I don’t know about you, but I am not a mind reader. Nor do I have a crystal ball – okay, well I do but it’s for photography not fortune telling! I also cannot read tea leaves nor consult the stars for truths. Call me old fashioned but unless someone actually tells me what they want, there is a good chance I may not know. So why do we all have our moments (and yes, we all do it) of getting annoyed when others don’t know exactly what we are thinking or feeling? Or we throw an internal wobbly when someone hasn’t magically known our expectations of a situation and don’t react in the way we had hoped or planned.
So here is my question to you to ponder over today: do expectations serve a positive purpose? I like to think that there is a positive intention behind everything, but with expectations I just don’t know. The buggers just seem to set us up for upset and disappointment. It’s like those restaurants that have photos of their dishes on the menus. What are the chances of your order actually looking like that photo? Pretty slim. Do we fear the unknown and perhaps want to have control of every situation so create a possible outcome to then lull us into a false sense of security? (And yes, I did just write “lull us into a false sense of security” – my all time favorite sentence to get extra points in pretty much any English essay when I was at school!) But then quelle surprise, people, that little bubble of security is popped and we end up feeling disappointed or hurt because of that set expectation. So again I ask, why do we do that to ourselves? And should we just instead allow things to happen as they happen with no expectation of the outcome?
This time I am throwing it out to you, faithful readers. What is the point of expectations and how can we stop them ruling our lives so negatively? Do we just need to change our perspective of them? What do you think? Let’s talk this one out. Over to you…
It's like what? 