Don’t Waste Your Life on Silly Expectations

Giving up the expectations can be so liberating

Yogis have a saying:

What you can do, you can do. What you cannot do, you cannot do.

Even if it sounds very simple or even stupid, it contains lots of wisdom.

We live in times of ubiquitous competition in literally every field, and what’s more — we compete globally. Every “niche” is so crowded today that everyone earns on minimal margins, and innovation is rare.

The last century was a time of transformation in which many people built their fortunes. Such a breakthrough was, for example, (in many European countries) the transition from communism to capitalism, where privatization allowed many people to accumulate huge wealth, most often in real estate. It was a time where “there was nothing,” and the simple idea of opening a restaurant could bring enormous wealth because there was almost no competition.

Everything is now standardized, as a result of which the market is competitive. Nowadays, it is hard to come up with anything new, especially in the traditional business model. What’s more, the Internet has changed everything, for the first time in history, where even origin does not matter, because we are all part of a global network anyway, and access to knowledge is almost unlimited.

We live in amazing times.

It’s hard to disagree that we live in incredible times that offer tremendous opportunities. Never in the history of humanity has survival on this planet been as easy as it is now. Food, shelter, is something we hardly think about in developed Western civilizations.

Also, 30–40 years ago, we gained the ability to think for ourselves. For example, a person professing capitalist views in a communist country may have “accidentally” gone missing, so it was better to be quiet. Hundreds of years ago, disagreement with an emperor or king almost certainly amounted to exile or death. A few hundred years ago, when a ruler or priest said something, it was supposed to be like that, period.

Additionally, people had to work more to satisfy basic life needs, such as food. When a farmer worked half a day in the field using only simple tools, he did not have the strength to think and form his own opinion.

Nowadays, we can directly criticize ruling ones in the global network of the Internet. We have freedom of speech, and we can express our opinion, which is often appreciated.

Thanks to modern communication, we have reduced travel time to almost a minimum, and thanks to technology, our work is comfortable and often limited to operating machinery. As a result of all this, we have more time, tools, possibilities, financial resources and the permission to think and have “our own opinion”.

Unlimited possibilities aren’t always good.

While this might seem ideal, it’s not always the case. Unlimited possibilities and prosperity mean that we can really do anything and be everywhere.

However, this is where the problem arises. If we can be anywhere and do everything if we have so many possibilities and nothing limits us, where should we go and what to do?

In the past, our birth very often defined us, and changing our social status was not easy. When we were the son of a farmer, we worked in the field from an early age, and there were really no other options.

In the past, to be a journalist or publicist, you had to finish your studies, do internships, and often have contacts. Today, there is plenty of space to express your thoughts — Twitter, Facebook, or portals such as Medium. You don’t need to have an education or a background of skills — you can just do it, and the market is competitive and verifies whether a given person is fit for it.

It seems that anyone can be anywhere, and do anything.

But, are we so limitless?

We have gained a lot of freedom and ability to choose about our path, but we still have limitations

Each of us is born somewhere. According to the rules that prevail in the region, man receives a given education and often become part of a religion. In other words, man adopts some national identity. However, at a certain age, we can decide for ourselves, but what cannot we decide?

In this infinite sea of possibilities, each of us is “somebody”. We have different predispositions or potential in different areas.

If we are tall, we have a predisposition to play basketball. If we are short, life clearly tells us that “this is not the way to go”. Each of us has a unique genome, DNA, and cellular memory, which makes sure that we are always what we are.

So if you are, e.g., short and not predisposed to play basketball, you can create fancy expectations in your head for the rest of your life and complain about it, or you can understand it and focus on doing something you are good at.

Nowadays, there is a lot of talk about changing life or yourself. That is an issue that is often misunderstood and ultimately wastes all your time and energy on “Silly Expectations”.

Because yes, we can change, but only within who we are. In other words — we can be a worse or better version of ourselves, nobody else. So despite all this freedom, there is something about life that defines us.

So the only thing we can do is work on our body and mind in the specific situation we are in to make it as good as possible. The longer we stay in the head with our expectations, the more we neglect even the minimum we can do to make a difference.

Don’t Waste Your Life on Silly Expectations

Going back to the beginning of this article — we live in the time of the “rat race” competing with each other in every possible field.

