The pursuit of happiness. No, I’m not talking about the Will Smith movie, even though it’s incredible. The pursuit of happiness is something everything is looking for, whether it be through relationships, money, work, family or other means.
We are all looking for that one thing that makes us happy, that one secret. In all honesty, there is no one secret as each person’s happiness is unique to them. However, there is one thing that we all do that destroys our happiness: Expectation.
Expectation is where we build up this picture in our mind of what we expect from a situation. Here are some common ones:
- Expecting to get the job after an interview
- Expecting your husband to buy you a certain gift
- Expecting your child to behave a certain way
- Expecting a pay rise or promotion
- Expecting your husband/ wife/ partner to do something that you have imagined in your head (even though you haven’t told them)
Expectation is this thing that humans do which clouds our vision. It makes us pin all our hopes on one thing, one thing that is out of our control. And then when that thing doesn’t happy we become annoyed, angry or frustrated, and it even destroys relationships. We expected it to happen, why didn’t it? We start to question everything. “Was I not good enough for the job?” “Does my husband not love me?” “Is my child a problem child?”
Unfortunately, as humans these thoughts are automatic because of how we raised, marketing, social media or what we have experienced in our life. To begin with, trying to stop these thoughts may become counterproductive. Instead, practice control the doubt after it had happened because if we dwell on these doubts we start to self-destruct. I think ill-thoughts and start to self-destroy a relationship, job prospects or our view of the world.
On the flip-side to this, something I learnt early on from my parents is to “aim high, but expect low”. What does this mean exactly? It means that you should never give up, keep pushing as hard as you can. Work on that relationship, push for that job and do your best raising your child.
However, don’t expect things to turn out the way you imagined they would. That rarely happens in life (too many external influencers). This allows you to continually adapt to the changes in life. So when life throws up a challenge, the proverbial lemon, you’ll be able to deal with it.
In simple terms:
- Expect less of others
- Expect more from yourself
So how does leadership apply here? If you’ve read my book, then you’ll know that one of the core areas of being a leader is adaptability. Shifting your mindset and the level of expectation that you have of others and yourself, is adapting and bringing leadership principles into your life.
But that’s not all. In leadership you often put a lot of your trust in others and they put their trust in you. This is one part of developing a connection which helps you develop a stronger level of influence. However, if you expect to much of others you may be disappointing if they don’t fulfil your expectation. Doing this time and time again which start to cause doubt in your consistency to stay committed to behaving like a leader.
Also, the fact that people expect great things of you as a leader means that you need to keep your standards high and the best way to do that is to have high expectations of yourself.
In my experience, people who aim high and expect low are happier. Because, if something doesn’t go the way they want, so be it! But, when good things happen they are open to experience the full joy and fulfilment!
Thank you for reading, JT.