We can still choose not to disappoint ourselves

Expectations are the bones from which the soup of suffering is made. 

Any time we are anticipating future satisfactions, living for events or people or conditions that are yet to come, it’s detrimental to our serenity. 

Any time we build up some future pleasure in our minds to such an unrealistic pitch, the actual experience is guaranteed to be disappointing. 

It’s like the time my publicist assured me that my new book was going to be featured on the biggest morning show in the country. Sitting by the phone, waiting for the network to give us the green light ripped my guts into little fleshy tatters. To the point of hospitalization. 

And the bitch of the thing was, they sent a camera crew to my house, spent six hours filming, and never even aired my episode. All that stress for nothing. God damn it. 

Plant an expectation, reap a disappointment. 

We must learn to focus on what we want from ourselves, not what we want for ourselves. Because the former, we can control. It’s completely with the scope of our power. Even when the world disappoints us, we can still choose not to disappoint ourselves. We can maintain an attitude of lightness, acceptance, flexibility, trust and resilience. Those are things we want from ourselves. 

But the latter, the things we want for ourselves, that’s dangerous territory. Not so much the wanting part, but the waiting part. The attaching ourselves to acquiring them. 

That the soil in which anxiety, bitterness and disappointment live.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you expectations serving or frustrating you?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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