Everyone sets expectations, whether admittedly or not. Most of the time they’re keeping a bar raised in terms of who you want to be, what you want to accomplish, what you want to happen in life, and what you want from other people. But what most people don’t understand is just how toxic an expectation can be, or even how just a simple belief can alter a situation that hasn’t even happened yet.
Managing your expectations is absolutely crucial if you ever want to manage your own happiness. When you set an expectation you are consciously putting the belief, or at least the hope, into the universe that clearly states what you suspect will happen. Weather that belief is good or bad in nature, the expectation itself has already limited the number of possibilities that you will accept.
A simple example could be that most people believe that how you treat others will be how you are treated in return. Anyone living on planet earth knows this to not always be true, yet why do so many people have expectations such as this? Sadly, it’s almost as if setting such a grand expectation guarantees disappointment. However, it does not have to be such a negative belief system that only shoots you down.
Learning to set lowered expectations can be very difficult. Especially when it can easily be blamed on human nature and our modern day society to want everything to be exactly how we would hope it would be. And as backwards as it seems, lowering your expectations has a higher chance of returning your investment in happiness. When you do not expect situations to pan out perfectly, you are then allowing life to happen without your anticipated control of the outcome. And when you are not hoping to sway the outcome, you will usually find that something unexpected has either worked out well or pointed you in a different direction for good reason.
Another aspect of expectations is acceptance. No matter what happens in life, you have to accept things for the way they are. I am not saying striving for greatness or setting ambitious goals are useless and that everything should stay as they are. Actually, I am saying quite the opposite. But in order for goals to be achieved and greatness to be earned, you have to accept the bumps in the roads along the way. Letting disappointment alter the path you have set for yourself is not going to bring you any happiness. But accepting that maybe one part of your plan didn’t work out, or one conversation ended horribly, or one interview was a complete loss will only help you take your next step and it should hopefully never dissuade you from what you want. Lowering your expectations and keeping them in check makes acceptance way easier. And when you accept life, happiness usually follows.
The only things worth setting are the hope and intent for what you truly want, without the terms and disillusion that come with expectations. If we work towards things we want in life with the belief that things will turn out good but also the acceptance that things may not be great, then we are on the right path. We can’t control a lot of things that will occur in our lifetimes and expectations only strengthen the illusions that say we can. Without any set guidelines, life tends to work out perfectly as it should. And that’s all anyone is even asking for anyways, right?
