You know the feeling! The one where you hope, dream and cross your fingers for that special something to come true now or in the near future. It is called expectation.
You can have expectation for yourself or for others. Perhaps you know someone that was trying to achieve something significant. The excitement around expectation can be felt.
Perhaps you have tried for a goal in the past and had unrealistic expectations of yourself. That brings a whole different feeling – one of disappointment in our lives. When this happens, we all can make the mistake of allowing expectations in our lives to prohibit us from seeing what is great. When this happens we spiral towards lower-energy vibrations. I am sure you have felt this before. We all have!
Let’s talk about something that can help in a moment of high -energy expectation and in the low energy moments. This one thing helps both. It is called appreciation. When you recognize and enjoy the good qualities of someone or somethings, you are appreciating it.
Appreciation allows us to see what is great! If we are already in a good state, then things look even greater. When we need a little uplifting, appreciation is the tool to lift and reenergize. Allowing appreciation to takeover creates gratitude and it also opens up the door for magic to occur. You may notice a brighter outlook on life or a spring in your step when you live in appreciation for others and things in your life.
So how do we set and keep a high goal without disappointment? This is an excellent question.
Here are a few things you might consider doing to meet the goal and not experience disappointment from expectation in your efforts or results:
- Observe. Observing allows you to be neutral to what is going on. It puts you in a state of being where you can respond vs. react. We can all probably think of times and situations where someone reacted versus responded.
- Look at your goal in solvable terms. Look at it from what you want, what you need and what is preventing you from moving to where you need to be with it. When you look at situations objectively it can remove the intense emotion that is caused by the desire of wanting your goal so badly. Create an empowering alternative and make yourself feel great!
- Consider the other person’s perspective. Sometimes it is good to take a step back and consider the other person. There may be things you don’t know about the situation. Try to understand and appreciate their world as much as possible.
- What is their suffering?
- What if their response has nothing to do with you?
- What if life is happening “for you” and not “to you”? I once had someone tell me to see the pain in the changing and the pleasure in allowing change. This made me have a significantly different outlook on life.
- Never quit on a bad day. We all have good days and bad days. This is normal when you are aiming to hit a goal. Not every day can be perfect. What is important is to repeat what is working until it sticks. Make a new identity with the new patterns you are creating which makes the old ones painful to you. When you do this successfully, you will have created a new habit to carry you to your goal.
- Be present. Be in the here and now and not preoccupied with what else you could be doing or what all you have to do. Be here now. Look for the greatness in every situation. Don’t consider any past result or negative patterns but rather allow yourself to scratch the slate clean and change focus to right here, right now.
- Decide what outcome you are looking for. Consider what you can do to move yourself to your desired outcome. If you decide the outcome before you have the goal, you are much more likely to obtain it. What I find has worked for most is when they tie their goal to a bigger why, a higher purpose or a calling. This tends to pull them forward when they simply don’t feel like pushing forth any more. If you reason why you want your goal is big enough, you’ll be unstoppable.
- Remember you have a choice.When it comes to goal setting, appreciation and success, we are the cause or the effect, powerful or powerless, it’s a choice!!
Much Success!
Sara