Expectations: the belief something will happen. Creating, placing expectations on myself often helps me achieve but it also creates the overwhelming pressure to meet them. The expectation that I will be excellent at what I set to achieve is both empowering but also paralyzing.
Why are expectations both empowering but also paralyzing? They can be destructive to our happiness or a source of inspiration to it. The idea, however subtle it may be, that one person, one job, one project is your everything is blocking your route to happiness.
All your relationships, all your career choices and your passions make up parts of you, all create parts of happiness. No one person, or thing is your everything. If one part of your life breaks apart it does not destroy your happiness. It is implied that meaning and purpose is created from one aspect in our lives. It is thought that if are missing a singular purpose either through a person or career that we can not have happiness. That we are lost. This is not true, one aspect of our life does not define our existence. We do not have one route to happiness. We have different people and different interests that create our happiness we just need to be willing to see it that way.
Your closest friends or significant other are undoubtedly really important to you, yet they can not always be everything you need all the time. We believe that because we are willing to do something for someone they are automatically going to do the same thing for you. When they don’t we allow ourselves to spiral and believe we are not as important to them as they are to us; simply because we believe they should do everything for us that we would do for them. It’s tough to acknowledge this is not the truth. They also have expectations and although they may not always be the same as your does not mean they care any less about you.
It is good to expect actions/conversations of your friends and significant others and to let them know what they are. Let them know if you are not getting what you need from someone. This helps to create healthy honest relationships with those around you and yourself. Each relationship in your life is unique and specific to the two of you. You are special and each relationship is special, they all have their strengths and they also all have their weakness.
People are not the only thing we place high expectations on to complete our happiness. We have always been told that our careers should be our passion, our everything, if we do not love them than we shouldn’t be doing them. The expectation of this very fact as well seeing this viewpoint expressed however genuinely in my friends and family has lead me to struggle with this expectation myself over the past few months.
I really enjoy my job working at children hospital as an RN, however, I do not love it, at least not always. I know I would miss it, it would be a loss if I could never do it again but I know I could find another career path; one that brings me joy that I also am passionate about.
Knowing that my career choice is not my everything is also me understanding and accepting that it does make me any less good at my job. It does not make me care any less about my career path and more importantly does make me care any less about the children I care for. I am starting to realize that is completely okay. Yes it is good that you enjoy your career because if you don’t that will create a miserable existence for the next 40 years but it does not have to be your everything. I believe that not being completely in love with your job will not lead to your unhappiness-or less dramatically it won’t keep you from complete happiness.
Accepting that no one relationship, no one career, or one passion is your everything keeps you, you. It allows to create space for happiness to come in from all the windows not just the crack under the door. It gives you something that no one or no thing can take away from you; and that is empowering and brave.
Create a life that is made up of multiple aspects which complete you as person. When parts of your life break off or change you are not left with nothing, that your happiness is not gone. That you have all these different parts of you that make you who are. No one thing is the only route to happiness. No one route is everything. All aspects of your life are part of your everything and make up your happiness. We choose to be happy in the moment, YOUR EVERYTHING IS YOU, and you are made of everything in your life. You have multiple access routes to happiness; it is a gift and we just need to pick it.
Enjoy the moments, accept your expectations for that they are, use the expectations to better yourself but work to not become enslaved to them.
·Love·Mountains·Truth·
