Why having any expectations of others makes you miserable

From the desk of Alex Mathers - a Brit in Sofia, Bulgaria, still sweating from 35-degree heat.

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One of the greatest obstacles to personal joy, let alone progress and success in your life is having expectations of other people.

When we expect people to do certain things, without any prior agreements in place, and they don’t pull through, we grow resentful.

Has that ever happened to you?

Maybe you had a partnership with someone on a project that involved an expectation of a certain amount of work that each of you would do. But the other person didn’t do close to as much work as you.

You didn’t really verbalise it, but you would stew on it and get frustrated.
You take it personally.

You feel the heaviness of the burden of disappointment.

It happens to everyone and is the reason many relationships and families can face drama and conflict.

When you expect the world to show up as you’d like it to, or provide you with anything, and things don’t work out the way you want, you can become disappointed.

You’re human and you can have high hopes for others.

But those people who get far realised the futility of expecting anything from anyone a LONG time ago.

They dropped the sense of entitlement to anything.

They took responsibility for all their own shit and gathered strength from this.

They no longer attached themselves to expectations and to needing anything from anyone else.

They got intimate with the idea of abundance.

They saw how freeing this was.

They either made firm agreements with people so that both parties agreed on actions to be taken.

This is often missed and is worth looking into first.

What agreement do you need to make with others that you can shake hands on?

This solidifies the expectation and moves it to a higher level that has more accountability attached. People are often far keener to follow agreements and these can work well.

Or you can simply drop the need to rely on others for anything.

We no longer feel the need to say: ‘Jake should pull his weight more in the office because that’s what co-workers are supposed to do.’

Should they?

How about letting go?

When we can drop the need for others to do anything specific, we’re not wound up tighter than a toy truck anymore.

The stress is gone because resentment is a weight we carry.

We’re free.

And from this place of looseness; of freedom and lack of resentment…

We’re resourceful, creative, and unstoppable.

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Pssst. You’ll also love my recent book: ‘The Art of Self Respect: Twenty-five subtle habits for cultivating deep self-respect and attracting the respect of others‘ — get your copy today.

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Reach out to Alex today if you’d like to discuss working with him directly to help you with life challenges and achieving your goals.