If you want to reduce some of the troubles you find yourself having, then try to let go of your expectations. Expectations can bring us a lot of problems.
If we expect things to happen in our life and then they don't, we can become miserable. If we expect people to treat us a certain way and they don't, we may become upset. When we place expectations on ourselves, we can be disappointed if we don't meet those demands. We need to learn that we can become very attached to our expectations and this can make things seem worse than they really are. Expectations affect every aspect of our lives. We need to let go of some of them.
It is good practice to try your best to reduce your expectations in life. This will help to give you more peace, as you won't be getting as upset at how things happen around you. You will be more content in your life when you learn to accept things as they are more.
If you examine your life and your behaviours, do find you have a lot of expectations? This could be from the simplest things, like expecting your hair to look perfect every day, to bigger, and more complex issues like wanting to be rich and famous. Do you become distraught if your day isn't perfect? If we are having a bad day that is because things aren't going as we expected during the day, we are having little mishaps and we let this drag us down. Do you get into fights with others if they don't do what you want? Do you get into a bad mood if you spill something on your favourite shirt? Be completely honest with yourself and take a look at how much your expectations bring you troubles and let you down.
If we can start to realize that our own expectations cause at least some of the problems we face in life, we will understand that we can reduce those issues by letting go of our own desired outcomes. We can start to see, that if we get into a fight with someone that it is not completely the other persons fault, but that our expectations weren't met somehow and this has caused part of the problem that led to the fight. We are upset that our desires and wants were not met and this causes us to become upset with the other person. They may have done something we didn't like or the opposite, they didn't do what we wanted and so we get angry with them. Most likely they have the same issues with us. These things lead to conflict.
When we find ourselves upset at any given moment, we need to look at ourselves and ask ourselves what were we expecting? What desire of ours wasn't met in this situation? When we find these answers, we can begin to understand what expectations we had and how perhaps we can meet them in other ways. If we are dealing with another person, we should ask ourselves if they were aware of our expectation. Did they know exactly what outcome we wanted? Did you tell your spouse or partner what you wanted for your birthday for example? If you didn't let the other person know, then they are not at fault for not meeting your desires. Other people cannot be expected to magically know exactly what it is you want in life, if you never tell them.
However, there are certain things that we would expect that are rational, like expecting people to be honest, trustworthy and conscientious. When anyone fails to meet these requirements, then we have to realize they are not to be trusted or believed. We need to realize they are not capable of basic, decent behaviour and stop expecting it from them. We need to be guarded around people that behave a-socially or anti-socially, otherwise we will be hurt by them. We need to drop the expectation that the person will change or that we can fix them because there are some people that will never change their behaviour. They need to do it for themselves, you cannot do it for them.
To reduce your own suffering in this life, it helps if you can reduce and eliminate some of your expectations. Life will become easier for you if you don't expect it to be perfect all the time.
The link for this podcast can be found here: https://youtu.be/rkHD98TmCAM
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