Hello friends,
hope you are well. So great being with you today. Hope the weekend was amazing while parts of this planet are experiencing Spring others are going into Autumn. Gosh, now this is a habit of the English, where the weather is often the beginning of a talk.
You know, I thought about this topic and what a nice surprise life is when you:
1) Don’t take anything personally.
2) When you live without expectations.
These two together actually work like magic, but you know what’s more magical? When we receive love, abundance (including wealth), excellent health and happiness, believe it or not, the attitude of gratitude helps you live a life of lowered expectations. What happens when you least expect it? You will always be surprised? Imagine being surprised most of the time, for all the right reasons? I mean it cuts so much of the inauthentic game that stands in one’s way and life. It cuts out what happiness we’ve attached to the expectation and bring us even more happiness through no expectation.
Living a life of expectations automatically comes with disappointment as a side effect, just like an overdose of anything. Living on a high then processing the high and quick wins especially without sitting down, discussions, processing it within the mind and seeing if the plan can be bettered, made advance, more full proof, perhaps what a plan A, B or C looks like, but the key is, NOT GETTING ATTACHED TO THE OUTCOME, i.e., to what is planned but allowed for surprises. What we presume are negative surprises are merely opportunities. The greatest opportunities actually, because that’s where faith, magic, belief, visualisation operate, God, call it what you wish… Why? Otherwise, how else will the universe help you manifest what you’ve asked for without you controlling every single outcome? You can’t, controlling it entirely wholeheartedly is one thing, but controlling it entirely knowing that outcomes in each of the steps are likely to change is called going with the flow.
I mean let’s list down the obvious things we expect, and I know this list can really go on depending on the character of the person we are talking about.
1) We expect people to answer what we like to hear (come on, admit it…), hey, be honest, when your significant other doesn’t notice you’ve changed your hairstyle (I guess I hit that right on the nail). “Hey significant other, don’t be doing that all the time,” says T. Dench Patel
2) We expect people to do certain things for us because of our relationships and the world’s rules because it seems like for generations, we should be doing that. Tradition, ceremonies, someone said so, the teacher, the system, the this and that… but think about it, even they can’t control the outcome because we really want everything to be so perfect. Oh gosh, imagine how much disappointment a perfectionist can feel (for example, see how COVID has disrupted the entire world).
3) Oh! The biggie … we want to make someone else happy and so the expectation to control everyone around that and then imagine how you feel when this one stomps off to the left the other to the right the other did this wrong, etc.
For the most part, it is absolutely true, what can be controlled and is under your control then sure control it.
Omg! The big one for all of us. What did we plan for our life? Hello, and what came out in the end? Now that really hit you right? It sure did me… I heard somewhere that life has its own plan for you.
You know so many of us live without intention, without finding out our weaknesses and strengths. We haven’t discovered our real reasons why, or where we ourselves come from. So, just a thought, imagine if we knew, wouldn’t that really cut down expectations we have of ourselves and others?
I found this article pretty interesting, No expectations no disappointments. It goes into these points into detail under the sub-heading, here’s how to live a life without expectations.
1) Become aware of expectations.
2) Stop wanting to be right.
3) Have no expectations of others.
4) Don’t compare yourself with others.
5) Focus on process goals instead of outcome goals.
This article is incredible Live your life for you, not to please expectations I found the following really powerful,
“The same thing happens with people. They get frustrated when you don’t behave as they expect. That’s key to understand—it’s their problem, not yours.”
“Expectations are premeditated resentments.”
“Many people bear resentment when the outcome of an event is less than they imagined it would be, even if their expectation was based on unreasonable assumptions.”
“Frustration is the gap between what people expect from you and who you are.”
“To bridge that void, you must reframe your relationship with people’s expectations. Expectations create a social contract—it’s an implicit agreement between others and you. If you don’t push back, people will assume you are okay with it.”
“Speak up. Or people will continue invading you. If you don’t resist, not only do you legitimize the agreement, but it also becomes a social practice. Soon, you’ll start doing the same to others—when you let other people define your life, you want to prescribe theirs, too.”
“Not expecting things from others is the first step to preventing people from dictating how you live. Life is a two-way street—when you realize that no one owes you anything, you stop expecting people to owe you anything either.”
“People will assume the social contract is active unless you explicitly break it.”
“Learn to draw a line. You don’t need to be harsh, though. Just let others know when they are out of bounds—not everyone realizes when they are trying to define how you live.”
“Stop judging, stop expecting.”
In another article, I read this, “If everything was always perfect and the way we would like, living would be pointless. Joy doesn’t exist without sadness. Satisfaction doesn’t exist without disappointment. Success doesn’t exist without failure. In order to feel the tickle that reaching and accomplishing an expectation causes, you have to experience and endure frustration.”
This article was just as good, these are the points I found to be really profound. How to conquer expectations and live the life you love.
“Deceiving others. That’s what the world calls a romance.” — Oscar Wilde
“That’s why it’s better to expect the unexpected — accept the glass will break.”
“Don’t walk in my head with your dirty feet.” ― Leo Buscaglia
“We all crave autonomy. No-one wants to be told how to live. Don’t expect people to live up to your expectations. That’s one of the hardest things in life: we have a hard time understanding that people are not under our control.”
“Aiming for the best is not the problem — our attachment to our expectations is the issue.”
“Dalai Lama said, “Attachment is the origin, the root of suffering; hence it is the cause of suffering.”
Omg, I really love this one, “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” ― Bruce Lee”
This article is amazing, and I found these points amazing, Having no expectations, the secret to freedom and happiness – I found this article really interesting.
“Act on desires with a detached involvement. You do what you are guided to do by your heart, but you do not judge the rightness of your actions by the results that you get.”
“But actually, you are not seeing the whole picture, because what you are seeing is only a piece of the larger scheme of events where everything is really working out the way it should.”
Lastly, I will leave a few more articles in the links below that also are very good reads.
Releasing expectations – 4 ways to live your life for you
In this article, this is what really stood out for me – “He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away.” ~Raymond Hull
How having no expectations improve your life satisfaction
Yours sincerely,
T. Dench Patel
Thank you for the comments and support. Thank you for offering to donate if there was a donate button on here. I prefer not to take donations. You can support by purchasing my books (Paperback or Kindle), The South African: True Colours, The South African: Roamer or my children’s book Light. These books can be found on Amazon mainly and other sites in your country.
The audiobook for The South African: True Colours is available on iTunes, Apple and Audible. The South African: Roamer and Light will be released soon.
Note: Do keep referring back to this site as much as possible, as I grow, a more profound perspective may form and so I will always come back to each of these articles to re-evaluate them.
