(don't) Expect

First off: Expectations about ourselves and our life do not equate the goals we have. I spent most of my life believing they’re the same thing. To my younger self and all those who struggle with disappointment, this is for you:

Goals usually help us find direction and purpose and inspire us to move forward. On the other hand, expectations are our mind’s projections of an outcome. I want to argue that expectations are actually counterproductive and harmful. We don’t need to watch out for tigers and bears lurking out of the darkness to eat us nowadays, but our brains project outcomes in the same way they did a million years ago - they try to protect us from harm. Emotions are a chemically induced incentive to avoid potential harmful outcomes or try to ensure the fruitful ones. Being safer from bodily harm in modern society just means these same physical processes get applied to something else: our mental states.

I used to struggle with a lot of disappointment, either with myself or the world. But now I know it wasn’t because the world wasn’t »fair« or because I wasn’t good enough. It was because most of us depend on a track record of proven expected outcomes to be the de facto representation of both ourselves and the world. When an expectation proves true, it only enforces our undoubtedly biased story line (a good or bad one). When an expectation proves false, we get overwhelmed by emotions. It’s a lesson lost in both cases. Expectations try to force our image of reality onto the world. And WHEN that image breaks it hurts, because we’ve become fully dependent on equating our self-image and self-worth with how RIGHT we are in our projections. It’s completely normal and we all do it without even knowing it. But that doesn’t mean we can’t unlearn it.

“Happiness Equals Reality Minus Expectations.” ― Tom Magliozzi

To start living a life without being driven by expectations, we first need to see them for what they are first: an automatic process, ran by our brain. That’s it. Learning to spot them when they try to take over the wheel requires a daily practice of mindfulness. It’s a leap of faith that over time shows us: we got it wrong. But that’s ok.