Keeping Your Expectations Low

There will be high points in your life.  Where you’re working at the perfect job for the moment and you’re feeling healthy.  Where your friends are all you need them to be and your family is supportive.  Where you are happy as is and nothing can change that.

But then come the lows. Where you get fired and eat junk food for days to make up for it.  Where your friends start ditching you and your family is far away.  Where everything sucks and nothing can change that.

I’ve always been a realist. I know a lot of people either want optimism or pessimism, they don’t believe in the inbetween.  They believe this world is black and white.  I believe in shades of grey, therefore I’m a realist with a hint of pessimism.

During the highs in our life, we tend to forget about the lows.  We forget about all of the unbelievably tall mountains and sunken valleys we had to crawl through to get our lives to where we actually want them to be. We become comfortable and we begin expecting good things to keep happening because we have become so accustomed to such a blessed life.

But nothing gold can really stay, can it?

So then we hit the lows.  We forget how to get back up to the highs and every beautiful expectation we dreamt up is quickly shattered as we fall back to earth. Back to reality.

So it might be pessimistic, but always keeping your expectations low keeps you from getting hurt.  It also helps you to be pleasantly surprised when things do go your way. Building up the way our friends should act, the way our jobs should be, the way our life is going will only end in disappointment.

If you live your life expecting everyone to treat you the way you treat them, you’ll only be let down. Keep your expectations low because it can only go up from here.