When I was little, if I was acting like a brat, I frequently heard from one parent or the other, “Sounds like someone needs an attitude adjustment.” Now, as a fuzzy-haired, sometimes precocious little girl, those words sounded more like, “If you don’t cut that out, you’re going to get into trouble.” Therefore, I’d usually stop {fill in the blank here}: harassing my brother, refusing to eat my lima beans, or complaining about being bored, hot, tired, etc. However, I didn’t ever think of it in terms of actually adjusting my attitude, but rather my behavior. And that was just to avoid getting sent to my room.

What I didn’t understand until much later in the game, after my hair stopped being quite as fuzzy, and I finally became friends with my brother {although I still don’t eat lima beans}, is how much my attitude affects not only my behavior but my relationships, my everyday mundane interactions, and my overall satisfaction with life. For this reason, I’d like to suggest that another word for attitude is expectations. This might sound like a, “Well, yeah, duh” statement, but hold on a second. Think about the last time you were upset about something and ask yourself if the reason why might have had to do with your expectations being just a tad out of wack. This can be a difficult thing to do because most of us like to feel justified in whatever we’re upset about. It’s easier if it’s someone else’s fault that we feel shitty. It’s much, much harder to adjust our own expectations and take responsibility for feeling the way we do.

I’ll give you a somewhat shameful, definitely embarrassing example. Last week I was grocery shopping, which is already an activity that I despise for reasons I won’t go into at the moment. It just so happened that it was the day before Dayton was supposed to experience some sort of Snowpocalypse so it was complete and utter Market Mayhem in there. Everyone was freaking out about the possibility of a tenth of an inch of ice. In addition, and much to my dismay, Kroger recently rearranged this particular store–it took me years, but I had finally reached the shopping nirvana that comes from being able to fill up your cart blindfolded in about 7 and a half minutes flat. Now I can’t find anything, and every single time I set foot in the store it feels like I’m in a bizarre dream sequence where everything is kind of familiar, but it’s all backwards and doesn’t make sense, and I’m still vaguely aware that I’m in the grocery store but I’m waiting for Taye Diggs to show up so we can go to a Groundhog Day party at his mom’s house that we’re already late for, or some other random thing that happens in dreams… anyway, I digress. Grocery shopping in this new Twilight Zone Kroger is like a really confusing dream. You just want to wake up and get the hell outta there.

So on this particular pre-Snowpocalypse day, I’m flying through the aisles trying to get everything on my list, but I can’t find the couscous. And it gets so bad that after I’ve speed-walked (angry marched) back and forth across the same 6 aisles like 50 times (“There’s the rice, there’s the quinoa; where the $%@&! is the couscous?! It should be RIGHT HERE!”), I start to have what feels like an out-of-body experience that tells my brain that I want to actually start knocking over displays like an angry bull. Now, I don’t actually do that, but I was so distraught and frenzied that for a few seconds I saw myself through a red haze in my mind doing exactly that and I immediately flashed back to being 7 years old and on the brink of a temper tantrum. “Sounds like somebody needs an attitude adjustment.” I realized how crazy I was feeling and how nearly powerless I was against it, but it wasn’t until hours later that I looked back at what could have been a completely hideous experience had I started knocking things over and roaring, “Where’s the couscous?!?” And what I realized was this: my expectations were COMPLETELY OUT OF WACK. I mean, seriously.

I don’t know what was going on with me that day that led me to such a disproportionate state of angst over not being able to find a box of tiny Moroccan pasta, but the one thing I do know is that it was completely unreasonable–not to mention bratty– to be that upset about something so ridiculous and inconsequential. I was feeling crowded and rushed, and I didn’t want to be there in the first place, and I expected the couscous to be in a certain spot, so when it wasn’t, it resulted in the perfect, irrational, get-out-of-her-way-she’s-a crazy-person storm. And I created it. All. By. Myself. My expectations caused a near melt-down of epic proportions. My blood pressure sky-rocketed. My heart rate was through the roof. My already mediocre mood was ruined. The whole thing was completely preposterous.

The grocery store does not owe it to me to place everything exactly where I expect it to be. They also cannot control the number of people who show up panicking, trying to stock up on toilet paper and canned goods lest they run out in the next 36 hours of “bad weather.” On top of all that, I am no more special than anyone else; the universe has never, to my knowledge, agreed to make things run perfectly for me, which covers everything up to and including grocery shopping. In short, I had absolutely no excuse to act like that, even if most of it was happening internally. But if my expectations–my attitude–had been properly calibrated in the first place, I could have avoided that entire mental meltdown, the resulting (humbling) self-analysis, and a bit of an emotional shame hangover.

The same holds true for the expectations we each set regarding: receiving returned phone calls or text messages (yes, I’m talking to you); our friends’ availability and/or willingness to make plans; waiting in line for coffee, or to mail a package at the post office; or the teenager who finally takes the initiative to take the trash out without being asked. These are all situations in which we might expect A but should be prepared to get B– and we need to realize that it’s not the end of the world if we end up somewhere even remotely close. Be patient. Be a little more flexible.

The thing is, we all set expectations differently in various situations and with the people we encounter in our daily lives–both in intimate relationships and with random people we pass on the street. The trick is to learn how to set our expectations reasonably so we don’t end up flying off the handle over couscous or acting irrationally when things don’t go as planned. Realize that WHAT you think should happen, or HOW, or on WHOSE time table, isn’t necessarily the same way in which everyone else functions. It doesn’t mean one of us is right or wrong; we’re all just different. Keeping that little nugget of truth in mind, why not give people, situations, and relationships a little more expectational rope? Remind yourself that a) you aren’t any more special than anyone else and b) most things in life will not happen the way you expect them to. But that’s OK. Flex. Bend. Breathe. Buy rice instead. Try adjusting your attitude, and see if you don’t just find yourself feeling calmer, more forgiving, and more at peace in your tiny corner of the world.