Rewriting the Script with Grace: Letting Go of Expectations

This episode took a turn I didn’t plan… again. And maybe that’s exactly the point.

In Part 2 of this 3-part reflection (unfolding during a very on-brand Mercury Retrograde), I’m sharing what it really means to release expectations—not just outcomes, but all the mental noise about how things should be.

I’ll take you into a story about helping a neighbor, the lessons from a summer in Chicago with my daughter, and how I learned (the hard way) that checking in with my heart is always wiser than listening to ego-fueled productivity.

✨ In this episode:
 – Why life doesn’t have to look a certain way to be beautiful
 – The difference between detaching and releasing
 – A reflection on compassion without self-abandonment
 – How unspoken expectations can drain us—and how grace refills us
 – A gentle nudge to serve from overflow, not obligation

If you’re navigating shifting plans, repeating patterns, or unexpected pivots… this one’s for you.

💌 Let’s keep the conversation going:
 Share your story or lesson in a voice memo or DM on Instagram @picturelovepodcast. I’d love to hear how you’re picturing love in your world.

💗 Listen to Part 1 here: When the Plan Changes
🎧 Subscribe to get Part 3 as soon as it drops.

New day - marking the 2500 download milestone it was time for a fresh evergreen intro

a refresh! 

Transcript

Kris LeDonne: 0:39

Welcome back to Picture Love friends. I am laughing because the last episode that dropped, I am not kidding you. I was talking about detaching from outcomes and I had set the intention to. Finish polishing and get that episode ready. And then I was going to rest. I was gonna put my feet up and I was going to rest and enjoy my evening. And no sooner did I hit the sofa and put my feet up. Then I realized, oh no, I just need to go to bed. I'm tired. So I laid there for about 20 minutes and I'm having this internal argument with myself saying, go to bed. You're tired. You should just go to bed. Then the other side of me is like, what are you talking about? It's, it's like nine o'clock at night. It's not time to go to bed yet. Yeah, but you're tired. Oh, but that means I have to get up and I have to walk on my sore feet and I don't, maybe I'll just doze here for a little while and that, you know, this whole internal not very productive train of thought. And then all of a sudden the whole, not just house, the entire neighborhood goes pitch black. So I was wondering. Hmm. I wonder if that episode actually did finish uploading to the internet so it can be received. I don't have any idea, but I think I'm being told I need to slow down and stop attaching to certain outcomes, or I finish my work and then I relax and it stays in this neat package. And meanwhile, the universe has other plans, so i'm being reminded to go with the flow and do it with more grace. Grace for myself, not just others. Which is the perfect segue into part two, which could be considered the twin sister of the last episode, or twin brother, however you wanna take it. So we were talking about detaching from outcomes, and in this case I wanna talk about releasing expectations. Well, it could sound like the same thing, but it's not exactly the same thing. I was thinking, you know, the end game, the, the after we've done all the work or all the setting and the intentions, what's that finished result? That's what I was thinking about last time, but this is a bigger umbrella of just expectations in general. Expectations for ourselves, expectations for others, expectations for the pet sitter that may or may not be invited back again. We have to choose our battles, right? What's a battle and what's a lesson and what's grace? Where can I say I allow this to unfold in love? I think where I'm going with this is. I understand that life doesn't have to look a certain way to be beautiful. I'm gonna repeat that. Life does not have to look a certain way in order to be truly beautiful. It is beautiful. It's a matter of am I tuning into, am I present enough to notice how beautiful it's, and disclaimer, I am not minimizing any of the trials and the shadows and the struggles that happen because that is part of this life. But those struggles are not life. Those struggles are opportunities that life gives us to rise above, to show our strength, to heal something, to drag something old back up to the surface, to clear it. There is no podcast long enough to list all the reasons that we might come into adversity and struggle. But I am going to offer the thought that freedom can be found in releasing expectations. Expectations that somebody apologizes. Just coming to peace with the fact something happened and what are we gonna do with it? That's where I choose to live. I choose to live in a space of love and understanding that the way other people behave is a reflection of what they have learned, what lessons they have chosen to learn from life. And I really truly believe that if we keep encountering the same kind of struggle over and over and over, it's the universe giving us a chance to retake the test, so to speak. It's giving us a chance to, okay, here's round two. Let's try it again. Okay. Here's round three. Let's try it again. What is on the table that you're not seeing? That I am not seeing when patterns repeat? Because everything that comes back up to be healed is an opportunity. And I think that zooming out and taking a bird's eye perspective of that is where I've found so much grace for myself and for others. So I have a neighbor who, is in some tough times financially, and I've tried to help out best I can and has some health concerns. So this person is not able to drive. This person also does not own an automobile. This person also has made it a priority to walk or ride a bike to get to and from work. This person is doing the best they know how, and I know it's not my job to fix it, but I have chosen the job of being compassionate and helping out from time to time without taking on the responsibility of fixing and healing them. So. The last time I gave this person a ride to the grocery store, they got to the checkout and they were short. I came prepared for that and they wanted to pay me back. And they knocked on my door a couple days later, listen, I have cash for you to pay back. And I said, Nope, please just take it and use it for your next groceries. Okay. So after that experience. I didn't turn around to tell, I didn't tell anybody about it, but I was thinking about the car ride. And the car ride was a little painful for me because this person, really needed somebody to talk to. And I had not done any energetic work to prepare myself to witness that. And I, I kind of need to put on some emotional, I guess you could say armor, so to speak, or a little wax on my field so that I can be present and observe and listen to somebody who needs to speak instead of trying to fix it. But I was reflecting and saying, it would be so nice if I loved helping this person. It would be so nice if it felt like I was helping a friend instead of acting in charity, you know? And what if they just didn't complain so much, then I'd wanna help them more. And then I thought to myself, Hmm, that's