Expectations, or we can also say, ideas. In connection with someone or something. We don’t necessarily consciously expect those certain things to turn out the way they are in our head, that’s why we can call them ideas.

A new situation may come into our life, that we think will be so bad. Then it turns out it’s not that bad after all. In fact, it is actually something good. Well, that’s the luckier situation. We may not even remember these so much, as positive things tend to fade away more than the negative ones.

However, if we have an idea of ​​something, how good it will be, how well that situation will turn out to be but then it has nothing to do with reality eventually, then it can mean a big shock. They use the method in many courses, trainings, help circles to imagine what it will be like for you when it gets good. Great. Wonderful. Joyful. Heart-warming.

It is fine so far. But it will become an expectation and an idea so easily that we don’t even realise we’ve slipped across the border. This is when it becomes dangerous. It does hurt to fall from this high utopia into the muddy, filthy, smelly reality. It does not fade away, compared to the positive one mentioned before.

And then comes the shock, self-blaming, self-pity. Which – if we are already in this puddle – we have to live. But we all need to know that a lot of our energy is going away with this, basically unnecessarily. Our self-esteem, self-appreciation, self-love, all the self- ‘s are deteriorating. In addition, it can affect our trust, love, and acceptance towards others. How much better it would be if there was an emergency flashing in our head that would start beeping madly when we crossed that certain border towards the expectations/ideas. Then we could stop there and re-evaluate things.

An extremely painful type of these situations is when we have expectations towards someone.

Who we don’t know enough to have profound, real picture of him. We expect him to be a good subordinate, a good co-worker, a good friend, a good partner. Then, as things and time move forward, the reality becomes more obvious. Wait, maybe he doesn’t care so much about me, he just talks about his own things, even though we’re supposed to be friends? This new employee who came to the company ended up not being as understanding as he initially showed himself? This man I met, whom I thought would be my partner,  now I realise he is nowhere near of what I thought of him? This new team member, who I thought would be the employee of the year is a talented self-marketer, but there’s nothing behind it? And so on.

These cases can demolish our faith in our opinion-making, maybe in our trust in the whole world. Not to mention that by the end of this, we may lose the person about whom we mistakenly assumed things that are not there. And without these assumptions or expectations, maybe we would have been able to represent value in some other way in each other’s lives.

I know it’s easier said than done, but we have to try to live without expectations / ideas. We should try to be happy for what we get, because everything happens for a reason. Maybe this current situation is one of the steps to get to the desired place. We just have to learn something from this now. We just have to see some development path or learning from this.

It has to be kept in mind, even if it is really hard.