Are You Letting Expectations Ruin Your Life?

It’s dinner time.
You arrive home after having been away on a business trip for two long days.
You are exhausted, and hungry. You’ve been thinking about the warm meal you’ll find at home waiting for you all day long, with your gorgeous spouse welcoming you back with open arms and a big smile on their face.

Reality check.

You enter the door and you get greeted by a “Hey!” shouted from the bathroom. The house is a mess, and there’s no trace of dinner being ready any time soon. Your spouse approaches you saying “ouf, you wouldn’t believe what a busy day I had”.

What would your reaction be?

Disappointment Is Your Enemy

In this hypothetical scenario, you could have two reactions:

You could be disappointed because you had a completely different expectation of how things would have looked like.
Or you could pour yourself a glass of wine, put a frozen meal in the microwave, and lay back on a kitchen chair, asking your spouse about their day. Enjoy the evening, even if it looked different than what you expected.

Obviously, in an ideal world, you would choose the latter.
Realistically, it’s not always that easy to hold back our expectations and be cool when something doesn’t go according to the magnificent plans we had for it.

Well, let’s not expect anything at all then. Right? Wrong.

I grew up with the idea that having no expectations, or low expectations, was the best thing one could even do.
Expect the least and you’ll be surprised — right?

That’s the worst thing you can do to yourself.

If you keep the bar low, you’ll only reach mediocre results because you won’t be motivated to achieve much in your life.
That sets you up for the worst kind of disappointment: the one about life in general.
If you hope for average and work for average, guess what you’ll get?

If having low expectations will doom you to a life of meh feelings, and high expectations will set you up for disappointment, what are you supposed to do?

Understand the true nature of expectations
Take advantage of them only to the extent that serves you
Let go of them

Having high expectations will maximize your chances of getting the best, but won’t garantee you’ll get it.

#1 — Understand the true nature of expectations

Relativity is a key concept when it comes to understanding why your expectations are something you shouldn’t give too much importance to.

Two different people could view the same situation in completely different terms. You yourself could experience the same situation differently, under different circumstances.

This is because our judgment works in relative terms.
We judge something as good or bad by measuring it against a reference point.
This reference point can be different for everyone based on cultural background, upbringing, mood, circumstances, etc.

Let’s imagine the disappointed person in the example I gave you before.
If this person had just gone very close to having a fatal car accident on their way home, they wouldn’t be disappointed at dinner not being on the table.

Expectations don’t say anything about you, the people around you, or the situation.

Expectations are not “truths”. They are just perceptions biased by a reference point.

#2 — Use expectations to your advantage

The usefulness of having high expectations becomes clear when we think about goals.

When you set a goal for yourself, you want to have as high expectations as they can realistically be, in order to be motivated and inspired to bring the best possible change in your life.

You want to be excited when you imagine yourself reaching your goal because that excitement is what ultimately makes you show up every day and do the hard work needed for you to get where you want to be.

Without the excitement that comes with setting magnificent goals for yourself, you won’t go far at all.

If you set mediocre goals for yourself, chances are you’ll never gain momentum and will end up losing your motivation and quitting.
And if you manage to achieve your mediocre goal, you’ll end up with a mediocre achievement that won’t boost your self-confidence and won’t bring much of an improvement in your life.
That’s te meh feeling I was talking about earlier.

Dreaming big and expecting the best have two positive consequences:

You get a boost of motivation and energy, that pushes you to work better and show up even on those blue days
You have more fun in the process because you get to experience the feeling of greatness and confidence that come from reaching your grand outcome, by daydreaming about it

Like a Note from the Universe once said:

Expectation unlocks all doors, lights all paths, and frosts all cakes.

You have to have high expectations about your desires because thoughts become feelings, feelings become actions and actions bring results.
Great thoughts → Great feelings → Great results

#3 — Let go of expectations

We can see expectations as if they were lenses, through which we see life.

You can choose to wear the glasses of expectations to dream about something that can happen and feel excited about it, taking in all the benefits of that excitement, and when the time comes for you to experience that something you can choose to take off the glasses and look at the situation for what it really is, without judgment.

Releasing expectations is a very powerful thing to do.
It allows you to really be in the present moment without getting stuck in the idea you had of it, and find joy potentially everywhere.

Releasing expectations means you stop living in the past and start living in the present moment — and that’s where you find joy.

In the previous example, the person could just have gone “This is not what I expected but hey, I’m happy to be home anyways” and enjoy their evening, instead of feeling miserable about it.

It’s hard, it’s damn hard, especially if you are someone that sets high standards for yourself (and consequently expects the same of others).
But it’s totally worth the effort.
You have nothing to lose and all to gain.

So dream big, imagine yourself achieving all that you ever desired, do whatever you can to reach your desired outcome, and then make peace with the fact that what you are wishing for might never happen.

Detach from the outcome.
Know that whatever is going to happen, you’ll have grown while getting there. And hopefully, you’ll have had some fun along the way!

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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