It has little to do with reality and yet they largely determine our emotional response.
I have recently found myself in many situations where what becomes evident is the tremendous danger of expectations. They are a pure projection of what we think things should be or what outcomes should be. But they have little to do with reality and yet they largely determine our emotional response.
When our expectations are frustrated then rage, anger, resentment arise and we know that behind all these emotions depression begins to brew.
Let's take the risk of expectations to the level of relationships. One of the most common factors that appear in conflicts is due to them. Expectations with friends, with co-workers and especially the expectations we project on our partner. Pure poison for the relationship.
For this we must start from a simple and profound premise at the same time: The other cannot give you what he/she does not have, what he/she is not. Please read this sentence again: the other cannot give you what he/she is not.
Do you understand the relevance of this? Are you aware of how many times you invest your energy, your illusions, your desires, your conflicts,... in waiting for the other person to give you what you are waiting for?
It seems absurd as I write it, maybe as you read it too, but it is so, most of our fights are the result of the imposition we make on the other of our own lack, our own need, our own emotional universe.
And what can we do in the face of this?
Two things, the first more difficult than the other and about which I have already spoken to you a few times: Know ourselves, because if we know ourselves, if we make a real exercise of introspection and recognize without fear the less luminous areas of our personality, then we can see that what I demand from the other is basically a matter not repaired in me.
The people who suffer the least from the disappointment of expectations are those who are better with themselves, because then, they are aware that any expectation responds more to a personal need than to an obligation of the other person.
In reality, if you think about it coldly, it is an outrage to impose or demand from the other person actions, words, gestures that respond to our own individual emotional condition.
2- The second great antidote is the capacity we have to remain neutral or serene in the face of what reality is. This requires a minimum degree of observation capacity, of tolerance, of simply observing the other as he/she is. So, you may like it or not and it is up to you to decide if you want to remain in that bond or not, but to create conflicts by expecting the other to be what he/she is, is quixotic.
You cannot imagine the amount of time and energy that is invested, the conflicts and decisions that are made as a result of those expectations and the anger, rage, anger and sadness that they trigger.
This week I invite you to do the deep and simple act of observing who the other is, what this situation I am in is really like, and how and why I feel this way.
I guarantee that it almost always has to do with ourselves and that to the extent that you develop a neutral mind towards what is happening around you, you will be able to look with serenity at the nature of those around you. It is then when the space for true love is born, when we overcome the drama and we can stay with reality as it is.