Let Go … Sometimes

There’s something we need to realise; we all have expectations of how we think the world should work. And the funny thing is, expectations have extremes like everything in life. Of course it’s good when we expect the earth to orbit the sun, because if not there will be chaos. It’s also good to have expectations in our relationships, because how else will we know if things are working or not?

But today, I want us to focus on the other extreme. The times where our expectations are a little unrealistic and maybe borderline crazy.

Ok, let’s jump in….

Sometimes, we expect people to only think of great things about us. This in itself is not possible! Yes, it would be nice, but it’s not the reality. The reality is that we all get to choose our own thoughts. Not everyone is going to understand you, not everyone is going to hear the full story and we definitely won’t be able to change everyone’s minds.

The expectations I have for people I’ve known for YEARS keeps changing the  more I get to understand where they’re coming from.

All we can really do about what people think of us is make sure we are who we say we are. I mean being kind to others, being honest EVERYWHERE, being considerate, and being everything that shows good character.

We also expect people to make the same decisions we would make. It could be in the big things like when I couldn’t understand why my friend would agree to something she couldn’t afford. I mean I personally would have turned down the invite to a holiday if I know I have other pressing financial responsibilities. But what do I know?!

Or even in the little things like my utter confusion when my sister goes to buy more clothes, knowing she has no room to store them. I mean can’t she just be happy with what she has? Or at least give some away to make room for the new things?

But the reality here is that, people will make decisions that we don’t understand or even agree with. And that’s ok.

We often expect that things will always go our way. This is definitely not the reality. Sometimes things don’t go the way we want; like when I lost a piece of my earphones that I’ve been managing for a while now. It actually hurt me to think that I’d need to buy new earphones.

But you also get the times when things go the way we want them to go; like me finding the missing piece to my earphones exactly where it fell, 24 hours later! And with no damage to it either! So I don’t have to spend money on earphones right now.

Another thing we expect, which is completely opposite to the previous one, is we expect thing to never go our way! We even justify it by saying

‘If I expect the worse, I’ll be pleasantly surprised when the best happens’

But either of these extremes won’t really help. They just make it easier for us to waste our energy and time on unnecessary expectations that won’t allow us to live easy lives.

And the last expectation I want to touch on is one I’m still struggling with right now. We expect that we will “get there”. Now, I’m not saying we can’t have goals to reach and expect to attain them. But where we struggle with this expectation is that we think we’ll just sit “there”, when life is really a journey. We forget to account for the fact that we’re constantly changing, constantly learning; our needs, our wants and our dreams are constantly evolving. And we need to be ready to grow and move with the changes.

With all the expectations above, the easiest thing to do would be to let go.

It’s actually alright if someone makes a different decision to the one you would have made. It’s really not the end of the world if something doesn’t go your way and it’s definitely not a bad thing for me to keep pushing for the best!

Be willing to just let some things go.

Just let it be,