We all grow up coming to expect around us to be in a certain way - such as our parents need to be in certain way, our spouses/romantic partner need to be in a certain way, our children need to be in a certain way, our food, our colleagues, our boss, the movies we watch, our politicians ... the list goes on and on. Given any situation, we all want things to go a certain way, that is favorable for us. Given all the consumerism going on, "Expect great things" is even a slogan for some companies. We simply have come to expect things to work in a certain way.
Given all this, Why then do we say that expectations reduces joy?
The problem with an expectation is that out of all the possible states that something can be in, one has made it so that he is only ok with certain states, and not ok with the other states. Everything around us has it own nature. In addition to that, duality is the nature of life itself. There is pleasure and pain, happiness and sadness, hot and cold, day and night, positive and negative. Our mind itself oscillates in a dual state, positive one day, and perhaps not so much some other day. When we ourselves are not constant all the time, is there wisdom in attaching the state of our mind to the state of something external that we have no control over?
The more expectations we have, the more we set ourselves up for disappointment, the more we go out and make life wrong, and in turn make our minds negative. Happiness is simply a state of mind where one is not offering any resistance to the events happening in our lives. Thus, the more expectations one has, the less happy one tends to be.
Let me give you a personal and recent example. Earlier this week, I announced that we had a record of over 2000 members joining the page in a single day. As a response to that, I got a few comments from people who calculated the time it would now take for us to reach the goal of 100,00 members for this year given the rate of 2000 people joining every day. What actually happened in the next few days is that the fan count went back to normal, after a brief burst of activity. Now, if I had made an expectation that people will be joining at the rate of 2000 a day, I am simply setting myself up for disappointment. In fact, the state of my mind has nothing to do the page member count, and I'm perfectly happy getting zero new fans one fine day.
Now one might ask - are not some expectations reasonable - that my employee performs with a minimum standard, that my partner loves me the way I love him, that my spouse respects me and takes care of the children and me, that my children do their best in school etc?
Regardless of the event, reasonable or not, whenever we have an expectation, our minds are bound to turn negative when it is not met. And when the mind turns negative, it brings further unwanted situations back into our life. Ironical as it may seem, the expectation is a inhibition to creating the life we want. The fact is that nothing is guaranteed in the future, including your next breath. Another problem with expectation is that it clouds our vision, and we fail to see things that are actually better than what we expected, as the mind is focused only on perceived lack.
Another common question - what is life without expectation? How will I be motivated to do anything if I do not have any expectation?
Not having expectations is not the same as not having goals, vision or preferences for your life. It is absolutely important to dream big, for vision is what guides us to grow the way we want to. The key difference between a goal/vision/preference and an expectation in how we handle things when we encounter something that is not favorable to us. Without an expectation that something has to be in a certain way, our mind is free of the event, and we can calmly understand the reasons why things are the way they are, accept them and work towards turning them around to something more preferable. Going back to our example, I am absolutely dreaming big for the page, so much that having a million people on the page sounds pretty sweet and achievable to me. However the key difference is that having a million members on this page one day is my dream, my vision, and not my expectation.
-Sudhir krishnan
Sudhir Krishnan
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