We want to be “better” because it ensures social status, and often money, followed by pleasure. As a result, we are “goal-oriented”, where we only care about the results, which makes us forget about the joy of doing something.

That is strange because it is not a job to fulfill some fundamental issues like food. It is a stupid competition for the sake of competition, with no purpose other than that there are winners and losers. And although it drives us to live, sometimes we get lost in it.

We care about the future, we plan, we are engrossed in the pursuit of results, living only the future and expectations. As a result, some people are completely absent from life and focused only on “when I will have that, I will finally be happy/fulfilled”. The Buddha once said:

Be where you are. Otherwise you will miss your life.

If it is only the result that counts, then everything we do is meaningless. After all, the pursuit of results, learning, the road is almost 100%, and “success” is actually the blink of an eye, a tiny moment. With this approach to life, we sort of agree that almost 100% of life will be unhappy.

And since we will only “live in the future”, it will pass our whole life to some sweet vision that we have built-in our head.

How to find yourself in the sea of expectations?

Being present and understanding that:

Whatever you can do, you can do. What you cannot do, you cannot do.

The best that each of us can do for ourselves and the whole world is to embrace our immediate surroundings. If everyone took care of that, the world would be a wonderful place in a moment. I am writing simply about keeping order in the place where we live and taking care of ourselves.

Instead, many people live with “head in the clouds” ignoring themselves and the whole world. This struggle with ourselves or our thoughts can make us neglect our lives at the expense of the sweet vision of life we have built in the head. It’s because we often run away from problems to our “sweet vision”, our asylum.

The problem is, as Robert Frost said:

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

The earth keeps spinning no matter what we do. As a result, there are more and more problems, are getting bigger, and after a while it’s much harder to face them.

I am not writing this article to teach, instruct, or coach anyone. I do it to share my experience. It is something that I have experienced myself, which I have wasted a lot of time.

I experienced something like this at the age of 24, when I moved to a new city, leaving my hometown forever. “I could be anywhere and do everything”, I had a completely new start — nobody even knew me, I didn’t know anyone.

During this period, I had many problems from which I was escaping into my sweet vision of what I could do and how many possibilities I have, and worst of all — I was completely alone. Finally, I had to “get down to earth” and hit the reality, which was not very pleasant then.

The oriental culture helped me in all this, mainly yoga and the saying from the beginning of the article.

You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. — Marcus Aurelius

Instead of creating “fancy expectations”, it is much better to react to what life brings and try to use every situation to push this life in the direction we want. We have no influence over what life brings us, but we can have full control over how we react to it.

Well, none of us will make the earth suddenly turn the other way or make the sunshine at night.

If we want to achieve something, the only thing we can do is perform a specific set of activities every day.

If we want to be better at writing, we just have to write every day. We can work on the writing skillset - on the style of writing, on editing, grammar, topics, and skills like productivity, or regularity. However, we do not influence whether people like it or when it will.

All we can do is write new texts every day, develop our workshop, and wait for “our moment”.

In other words, instead of creating expectations for a job, it’s much better just to do what we can right now. Instead of building expectations, it’s better to build a lifestyle and love the process of doing this, and when we’ll have our “5 minutes”? We don’t know, and we have no direct influence on it.

Luck is just one of the byproducts of those who take the most action — Grant Cardone

We do in this world respond to the situation we are in because this is our life. Depending on how life is going, we react accordingly. The only thing we can do is to be proactive and present. Our “Fancy expectations” will not change this situation, it can only change by action.

By understanding the saying from the beginning of the article, we can gain focus. What we can do at the moment, we can do. We cannot do what we cannot, and there is no point in stopping at it.

Many so-called “successful people” represent such a pattern. These are people who understand the field in which they are good and just do something all the time. They move very fast from one project to another. They are starting something new all the time. These people are in “doing mode”, and they live their daily lives intensely. They are present.

On the other hand, people who waste time on “Silly Expectations” may get bogged down in these expectations and eventually not even start what they want to do. Such people can paralyze their lives with the expectations that they created.

So if you can do something, do it.

And if you can’t do something, do something else that you can in the situation instead of wasting time on complaining, making excuses, for having unreal visions about something you just can’t do.

Life doesn’t take place at the moment of success, glory, admiration, or anything else — life is here and now, all the time. We should be present more often and do what we can do instead of wasting time on “Silly expectations” about our future.

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