When we are babies we stare in awe of the new world.
Everything is fresh and new.
There are no memories, there is no future.
Just now. What you feel now is all that matters.
Am I hungry? Am I tired? Am I sleepy? Am I happy?
There are no bills, no jobs, no stress, no worries.
Just immediate responses to immediate feelings.
Self-awareness from being present.
There is nothing with which to compare the present moment.
Just now… as it is.
No interpretation against expectations, it just is.
There are no “shoulds”.
Just now… as it is.
Accepting reality for being real.
As we grow, we begin to establish expectations. We begin to expect, and when our predictions and desires are not met, we are disappointed, angry, sad, depressed…
Comparisons to a what “should” be.
As we grow even older, these feelings become conditioned responses to initial desires, and we expect the worse, so we get the worse.
Our past becomes our future. We condition our future by our past outcomes.
We expect to be disappointed, angry, sad, depressed again…
So we are. Over and over.
As these cycles build, we label them with medical diagnoses… depression and anxiety.
The pain and suffering that we experience in life are never from the outcome, but from our expectations, from the comparison and the “should” we establish in our prediction.
Our expectation “should” be the rule.
We have it all figured out… how it is “supposed” to go.
If life would just conform to our expectations, we could live a happy existence.
How shallow of life and the world… to not revolve around our expectations.
I was disappointed by life regularly. My outcomes did not come true on a regular basis.
When they did, I was not satisfied.
Why not more, better, faster, cheaper, bigger?
Why doesn’t life conform to my expectations?
If only my life would unfold exactly how I want.
When writing or creating videos, I often refer to the process of healing – or finding happiness – as an inside-out process.
I have found with myself, with my clients, and in my research that there is no sustained happiness to be found outside of an individual.
If there are damaged emotions, feelings, and thoughts inside of a person, then the outside will offer no relief. Nothing will.
Lack of happiness requires emotional healing – inside.
The process of healing begins with redefining the emotions, feelings, and thoughts into ones which serve to create happiness.
We can change the past by becoming aware of its presence and reinterpreting the past for our greater understanding and good.
We can change the past into one that serves to create happiness.
Happiness is there if you look for it and want to find it.
At the same time, we can create long-term intentions or dreams for the future to help us align our actions, but creating hard expectations on a minute-by-minute, or day-by-day basis is simply opening up the opportunity for disappointment and sadness.
Expectations also increase our judgment of events and reduce our ability to witness and enjoy life’s unfolding.
Death, sickness, aging, disease, economic volatility are external factors which simply will happen regardless of our expectations for perfection.
Expecting perfection will create suffering.
Instead, I hold the belief that everything that happens serves our greater purpose. Our pain causes our greatest potential source of happiness.
When I hit rock bottom, alcoholism, unemployment, obesity, potential divorce – all at the same time – I deliberately chose to use my condition as the catalyst for my rebirth.
No one else could make that choice for me. It was mine to make.
I could have held on to the pain, but I chose to release. I could have chosen to continue to falter, but I chose to rebound.
It was my choice, and I chose to heal.
I created dreams and a vision and began taking steps with no expectations. I found happiness in simple steps forward.
I redefined my past into one which could serve a purpose for my new life.
And as I healed with no expectations for the future, my dreams came closer and closer.
Creating expectations for the unfolding of my life would have created disappointment because nothing would ever be enough, fast enough, or perfect enough.
Expectations create suffering. Creating a vision while releasing expectations and taking steps creates happiness.
Happiness like a baby, feeling feelings, understanding emotions, listening to their bodies… with no expectations.
Just being present. No past to compare against, no future to create expectations.
There is happiness in just experiencing experiences.
Life becomes simple, fun, and happy.
No expectations but living.
No expectations but zero expectations.
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Previously published on mikekitko
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