Drop Your Expectations

Your expectations of the world and others are ruining your peace.

The mind is constantly generating expectations. We have expectations for our family, politicians, the weather and a never-ending list of things we can’t control.

The expectations we project onto the world are rarely met, yet we’re constantly surprised and disappointed that events don’t unfold according to our plans.

We expect others to treat us a certain way, to notice certain things, to react in a certain way to our accomplishments, and we’re frustrated when they don’t.

Think about the time leading up to a big event or special occasion. We start to plan things, we want them to be special, we want them to be perfect. We spend weeks and months playing out how the event will go in our heads. It's an imaginary dress rehearsal over and over again.

We jump out of bed on these big days expecting perfect weather, only green lights and every other part of the day to bend to our will.

All of this is an example of focusing on what we can’t control. Having expectations of things we can’t control.

Understand: The world is indifferent towards your plans and the way you think things are supposed to go.

Expectations vs. Reality

In his famous commencement speech, “This is Water,” David Foster Wallace spoke about how we’re at the center of every experience we’ve ever had:

“Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence."

He hits home with a point most will hate to admit, but know to be true:

“Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.”

Remember that everyone else is going through this world, viewing themselves at the center of every experience. That person off in the corner, a role player in your view, is having her own completely unique experience, where she’s the star and you’re some insignificant nobody.

Our tendency to forget, that we’re actually not the center of the world, is what leads to our unrealistic expectations of others. We build our expectations of others on this foundation that we’re the most vivid character making his way through the world. We’re caught off guard when others don’t treat us as such. When their actions don’t match the expectations we have of them, the expectations that stem from the false belief that us and our needs are surely at the forefront of their minds and focus.

Fuel the Fire

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche popularized the Latin phrase, Amor Fati – a love of fate. He wrote, "My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary…but love it."

Life isn’t going to go as planned. Just because we can imagine something doesn’t mean we’re entitled to it.

Have no expectations of how things are supposed to go. Instead, focus your attention and energy on what you can control, which is how you respond to what happens.

You’re relaxed and ready. It doesn’t mean that you won’t find yourself up to your neck in things you never saw coming and don’t want to deal with. You’re human, feel these emotions and get on your way. Get on in the world because it’s indifferent to your ideas of what’s fair.

Let it all become fuel to the fire.

These hardships? They’re going to make for a better story.

When facing a difficult situation, the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius would remind himself to turn, “obstacles into fuel.”

“The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it,” he wrote.

That’s how we can view obstacles and things that don’t go our way. They’re fuel to the fire. Everything that didn’t go as planned, fuels us.

Goals will take twice as long to meet. Businesses will fail. Creative projects will go unread, unseen and unknown. And then we get to choose what we respond. We can quit or double down, using it all as fuel.