Subtracting Expectations From Reality Leaves You With Happiness

Let’s do math!

85 reality minus 100 expectation equals happiness / disappointment level -15. Expectations were too high! Or reality was too low..

(You can define reality how you like, money, flights, intimacy, feeling understood, validating someone, what’s important to you is up to you.)

In other words, when reality doesn’t match what you expect, you feel bad.

And reversed, when reality exceeds what you expect, you feel good!

Now let’s explore some options if you feel bad.

Option One: Decrease Your Expectations

100 – 15 = Pretty good!

But… who’s living a 100 life? Maybe more realistic is.. say, 18.

18 – 15 = .. yeah things are ok. Pretty mediocre really.

But 18 – 3? well that leaves you with more than double the happiness result.

However, it’s not that simple is it? Knowing when to adjust expectations isn’t easy.

Whether downsizing expectations helps or hurts depends on on how well you can see yourself, your beliefs, your boundaries and your needs.

Mostly it sucks because you simply wont know whether you’re making the right choice until hindsight teaches you.

Should you escape the relationship / investment / toxic workplace…?

Sometimes you need to simply keep going, despite what everybody says.. Other times you need to recognise when to cut your losses, dry them out and turn them into lessons!

Knowing which choice is right takes deep insight and keenness to see yourself. Your intuition, your beliefs, your boundaries and so many more aspects of your life that are invisible to you. The stuff that makes up your rather difficult-to-upgrade Me Map.

Unfortunately, you’ll only know you made the right decision by experiencing the result. There’s a simple yet complex lesson in order to help this process; understand you always make the best decision you can.

Option Two: Increase Your Reality

1000 – 85 = … Very happy.

If only it were that easy!

Getting to reality level 1000 sucks for many reasons.

Your belief system will act as a big bungee cord ready to fling you back to old behaviours and shittier realities.

You will face resistance.

You will struggle.

You will overcome.

Again and again.

However, if you weren’t determined to improve your life somehow, you wouldn’t be reading this. So not only is it an option, you’re already here making incremental improvements!

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Option Three: Change Your Perception

Notice how every winner talks about gratitude?

It’s important because if you FEEL like your reality is level 1000, that’s actually the same as if your reality IS level 1000!

Combined with self awareness or self aware people (so you’re not fooling yourself) this has effectively many of the same impacts as actually increasing your reality.

Gratitude isn’t about your attitude.

You can make it an intentional practice, same as brushing your teeth.

Summary

When reality is bigger than expectations, you feel good. When expectations aren’t met by reality, you feel bad.

It’s up to you how you deal with this, taking incremental steps to change your reality; adjusting your expectations, developing your self awareness and modifying your perception to include a more optimistic and grateful outlook can make a huge difference.