Beyond ExpectationsExpectations:

There is a fine line between visualizing what you want your life to look like, and being attached to the outcome. The expectations can be like handcuffs, locking us into a jail sentence. Ranting and raving if we don’t get it.

My client said she expected him to take out the garbage every week, she expected to be loved more than she is, that life would be easier, that she would be enlightened.

To dream to seek, like a snake shedding her skin, to transform, crawling, running, skipping toward the expected goal is a lofty travel adventure. The rub comes when the destination looks different, when the guideposts change and the bridge is demolished instead of rebuilt into a 4-lane road. Can you still traverse the pot holes, the missing bridge and find a canoe to cross the cool green river?

Love that movie with Jack Nicholson when he says to those in the waiting room of the therapist, “What if this is as good as it gets?!”

Live in the unexpected wonder of a life turned around the expectations. Taking it apart like a puzzle of Van Gogh’s Starry Starry night. A piece of sky, then some golden starlight, and more black night sky. It all swirls into a milky way, far more glorious than the road map had indicated when you started your journey.

“Can you expect everything and expect nothing?” my friend, Sallee, asks.

What do you think?

When you release expectation, you are free to enjoy things for what they are, instead of what you think they should be.
~ Mandy Hale

Expectation feeds frustration.  It is an unhealthy attachment to people, things, and outcomes we wish we could control; but don’t.
~Dr. Steve Maraboli


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