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By placing expectations on ourselves and others we are condemning both ourselves and others to fail. In a previous article 'The upside is usually greater than the down side', I stated that, the best way to live is to imagine the best but expect the worst.
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In a previous article ‘The upside is usually greater than the down side', I stated that, the best way to live is to imagine the best but expect the worst. The article was about events in your life, but what is true for expectations about events is ten times as true for expectations about concerning others or ourselves.

If somebody places expectations on you, unrealistic or otherwise, they are setting you up for failure. Similarly if you place expectations on yourself you are setting yourself up for failure. At the end of the day we are all only human and the possibility for errors and mistakes always exist so we should not be too hard on others or ourselves when things go wrong.

What I want you to try to do is unload the expectations you have for others, from them and unload your own expectations from yourself. By doing this you will literally reduce the mental load you have placed on another, and set them free to achieve great things. In a similar way you will reduce your own burden and set yourself free also.

To give a concrete example of this, take the example of a husband and wife. Where the wife expects the husband to do odd jobs around the house and the husband expects the wife to keep the house clean. In having these expectations put upon them, both husband and wife have been set up to fail. Every time an odd job does not get done the husband has failed and every day the house is not clean the wife has failed.

If the husband and wife remove their expectations from each other then both will be under less stress and work better as a result. If they go one step further and remove the expectations from themselves, the stress will be further reduced.

The thing to remember is that we are not born to be each other’s slaves, or our own for that matter, we are born with free choice. If we do something for another it is our decision to do it and if that decision is made under duress we will not feel happy when we do it.

If we do something freely for another then we will be much happier when we do it.

Take care