How We Can Handle (Almost) Anything

Emotions flavour every part of our experience. Emotions are our psychological engine room driving the meaning and connection into the experience of any moment in time.  If emotions are the engine room and our expectations are the fuel source. If our expectation of any event or moment in time is far exceeded by our experience, we feel emotions ranging from joy to full blown ecstasy. If our expectations fall well short of our experience, we feel anything from disappointment to full blown depressive moods. If our expectations are met, we will feel anything from indifferent to sweetly satisfied. It is incredible how something so simple is so powerful.

Expectations exist on both macro and micro levels. On a macro level we have a broad expectation of how our life might look like by the time we are 30, 40 or 50 and so on. Whether we are aware of it or not, how we are feeling about ourselves, and life overall can be hugely influenced by comparing expectations with the reality of our experience. 

For example, if I thought that by age 40 I would be married with children and I am single with no kids, my experience fails to meet the expectation I had set, so overall I will feel dissatisfaction (to say the least) of my life overall. On the other. The emotional difficultly has been created by two things. 1. Expectations and 2. Attachment to how it ‘should ‘ be.

Very little know Russian philosopher, Vadim Zeland, author of ‘Reality Transurfing” shares with us that most of our problems would not be experienced as problems if we lowered our expectations and relaxed our attachments. Lowering expectations does not mean lowering your standards.

In fact, by raising our expectations we are open to lowering our standards. The reason this is true is because the higher the expectations the more rigid we feel about how things should be.  Raising expectations creates an attachment to outcome. We say to ourselves, ‘oh by the time I’m 40 I am going to be a multimillionaire’, you have created an attachment to how things should be. Anything short of being a multimillionaire at 40 will create an environment devoid of joy. However, if we lower our expectations of our financial status at 40 and relax attachments, we now leave the world of how it should be and enter the world of how it could be. 

The moment we enter the world of ‘could be’ we open ourselves up to a world of new possibilities. Whether we become a multimillionaire or not by age 40, will not negatively impact how we will feel about ourselves at 40.  Lowering expectations and relaxing attachments helps us let go of comparing ourselves to others, comparing our current experience to past experiences, and helps us let go of rigid belief systems. 

The world of ‘could’ releases the lid that the world of ‘should’ can bring. The world of ‘could’ be can be embraced with a healthy divine curiosity, whereas the world of ‘should’ can be is devoid of all curiosity and new possibilities.

Thanks for reading,

Love

Joe