, all good.
We just came back from a weeklong family vacation and I took this advice to heart (without having read it!) The first couple of days were rough being around the kids & their over-the-top excitement (noise). I continued my routine of waking up an hour before everyone else and made a point of leaving wherever we were staying and walking to a new coffee shop each morning. I didn’t care for most of the chai lattes I tried, but even if the rest of the day was s*** I prized that alone time & ability to explore a new neighborhood!
@Sarah – that sounds like a fabulous way to start your vacation days. So feeling this from 1.5 weeks into my 2-week family beach trip…
I read When Things Fall Apart a few months back, and it had similar advice:
– Expectations are the thief of joy
– To be more content, hope for less for yourself
– Derive happiness from doing nice things for other people
Not always easy to do… but to take an example from your post When having to listen to the same story again from a boring spouse’s boss you can think to yourself 1) I’m helping my husband’s career by pretending to care about his boss’s story, we will be able to bond over this later, 2) listening to this person makes them feel good, so that is nice too, 3) how nice that my husband has remained at work at this place long enough so that I could get to hear this story more than once, 4) at least I am not telling the same story over and over to a bunch of bored people, perhaps my cognition is not failing after all!
@omdg – great points. I like the idea of reframing this that it’s a good thing to have been around long enough to hear the story multiple times…there is that!
This is such a good reminder! A therapist encouraged us to ask our kids about “two good things that happened today and one not-so-good thing.” She wanted us to be able to help our kids see good things as outweighing the bad things while still being able to share about what was hard. We have a few family members who tip toward melancholy, and this has helped us find a better balance! Even if most of a day or trip is filled with not-so-good things, highlighting more of the enjoyable moments than the not-so-enjoyable moments can really help our remembering selves!
@Lauren – a great idea! And if you do this at dinner and can’t come up with anything good, the day isn’t over yet. So you can still make something good happen!
We got kicked off a cruise ship in port at Koh Samui Thailand when my husband got Covid pneumonia and had to be hospitalized to get IV treatment for 3 days. We ended up missing the Cambodia, Vietnam and Bangkok stops on our cruise-but he bounced back quickly and we ended up staying in a lovely Hyatt Regency in a suite overlooking the sea. His illness (and mine-I had a much less virulent form of Covid), the trip interruption and figuring out how to rejoin the cruise in Hong Kong were major stressors.,However, after the first 24 hours, I reframed things in my mind-decided to enjoy the lovely hotel and be grateful that my husband bounced back quickly. I was also grateful for my travel hacking knowledge-which came in handy!
@BethC – good for you for not viewing the whole trip as a disaster given the troubles in the middle. I’m sure there still were very enjoyable times!