“My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.”

Michael J. Fox

Do you ever find that you expect a certain result, like winning your next trial, and when it does not happen you are crushed and disappointed? Or, alternatively, when you win that case you expected to win, do you not feel less gratitude for the successful result because you expected it?

See, that is the problem with expectations. They can remove the  joy out of our life and create disappointment and frustration.

The Problem with Expectations

Expectations are the beliefs  we hold about what will be the outcome of certain events. “Expectations” are what we believe will happen, and reality is what in fact transpires. Often, they do not match up. This conflict between reality and our expectations can create both discontentment and unhappiness. When our expectations are not met, it can lead to frustration and even anger. In addition, when what we expect to occur does occur, we do not experience the true exhilaration of the experience, precisely because we were expecting it to happen.

Expectations are different from having a confident vision of our success.. Having a positive vision of our life, being confident in our success, is a positive attribute that helps us to achieve our goals. But expectations can be a trap that hinders our success.

There are generally 3 types of expectations:

1. What we expect of ourselves

2. What we expect of others

3. What others expect of us

We have no control over what others expect of us. We each have our own life to live, and we can choose the path we wish. But we do have control over our own expectations both of ourselves and others.

Expectations can be particularly powerful with other people who do not respond to us as we expect. We do something very nice for someone and do not receive the appreciation we anticipated. We expect to have a good evening with someone, and instead they were quite angry and distant. When we have expectations of other people in our lives, we experience disappointment when they do not respond as we thought they would.

Expectations are also problematic with results in our life. We think we will receive a certain outcome from our efforts and instead it does not materialize. We lose the trial we expected to win or do not receive the raise we expected to receive.

You will know that your expectations are becoming too powerful when you feel true disappointment when the expected outcome did not occur, or not adequately grateful for the expected result that did happen.  A simple example would be a football game.If our team is two touchdown favorites over the opponents, yet lose, we are crushed, extremely disappointed, because we expected them to win. But if the good guys win, we are not very happy about it, because we expected that to happen..Our expectations can rob us of fully appreciating the experiences in our life.

My Story

I have struggled with expectations for much of my life. I expected to win the trial. I expected others to act towards me a certain way. I expected to win a golf match. I expected to  have good weather when we were going to the football game. All those combined to create disappointment when reality was different than my expectations. .

Only after years of frustration and disappointment, did I learn that my expectations only hurt myself. Through my experiences, I have learned a variety of very helpful tools in managing our expectations so we can enjoy true personal freedom.

I have learned that the greater my expectations, the more I experience disappointment and frustration. On the other hand, when I do not go through life expecting a certain result or a particular response from other people, I experience much greater serenity and peace. 

Tips in Managing our Expectations

How do we control our expectations so when the anticipated outcome does not occur, we do not wallow in frustration and disappointment? Here are some tips:

1. Become aware of your expectations. What are your expectations of others? Your spouse, your children? Are they realistic? What about your career? Review your goals and visions, and make sure they are reasonable and measurable. Having unreasonable expectations of others or of yourself will simply lead to disappointment and regret.

2. Expect the unexpected. Once you understand that the unexpected is often likely to happen, we can adjust to it more easily. When things go wrong, situations change, or some unanticipated hurdle crops up, take a breath, pause, and consider our best options. The unexpected will absolutely happen, more often than not. Life is unpredictable. The only thing we can control is our own thoughts, feelings and actions.

3. Stop comparing. Sometimes a source of our disappointment is we expect that we will achieve what everyone else appears to have. Don’t forget that what you see on social media isn’t necessarily the life others are actually living.. Comparing ourselves to others will limit our performance. We start to feel envious and  jealous, and disappointed that we don’t already have what someone else may have obtained. Instead, we should set reasonable personal  goals for ourselves.

4. Live and let live. All too often, we sit in judgment of others, how they dress, what they say, how they are behaving, their level of success. Let go of our expectations of others, particularly how we want them to respond to us. They have their own life to live as we do and their own issues to manage.

5. Don’t  judge yourself too harshly. Sometimes the problem with expectations is when the anticipated result does not happen, we engage in excessive self-criticism.We are not failures simply because our expectations did not materialize. We criticize ourselves so harshly for failure and are disappointed we did not live up to our dreams. Instead, see what we can learn from our setbacks. What lessons are there in the reality that we experienced?

6. Practice emotional acceptance. Life will not always work out the way we expect or want. Things will not go our way. There will be obstacles. We might even be disappointed about that. But accept our emotions and accept the outcome. It is our reality. It is our role to accept the reality and circumstances we face as being exactly what they are supposed to be at that time. We can then decide how we want to respond and move forward.

7. Be grateful. We do not always get everything we want. Sometimes we fall short. But we feel so much more fulfilled if we truly savor what we have. Our happiness comes not from getting what we want, but from wanting what we have. The greatest antidote to unrealized expectations is gratitude. Look for the lesson in the disappointment, and then reflect on all we have to be grateful for. We may not have gotten everything we wanted, but we are blessed with so much in our life as it is. My experience is that when one door closes, another opens. If this particular route did not result in success, consider what course may work out better. Truly appreciate the many gifts and blessings in your life. 

Conclusion 

True personal freedom comes from accepting the reality of our situation, and being grateful for the gifts that we have. \When we live in gratitude, our reality might actually end up exceeding our expectations in ways we have never expected. Life can become exciting, new and wonderful. See, our powerful expectations can actually imprison us. When we let go of them, we will experience more personal freedom. And isn’t that what we all want?

What are your thoughts?

I am working with attorneys and other professionals to help them be as successful and fulfilled in their profession as they want. I would love to learn more about you, your challenges and your goals. If you would like to chat, please set up a complementary discovery call with me here: https://calendly.com/garymiles-successcoach/one-one-discovery-call