One of the few things in life we control is our reaction to things. And expectations tee up those reactions. They often set the odds on the outcome, and the odds usually aren’t in your favour. I’ve decided I’d rather stick with actual reactions rather than put my reactions at a disadvantage by mixing them with my everything-should-be-amazing imagination.
When you don’t have expectations,
you experience things objectively rather than tinted with presupposition. Then
if you do happen to be disappointed, it’s only because the experience wasn’t
good, not that you thought it would be INSANELY GREAT and then only
ended up as GOOD. A good experience should always leave you smiling, rather
than disappointed because it didn’t measure up to a story you made up.
Leaving expectations out of it
makes everything more direct. It’s simply how you feel about something rather
than how you feel coloured by how you thought you were going to feel. To put it
another way, not having expectations means you can’t be let down. Being let
down means something didn’t measure up to what you expected. So instead of
being let down about something, I’d just be unsatisfied with the outcome. That
may sound subtle, but it has a distinctly different emotional impact.
Expectations are what let you down, not outcomes. Outcomes just are. I’ll
evaluate those rather than how they measured up to some artificial line in the
mental sand.
In practice. We don't work with
expectations. We simply do our best work and the chips fall where they may.
Having expectations makes outcomes binary — you did what you hoped to do, or
you didn’t. I’d prefer to live with just doing and enjoying the flow. BTW,
predictions are different from expectations. Predictions don’t come with an
emotional impact if the outcome doesn’t measure up. Predict wrong? “I was
wrong”. Expectations not met? “That sucks”. See the emotional difference?
In my personal life, I don’t have
expectations of others, except to say that I assume all people are good until
proven otherwise. I’m more interested in how people are, than what I expect
them to be. If you ever want to be disappointed by someone, set unrealistic
expectations. Of course, as you get to know someone you have a sense of what
they’re capable of, but even then, people just do as they do, they don’t miss,
meet, or exceed my expectations.
If I’m competing in something, I
don’t expect to win. I want to win. I’ll do my best to win. But I don’t expect
to win. My expectations have nothing to do with what I’m competing on, and I
don’t control the other side. I can only do my best regardless, so why measure
that against anything other than the ultimate outcome?
When I go to a movie, I don’t
expect it to be bad, good, or great — I just want to go see the movie. I may
have heard something about it prior to seeing it, but that's someone else's
opinion, not my expectation. After it’s over I can ask myself if I liked it or
not, not how it measured up to how much I thought I’d like it (or not). I’m
convinced that people would like things a whole lot more if someone else didn’t
tell them they wouldn’t like it. Stuff’s pretty great, you know.
When I head to the airport, I
don’t dread security or lines or waits. Why? Because I have no expectations of
those things. And let’s face it — expectations of those things are usually bad.
So, if they are actually bad, you expect disappointment and get it. What a
sad way to start a day.
When I go for a walk once in a blue when I get time, I don’t expect to walk a 6-minute mile, but if
I do, great. And if I don’t that’s fine too — I still went for a walk. If I was
competing, that might be different, but I’m just enjoying it.
When the new iPhone comes out, I’m never disappointed that it didn’t have this or that. I’m usually delighted. Why? Because I wasn’t expecting anything other than something new. I can judge that thing when it exists, rather than setting up opportunities to be upset. The number of people who complain about something new that didn’t exist five minutes ago is a testament to the negative power of expectations.
Is this indifference? It’s not —
I’m not indifferent. I have plenty of opinions and points of view. Some
strongly held, others less so. But I only consider outcomes once they happen
rather than writing a script in my mind that I react to after the fact.
I wasn’t always this way. I used
to set up expectations in my head all day long. Constantly measuring reality
against an imagined reality is taxing and tiring. I think it often wrings the
joy out of just experiencing something for what it is. So, over the past few
years, I’ve let those go and ended up considerably happier and more content.
And really, every day has a shot
at being pretty great when your only expectation is that the sun comes up.
Rab Rakha!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment