All Of Life’s Problems Can Be Traced Back To One Simple Equation. Expectations Un-met #191.

Happiness Comes When Expectations Are Met Or Exceeded.

Every fight, every break up, every blow out, depression, unhappiness, anger sadness, frustration, everything. All negative emotions can be tied back to that simple equation. Were the expectations you placed met or exceeded? If not, chances are one of the aforementioned emotions befell upon you. And in your frustration, those around you may have payed the price.

We so often don’t see it but we nearly always have some form of expectation placed on any given situation. Child didn’t clean their room like you asked, so yell at them. Spouse didn’t take out the trash or didn’t make dinner. Anger and resentment well up. Now you’re upset with them and the more times they miss the mark on those expectations that you placed upon them the bigger the wedge is driven between you. One of the most sure fire ways to breed resentment is to place expectations on another and if you want to add an intensifier put a timeline on it. If a spouse or significant other leaves you, it’s because the expectations they had for your relationship have not been met.

Where Are Your Expectations Set?

Maybe you even set your own bar too high to begin with, and you’re scrambling to keep up. Which in turn makes you unhappy because you aren’t living up to your own expectations you set upon yourself. Many successful people are often times some of the most unhappy people because their expectation for themselves and their businesses are set so high that if they miss the mark they are a failure in their eyes. Or if they hit the mark they still feel they could have done better. Which there is absolutely nothing wrong with being driven and having high expectations. Just always keep this fact in mind, it could be leading you down a path of pain and misery. Either learn to enjoy the suffering. Or change your ways

If you do have expectations for someone else, high or low, make sure you preset those notions with them, so they can make sure they either attempt live up to them or they can depart from them entirely. Or make sure you have a plan in place in case you don’t meet others expectations. Your financial expectations might be different, your time spent together expectations could wildly out of balance. Your family expectations could not match up. Make sure you communicate these desires. Happiness is simply expectations met or exceeded.

Expecting Too Much From Others.

We all have friends or family who are never on time, always late or they just outright flake on their plans altogether. And we all have the same negative reactions towards them. Let down, upset and sometimes angered. We expect people to follow through on their word. But what if we knew some of our people were that way and we began to expect their excentricities. Those quirks, although rude would never catch us off guard or make us mad again. They would simply be meeting expectations and if they were there and on time they would be exceeding them.

Pain from a death comes from the expectation that person would be alive tomorrow. Yes you will miss them but missing anyone or anything is you expecting to see that something or someone more than you currently are. Losing what you expected to have, love, long life, family, health, friendship. Losing all or any of that can be incredibly painful if it goes away. All parents expect to have happy healthy children and when that expectation doesn’t happen it can have devastating effects on you and your family.

Lessons Learned.

However if you know that all these things are very much possibilities that can happen in life and you begin to accept and expect that. It will drastically soften the blow if anything does go awry. All in all, if you want to be happier, lower your expectations. Once you have those lower expectations, you can than go out and exceed them.

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