I sometimes wish I had no expectations. No matter how much we want it to be so, merely wishing something will happen will not make it happen. When we can’t bring our expectations to fruition, we can find ourselves frustrated and upset. How can we cope better with our expectations? What is the problem with expectations? Here is my take on the matter.

I expect a lot. It is just the type of person that I am. It’s not only others that I hold to very high standards, but also myself. It can be exhausting at times and can cause major issues. For example, my self-esteem was always very low because I expected too much from myself, and couldn’t live up to my unreasonable expectations.

It also affected my relationships. I expected a lot out of my past boyfriends, and they, who couldn’t handle it or possibly keep up, left me heartbroken. This is one problem of expectations. When we expect something out of our partners and they, on their part, don’t wish to live up to it, we create resentment.

The problem of expectations. We often wish for something to happen without any good reason behind it. If we believe that these expectations will give us what we want and will make us happy, we are setting ourselves for a major disappointment. We can’t think things into existence.

See, expecting life to turn up exactly how we expect and wish it to will lead to nothing but disappointment because life is will not always turn up the way you want it to. When those unmet expectations involve other people’s inability to meet our expectations, the disappointment is mixed with resentment.

We have to accept that life doesn’t always go the way we want it to. That people aren’t going to behave the way we want them too and do as we wish. We can’t expect people to go against their goals and values just because we expect them too. After all, we wouldn’t expect it from ourselves. We have to separate between realistic and unrealistic expectations. We can’t expect others to do things we don’t wish others would wish from us.

Here’s to expecting not to expect!