not very aligned, Kris, that's asking somebody else to change to make me feel better. So I'm gonna give them another ride today. This time I'm putting on a little bit of an energetic wax on my field and whatever they need to say, I'm gonna tell myself. They need to say it. They need to get it out of their bodies. It's not my place to fix it. It's not my place to expect them to be a good company for the driver. It's not my job to expect them to see the world the way I see it. They are in a different journey. They're on a different path. They have different circumstances. And that alone gives me freedom to breathe because I know this person is gonna sound the way they need to sound, the way they think they need to sound, and their decisions are not gonna harm me. As a matter of fact, what they decide to do with their life really is none of my business. It's a matter of how do I wanna show up in these circumstances? So today I'm, I'm committing to myself. I'm gonna give this person a ride. I'm gonna wait for them to finish. I'm gonna drive them home, and I'm gonna say"thank you, universe, that I have the means to be helpful. Thank you universe, that I get to be of service." And you know what? Those are reasonable expectations because I can do that, and it does not depend on somebody else's behavior or their words or their beliefs or their life situation. Ah, did you feel that? I hope that if you're still listening, it's because that really resonates and that's helpful. But yeah, seriously going into something with a, do I wanna do this? No, I don't wanna do this. I wish they would be, that's getting caught up in the weeds again. But choosing to show up as my best self and not expecting them. To say or do anything in any particular way and practicing more gratitude. Gratitude that I could be of service. That is the expectation that I could give myself in this circumstance, and it does not matter what unfolds- I can accomplish those goals. Now, I do have a little story it laid the foundation for this conversation because looking back, if me, as I am today, went back and relived that timeline, I would do it very differently. This tags onto the episode a few, few weeks back when I was reminiscing with, Maelu who was indulging me as I was sharing pictures with you. If you, if you're catching this on YouTube, the Maelu episode, you can actually see the photos I was talking about. But I got it in my head that I needed to try to run a 5K. And that 5K- it challenged me. It stretched me, training for it and doing it, and then it, how everything went unplanned. And I ran more like a six and a half K and ended up hurting my foot. That's the backstory for the Chicago story because. Two or three weeks later, after the school year, I went with my teenage daughter to live in downtown Chicago in a dorm room, a single bedroom, single bathroom, dorm room, and a high rise in downtown Chicago. That's where I lived with my daughter, my 16-year-old daughter. And the reason I did it was because she had been accepted into an a life changing dance intensive for four weeks, and that meant she needed to live in downtown Chicago and was not old enough to actually lease a dorm room. One of the high rises. So I took my business on the road and I lived in Chicago with her, like a college kid on a meal plan. Literally did that and I will never regret it, but yes, not regret. But if I, today's Chris did that over again, I would adjust my expectations. Okay, here's what I didn't do wrong, but I wouldn't do again. I thought, okay, you know, I'm a solopreneur. I, I help people with their pictures and pre preserve their family, uh, memories. And I wanna make an online course that can just give me some residual income so that I can be more present with these milestones my kids are going through. Let me just make this digital product while I'm in downtown Chicago. I literally wrote a course and recorded the videos and learned how to use teachable and tried to load it into my website and worked overseas with my web designer over in Germany, and I did all this, but it was hard. And I was working uphill, and I didn't go into it, checking in with my heart. I checked in with my brain, my ego. My ego wanted me to be financially productive while living in downtown Chicago, away from my usual routine, away from being able to walk the dog and take care of the pets. And, you know, all the things of taking care of back home were behind me. So I thought, hmm, no excuse. Perfect way to use that energy and channel it into something like that. But again, when the ego, when the brain makes decisions without involving my heart, it usually drains me. And that's exactly what happened, and I didn't understand it while I was going through it, but I went through with these expectations that I was going to be financially fruitful during that time when in fact. Life had given me an opportunity to explore a new city I had never been to before. Life had given me an opportunity to take tours, be a tourist life, gave me an opportunity to go see shows that were walkable and to live like a city girl for a month. And I didn't do that. I tried to push and push and push myself, and meanwhile, I discovered that the injury on my foot was more significant than I thought. I had developed a aroma in the bottom of my foot, and the Emergen Emergency Care Place put me in a boot, which ended up making it worse. So I was hobbling and struggling to do laundry and struggling to create a course and struggling at homesick for my own bed. And I fell into a trap of shortcoming and. When it all culminated, my daughter had grown. She had grown so much. She went through a difficult breakup. She made amazing new friends in a new city. She got to live Chicago life with real dancers and be surrounded by people who really knew her heart. And so for that, I will never regret that summer, but if I had to do it again. I would do it differently and I would be present in Chicago, not productive at Chicago. So lesson learned, and it all came back to having expectations that were not aligned with my heart. Just my head. So I give myself grace and I say, these are valuable lessons, and those lessons help shape the person I am today. So none of it is for waste. I give myself grace to reshape my framework on my work, and that is what helped me. Close a business that had gotten so misaligned and it's. It's a tough lesson because I, I literally don't have the desire to go back to Chicago. I would have to do it planned as a vacation with, with space and intentions to not work, but to just appreciate the city for once and hopefully not have a foot injury in the process. But there you have it. So this is my storytelling way of saying. What expectations are shaping today for you? For me, for all of us. What expectations can we let go of and just show up in our hearts out of service for today? That's how I want to picture love. That is the conversation I wanna have with you. And if you have any things that you love about Chicago or a lesson that you have learned parallel to what we're sharing today, I would love to hear it. I wanna know how you are picturing love and how you can help me picture love better in my days too.