My Great Expectations

Expectations really suck. They aren't really all that nice either. I wake up living in LA and I expect a beautiful sunny morning. I live in SOCAL, I expect perfect weather. But what I actually get is a humid overly hot sun beating down on my tender Irish skin with unrelenting blazes of pure hellfire! Not what I expected, not what I wanted, now I am sweating and it's only 8:30 in the morning.

I completely forget where I read this, but I remember a blog/book/magazine article? about how to avoid getting your feelings and emotions destroyed over unattainable expectations. Sometimes I feel like I expect a lot out of people, out of the friends and family I am surrounded by. They most often exceed my expectations and I am lost in a cloud of amazement of their love and generosity. But then...there are the duds. The ones that you only want the simplest thing from...and they fail utterly. Now here is a problem:

I expect Person A to do Task B, but instead Person A gets all up in their head and decides Task B is far far too much for them to even try to tackle. Ugh...Task B was simple, and you failed Person A.

Sometimes I ruin my own expectations. I go to sleep with thoughts of running in the morning. I am going to wake up and be energized and walk my dog! I am going to gobble a handful of almonds and then head out the door into the beautiful morning sunshine and run 5 miles. But....in actuality, I wake up 35 min late, trudge through my apartment like a zombie trying to shake off the hysterically jumping-bean dog off my body long enough to clip on his leash and stumble outside. The sunshine stings my sensitive sleepy eye balls and it's too damn hot to do much but quickly shuffle from shady spot to shady spot. Ugh, expectations of getting in shape, ruined!

There are days whenI just think, "I will expect nothing! I will make no commitments or desires and will think of things only as they happen!" But...how negative is that? I don't want to go on a date with zero expectations, those standards are in place for a reason. I don't want to go to work without the slightest bit of desire to complete something, I would never stay on task. Living in a world of shattered expectations everyday is miserable yes, but living in one without any? That's just horrifying.

With two extremes you need a middle ground. I expect the best out of myself and everyone around me. I expect there to be love, trust, loyalty, honesty, communication, and appreciation. I also expect there to be annoyance, frustration, misunderstanding, anger, and disillusionment. At the end of the day I can expect to be let down eventually, but the point of being let down is to not let it get you down. Fall down...get back up. Scrape your knees riding a bike....get back on. Lose faith in your spiritual beliefs...pray and discover how to reconnect. There are way to work through disappointment of being let down, there are ways to conquer the fear of losing what you want to keep.


I don't want to live my life in a bubble of fear, never doing something because I am afraid I will be let down. If I just never work out, I will never be let down by not losing weight. NO, I will work out regardless of how much weight I lose because I want to work hard to be healthy. I want to charge into life full throttle with my hand on the trigger screaming, "Throw it at me, if I don't get what I want, I will blow right past you and onto the next!!" So, relationships...bring it on. Getting in shape...I am the only one stopping myself (that and the absence of coffee in the morning....). Getting the job I deserve...I have to play the game to win it. The only expectation that I will never  budge on is to live life and be happy, the rest of 'em....give me your best shot!