Would Life Be Better Without Expectations?

Because we tend to suffer when things don’t go our way, don’t we?

We humans are so funny when it comes to our satisfaction of how things turn out. I realised this recently as I went on a hike during a little getaway up north. We had looked up this specific track beforehand. It was rated an easy grade track with a few steep sections but otherwise flat. When we began our 3-hour hike and it was off to a pretty steep start. It didn’t really get flat at all. It continued steep for most of the way, until it went downhill for a little and then back to a steep uphill journey. I wasn’t happy. I started complaining about it to my partner and got a bit too caught up for my liking-oh well! (I did finally get over it and was able to laugh at myself & my low mood and enjoyed the beautiful views)

But to the point of expectations, the funny thing was, I had happily done hikes just as steep or steeper in the past. And I will likely do so again. The difference was, I knew what I was getting myself into those previous times. When I did those hikes, I made the choice to do those ones intentionally and so my expectations matched the outcome. This time around, I expected an easy 3-hour hike, which was supposed to be mostly flat. And so when we encountered this steep path, it didn’t match my expectations and my brain (that likes to predict things) wasn’t happy.

Let’s look at this more generally: let’s say we measured how things in life could turn out from 1–10 (10 being the best outcome). So if there is something coming up in our lives and we expect it to have an outcome of a 2, but then it turns out to be a 6, we end up quite happy! But if instead, we expect it to be a 9 and then it turns out to be a 6, we aren’t quite as happy. The outcome is exactly the same, but depending on what we expected and predicted it to be, we are either happy with it or not. It’s not the outcome itself that determines our satisfaction, is it?

So is the goal to have low expectations? That isn’t really fun. And probably isn’t ideal either, as our expectations do play into the experiences we get (more on that another time).

Perhaps we could have no expectations at all. When we just live life as it comes, not expecting it to go a certain way, we can really only be surprised. But that doesn’t always work, as we have brains after all. And brains like to predict how things will go. They like to “prepare” us.

It seems to me, that the best thing we can do is:

That seems to allow us to bounce back quicker from the disappointment of an unfulfilled expectation.

And perhaps along the way we will learn not to hold on to our expectations so tightly and instead be open to experiencing life as it comes and sometimes (or rather, often) getting a chance to laugh at the conditions we put in place in order to feel our innate wellbeing.

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