Mental Health: Victims of Our Expectations?

How do we approach life?

How do we approach our projects, events, relationships and everything else?

It is definitely nice — and often beneficial — to have a plan, and perhaps even goals.

But what comes beyond that? Do you have expectations? Or merely hopes for a particular outcome? What are the inner standards to which you hold yourself, if any?

In this modern world of great uncertainty, expectations can often be the direct path to disappointment, often because we believe something is going to come to us with far greater ease than reality dictates.

And so, we end up not as victims of actual misfortune, but victims of our expectations.

The unfortunate side effect is that our self-esteem tends to take a beating, whenever we end up disappointed in something. This is particularly true if we engage in a bit of self-inquiry, rather than just blaming external factors for our disappointment.

We also have to examine how deeply invested we are in a particular outcome. The deeper the investment — aka this outcome MUST happen or it will feel like the end of the world! — the deeper the damage to our self-esteem.

I often hear people make declarations about various things in life being "unfair," and how they are disappointed because something unfair happened.

Again, we must ask whether this is really true, or just our assessment because what we were trying to accomplish didn't turn out as hoped.

Success is not guaranteed.

Unrealistic expectations are often seen among those who grew up in families where they were always assured that they could "have anything they wanted" and "be whatever they wanted."

Sadly, in many cases you cannot.

And so, sometimes we have to check our expectations against the reality of the situation.