It all begins at an early age, before you can walk, talk or even hear the burden of expectation fills your life. From the moment a woman announces that she is pregnant she is bestowed with the honorary title ‘expectant mother’ and for the next nine months she and the world around her wait for that ‘expectation’ to become a reality. During the nine month waiting period the whole world is coloured with baby talk and baby type preparations and after approximately nine months a bundle of joy arrives.
And that is how life continues to unfold we expect things to happen, see the world through the lens that best fit the situation and due to some form of universal law, the things we expect usually show up, but the question is who tells us what to expect and how do we know exactly what we are expecting?
Have you or do you know someone who has woken up and before you/they have even put one foot on the floor you/they have declared that you/they are expecting the next twelve hours to be a bad day and then as if by magic, in almost a 100% of cases, the person who made this profound declaration is usually proved right. Is it that you or others are gifted psychics or is it perhaps more likely that the day turned out just as expected and all that happened was that the universe went into overtime to present you/them with exactly what was expected.
Or maybe, a not so pleasant situation has happened and you call a friend, who has been watching from the sidelines, for support and in the process of the conversation your friend simply declares, “Well what did you expect?” Is the friend suggesting that you somehow brought this situation on yourself?
Yes they are and this is exactly what the ‘experts’ in the world-renowned The Secret movie share with us and to a great extent they are right, but maybe, just maybe it is a little too simplistic to use that illustration alone to explain away the daily occurrences in our lives.
Maybe it is more about the actions, or lack thereof, we take based on our expectations. Your attitude, posture, language, physiology, sense of dress etc. etc will change dramatically depending on whether you expect your day to be a fantastic one or whether you think it is going to simply be just another one of those days.
Expectation is essentially faith at work (and you don’t have to be a member of a religious organization to have faith) and along with its cousins Focus and Action it gives us the successful outcomes we desire.
But for some of us the waters of expectation have been muddied by the challenges and obstacles of the past as well as the opinions of people in the present and until and unless we find a way to navigate through this terrain we are destined to relive time and time again unhealthy and unhelpful expectations of ourselves and never truly get a chance to enjoy our ‘Great Expectations’ (Charles Dickens knew what he was talking about)
It is also useful to note that in the absence of a consciously declared expectation we have in fact declared to the universe we expect it to do it’s duty and give us nothing. And the dangerous thing about expecting nothing is that you are rarely if ever disappointed.
So how do you raise the level of your expectations?
Firstly it is important to note that absolutely everything that has ever been achieved happened because a powerful formula was created between the powerful agents of our expectation, the lens of our expectation and the corresponding action.
7 things you can do right now to raise your level of expectation
- Choose to expect great things of yourself and write down at least five things you expect from your life today.
- Now raise the level of your expectancy. Do not use the past as a yard stick to measure your expectations by do not allow past experiences to dull your dreams. By raising your expectancy allow your perspecive of your world and what is possible to be enlarged. Rewrite the five things you are expecting from your life.
- Write yourself affirmations to support your high level of expectation and repeat it to yourself throughout each day.
- Stand in front of the mirror and inform yourself that it is okay to have high expectations and that the past does not have a part to play in the decision making process.
- Wake up each day and openly declare the day as great day before it really gets started, after all it is a new day fresh with no mistakes so why can’t it be a great day?
- Be observant, as you go about your day look around you and begin to acknowledge and see the things around you. You will be amazed at what you see when you are really looking.
- At the end of the day write a gratitude journal and give thanks for at least five things that you have experienced each day.