Introduction

Today i'm going to be talking about how expectations lead to disappointment

I'm sure a lot of you had expectations of what 2022 end like or that new decade was going to look like. Where you might go, where you might be, and what you might start doing.

I had ideas of where i was going to go travel for a bit or what i was going to experience and as i'm sure you experienced there was a very firm moment at the start of the year where suddenly those expectations of what was going to happen had to be put on hold.

They had to be cancelled that idea of expectations had to be let go of and had to face the real reality that actually this thing that i imagined was going to happen in the future isn't coming around. it's not going to happen in the capacity that i envisaged it.

So often we can place our energy, our emotions, and our excitement into these future events and what we realize is that when we give that and it doesn't happen, we can actually end up being quite disappointed and almost feel like we've lost something because we create this sense of having it already.

That is why i think 2022 has really taught us a lesson, we all may have expected certain things to happen this year. We may have expected growth in certain areas and instead we've been delivered it in another form, another capacity of growth which is still important.

Aspects of Expectations and Disappointment

So if we go into and i think we've all probably realized this living more in the present, living for the now, knowing that something might be coming up but not having our hopes or not having all this energy placed into.

It doesn't mean that we can't be excited for things but we can't place all this energy and all this expectation into it because if it doesn't happen we will just leave ourselves feeling disappointed and that is again another importance of being in the present.

Just being able to surrender and accept and this year has also been about surrendering and accepting. Everything that has come and everything there's been. So that's also an aspect of it.

So, that's one aspect of expectations and disappointment, another that we often find is that we put expectations on people, we have expectations of our friends, our parents, our boyfriend - girlfriend, our bosses. We have expectations of how people should show up based on our understanding of the world and based on who we think they are.

If that person doesn't show up in that way we get disappointed but this person is not what we project them to be and what we think they should be.

They are their own person who has their own stories, their own beliefs, and they are doing what they believe is best and that might not align with what we expect or how we expect them to treat us ?, what we expect from them ?, or maybe how we expect them to show up ?.

That expectation we're placing on them is ours to deal with, not theirs. I think some people can find this difficult the the idea of expectation when it comes to people.

So, i just want to clarify that you're allowed to have boundaries. You can have boundaries if people overstep, you're going to challenge them.

That is very different from an expectation because this is what i think is important, what you think is important might not be important to them in the same capacity that it is to you. But if you think it is and if you're saying it is then they're going to show up in this space.

So, it's really important that we can distinguish from the expectations there, but if you have a boundary and someone oversteps that. they say something to you that is unacceptable then you stepping into the space to challenge them onto that.

It's not that you had an expectation, it's that you have a clear set of boundaries that they can't cross and if they do then you challenge them and if it needs to go and you need to not be with that person that's also fine.

Seeing with a Different perspective to Counter Disappointment

This is the importance, we're not saying expectations because expectations lead to disappointment. if i imagine someone is something they are not and they don't show up in that way of course i'm going to be disappointed.

If i imagine something's going to happen this year and i expect it to happen in the way that i imagine then of course i'm going to be disappointed. But if i just go through and say,

“ okay cool. Well, i've got this event that's going on later this year. Let's just see what happens.”

I don't know what's going to happen between now and that event but let's see if it goes on. Awesome, let's go with it. If it doesn't, then maybe there's a reason, maybe there's another flow, maybe there's some other opportunity here.

I think what we're seeing is that there's been a lot of of negative things that have happened this year or there's been good and bad however you want to look at that and there have been some challenging spaces created and there's been some opportunities created.

Conclusion

It is important that we look for those opportunities, look at what is presented, and look at the reality that is presented in front of us. Not clinging on to the expectations of what we had or what we thought we had and just going with the flow. That surrender that acceptance makes it a lot easier just to go with that

You can adapt to that, you can change and then see what can go beyond that ? or what opportunity that brought with it ?

So, yeah this is one of the most important lessons i feel i've learned this year maybe it's something that you've found, you've learned and like i said expectations lead to disappointment and your expectations of people that's not necessarily who they are, that's you expectation, but if you're setting boundaries and people are crossing those.

That's not necessarily the same as an expectation and you should honor and respect your own boundaries in that space. That's what we're talking about.

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