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Why Its Time to Let Go of Your Expectations

November 22, 2009

Post by Justin Dixon Photo courtesy of Kchbrown

The scientific method has a few basic steps we are all familiar with. Research, make an educated guess, try something to find out, and than record the results. The thing is that in our own lives most of us leave out a step.  We research, we make our “educated” guess, and than we assume the results.

Imagine where we would be if this is how the world functioned? What technology would there be? What discovery would there be? How would we move past the dark ages where any new idea was punished as heresy or witchcraft? Simply said we wouldn’t.

Now most of us are not going to argue that a scientist should try an experiment before writing down there results. An engine should be tested before it is claimed that it runs. Yet in our own lives it is much more common for us to make predictions about what is going to happen and than hold them as fact. Today I want to challenge that. For joy, for inner-peace, for the sake of moving forward, we must challenge this.

Our expectations are often skewed.

Writer and Harvard Psychologist Dan Gilbert has made it his life work to study expectations, and their effect on our lives. In both of his TED talks (here and here) What his research has found is that we human beings are remarkably bad at making predictions. Most of the time, we sensationalize the most dramatic and extreme points, but we still completely miss what would really happen. We let these ideas of what will not be effect our decisions of what we do, and what really becomes.

Suspend expectations about yourself to break through your limits.

“Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”~Ralph Waldo Emerson

For a while I had been living a life that set limits on me. I didn’t know I had been putting limits on me, but I had set them. I didn’t think there was any opportunity for me to advance my career, I did not see any way for me to start school, and I did not know how on earth I was supposed to move from Texas to Virginia to be with a girl that I had been dating on and off for five years. I didn’t realize that I was settling, I didn’t realize I had limited myself, I just had expectations.

Than upon a visit from that special someone, and a good hard look at what Emerson had to say about living life, I started realizing, that I had put these expectations on my life, and I couldn’t say why. So I decided than to lose the expectations. The fact is that we are made new every day. Every thing you go through, every failure you have gives you just a little more experience, and that experience can be applied to do something that you previously failed. The day I decided that I would not put any limit until I scoured every bit of what I could do in a constant manner was the day I started moving forward. Shortly after I was on the road, traveling with different family members around the country. I had put together a saving for my move, and had left my job. Most of my stuff is still at my parents house, but I was going to see just what it was that I could really do. I was going to test my capabilities in a different type of job.

Once here it took me a while to find work, but now for the first time, I’m at a desk job. No its not anything glamorous, but it is the highest level of job that I have had to date. No its not where I am stopping, but I am getting to test what I am made of on a regular basis, and that brings me a sense of pride. Though its not just life limits that we can break through in suspending the expectations of our constantly changing experience.

Suspend your expectations of whats going to happen to enjoy life more.

I am addicted to stories. I play games for a story, I watch movies for a story, and once I start reading a story I’m going to dedicate myself to getting through it. I once ran back and forth from my apartment and the closest blockbuster four times just so I could finish watching the first season of Heroes. (I worked for that story) So what does this have to do with expectations and life?

When your watching a movie like the 6th sense for the first time, do you really want someone to spoil the ending for you, or do you want to work your way towards it? I’ve learned that you can enjoy the story more if you let the storyteller tell the story. Why should we want it spoiled in life? What is going to happen is going to happen, and while we can make changes now that will effect the future by definition anything that is going to happen is going to happen.

Christmas morning is just more fun when you stop caring about the outcome. Don’t worry about whether you’ll get the coolest gift, or the lamest gift. Don’t even worry about whether you gave the best gift. Instead do what you can and watch what happens. Don’t let life be a set of things that should happen, and if they don’t you fail. This creates a false sense of failure. Instead take Emerson’s words and make your life an experiment. Results are going to happen no matter what choices you make, and all the predictions in the world will not change what will happen. Instead watch what happens. The thing about an experiment is all that you can get are results, you can’t lose, because no matter what result you get you learn.

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