By: Maria Climent Huguet
Maria Climent is a 26-year-old Catalan lady. After studying translation, she decided her life was odd enough to became a humor scriptwriter and by default, a blogger. This is how she’s now a mother of no one and a better person. She also likes to cook!

We can often have big expectations of what a trip will be like, how much we are going to mature, how many adventures we are going to have… and in fact, there are many things that escape to our control.

You’ll surely recognise expressions like: “Damn it! Eight months waiting for my vacation and, why the hell had it to rain the whole time?” Or, “damn it, I rent apartments in Florence once a year, and only the days I’m there, I get sick!” And then we think that all these inconveniences have spoiled our vacation.

But indeed, it’s ourselves who spoil our own trip by having too high expectations. We are so obsessed with the thought of that holiday and how it must be perfect that if anything, and I say, anything unexpected happens, our ideals are crushed.

Moreover, not everything is just like it appears in pictures. I mean, Photoshop exists! Even a suburban industrial city could look cozy in a postcard. Come on, even Chernobyl would look cute in a black and white postcard with the sun setting in the background!

How many of us have imagined a hundred wonderful adventures of the outdoors on the South Island, New Zealand – or  partying in one of the Florence apartments you rented and things hadn’t turned out exactly how you imagined.

So, here are some tips, to help control this frustration generated by too high expectations of a destination:

• Live in the moment. It sounds cheesy, but, come on, it’s true! Try to enjoy everything that is happening in the present. Make the best of every day.

• Be as flexible as you can. The secret is knowing how to adapt to situations.

• Be open-minded. This is the only way for you to enjoy possible last-moment changes. Most of times improvised things are better than what we had scheduled.

• Let yourself be surprised. Instead of having a perfect mental map on how are your holidays going to be, let the –call it fate, destiny, universe, circumstances, etc… surprise you. Just say: let’s see what happens!