Great ‘Un-expectations’

When you were little did you make plans for your life? For example, “When I’m 25, I’m going to be married to [insert celebrity here].” Even though I wasn’t thinking about marriage at five years old, I did have a huge celebrity crush on John Boy, from the TV show, “The Waltons.” Or maybe you had a plan like, “By the time I’m 32 years old I will have a spouse, two kids, and a dog” Or maybe you weren’t much of a future planner like me. Although, my guess is even if you didn’t plan out your future, you still had an idea of what you might expect it to be like. How many of us envisioned the way our life would turn out and have it turn out that same way? My guess is not many of us can say that. Unfortunately, all too often a feeling of disappointment comes with that. We expect one thing and if it didn’t happen the way we planned, we were disappointment. This could be related to planning your future, wanting a certain job, or even winning a prize you really wanted at the fair.

Lately, I’ve been struggling with sleep. I just can’t get enough to function through the day and I never feel rested.I go to bed exhausted and wake up exhausted. I agree with a saying I heard once, “I’m not an early bird. I’m not a night owl. I’m a permanently exhausted pigeon.” Because I’m always tired, I expect I should sleep deep for hours and wake up refreshed, or at least feel awake! When it doesn’t go how I think it should, I get disappointed. What if I were to change my expectations and for the time being accept the fact I will be tired and never get that deep sleep? Then each morning instead of starting the day being disappointed in my sleep, I would wake up to my new ‘normal’ way of thinking and start the day off feeling better. 

Let’s go one step father and take this thought into something everyone can related to. What if we changed our thinking to this — no one owes us anything. Stay with me here. When I took the Dale Carnegie Course one of the sayings was, “Expect ingratitude.” When we hold the door open for someone or let someone in during traffic, don’t expect the other person to say “Thank you,” or give a little wave. That’s ‘expecting ingratitude.’ That way when people don’t show thanks, we won’t feel disappointed. Easier said than done at times, I know, because we’ve all been there.

However, on the occasions when people do thank us or give us that wave of thanks it will make us feel so good. We didn’t expect them to say thank you, but they did. That would give us joy rather than expecting it and being disappointed when it doesn’t happen. What I’m saying is by shifting what we ‘expect’ to a ‘don’t expect’ attitude, it will make us happier! We won’t expect someone to hold the door open for us, to thank us, or give us a compliment but when it does happen it will makes us feel good.

If you’re struggling to understand this mindset think about this, when was the last time someone gave you a present that was completely out-of-the-blue and there was no special reason behind it? It could be as small as someone buying you your favorite drink (FYI, I love hot apple cider!). What made it so special is they gave you something when you least expected it. 

This mentality works not only for the smaller things, like a hand wave or a thank you, but it also works for the larger things in life or life in general. Our lives may not have turned out exactly how we expected they would, in fact, it could be the complete opposite of what we expected. I personally wouldn’t have expected I’d be dealing with daily pain and six surgeries over the last ten years. Life isn’t what I expected and it’s taken a lot of years to get rid of my expectations with what I can’t do. I still struggle with it occasionally, but I’ve been able to let go of most of my expectations. The more of these expectations I’ve learned to let go (like wearing heels or playing sports), the more I’ve been able to focus on all the things I do have in my life. Instead of looking at the ‘what-ifs’ I’ve been able to look at the ‘what-haves’, and I have found some truly amazing things I have in my life and things I can still do.

The same goes for you and your situations. What is one area you can work on with this new mentality? Try and create a new ‘un-expectation’ and watch how you’ll be elated when you become happier! 

Keeping the perspective,
Lauren