We can set ourselves up for a disaster by being too attached to our expectations.
Expecting a fight, we might start a fight.
Expect a person to do something and we feel slighted or let down when they don’t.
Expect a certain result and we feel like failures when we don’t achieve it.
On the Re-calibrating blog, Charles Jones tells the story… “The Buddhist nun and teacher Pema Chödrön tells a story about a friend who was struggling with feelings of anger and decided to go to the San Francisco Zen Center for an afternoon of meditation. As she started to meditate, she heard this irritating clicking noise. She quickly determined it was just the radiator in an old building, so she ignored it. She then proceeded to meditate for several hours, never noticing the clicking again. After she concluded her meditation, she encountered two friends who had also spent the afternoon meditating. They were both angry at the woman who had been making the irritating clicking noise. They generally had no struggle with anger, but were incensed at the rudeness of this woman’s clicking. She had completely ruined their meditation. Ironically, it was the same sound that was ignored when it was perceived as an old radiator.”
Seth Godin referenced this story on his podcast “Akimbo” last week noting the interesting difference between how something being an inanimate object can be disregarded, but when it’s another person we have expectations and we are angry when those expectations aren’t met.
I’ve had a few experiences recently where I felt extremely let down by my expectations of someone in a position of authority who had the power to do something, and chose not to.
I certainly don’t know all of the reasons for his choices, but I felt like he could have handled the situation differently as I had expected him to, but he didn’t.
I’ve struggled a lot with letting go of my expectations in order to accept the outcome.
Maybe if we don’t expect anything more from another person than we would a radiator, no matter what their status or position is, we could float along a lot more happily.
I know it sure would help me if that’s what I had done.