“Trade your expectation to appreciation
and the world changes instantly”
– Tony Robbins –
Expectations are a vital part of our society.
In general, most people realize this and we accept this but the problem for me lies in expectations that don’t fit into my reality and expectations that become wildly out of control. Personally, my expectations for myself and for those around me are quite high and at times feel almost unreachable. This is a huge problem.
Why?
To put it in a nutshell it stresses me out in a major way. I always thought that once I had accomplished a task I would be less stressed, but what I have found is that I continue to put expectations on myself that cause me unnecessary stress. There are moments, maybe even just a split second, where I realize this life is moving fast and that I need to let certain things go and revel in the tiny moments and enjoy it. Cue rethinking my expectations and lining them up to me more in line with what I can actually handle and accomplish.
Coming back to my original thought.
I want to take Tony Robbin’s words and incorporate them into my reality.
Instead of expecting things in my reality to be perfect and unflawed I want to appreciate things and enjoy the flawed parts of both myself and reality. By letting expectations go and appreciating what I have I can actually feel the stress melting away.
Now, this isn’t to say that one shouldn’t have any expectations at all because that wouldn’t get us far, but to lighten up a little. If there is one thing I know for sure it is that we were put here for more than stress and deadlines and craziness. At 30 I am just starting to imagine a life where I can appreciate the little things, the imperfection of it all.
As I type this in my newly moved office space in our bedroom nook {pictures to come} while my two year old is climbing all over me and hiding from scary dinosaurs I chuckle to myself instead of becoming frustrated (which is my go to emotion the last few years).
Life is never what you expect it to be. For instance, like I previously mentioned we moved our office to our bedroom nook. It is this strange little area off our bedroom and we weren’t quite sure what to do with it until the hubs came up with moving our desk into it and somehow magically it looked like it should have gone there all along. I was happy for all of five minutes when it hit me in a litany of rambling thoughts that came out something like this…
I can do so much with this space! I have so much work to do! What do I want this space to feel like? What can I put on the wall to help organize the space? When am I going to find time to organize it? I want to style the bookcase!
Cue my expectations causing me to have an immediate stress attack. Haha. Will it get done? Yes, of course I don’t let things sit idle. So why do I stress about it when I could simply let the process evolve naturally? There are those pesky expectations I place on myself again. Eventually I will learn, right?
Do you place unrealistic expectations on yourself or your reality? How do you cope?
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