If there is something I have learnt this year, it’s this – live life with no expectations. I don’t know about you, but when I am looking forward to something I tend to picture how it will happen, what I will say, everything. I decide how I want things to fall in to place. I don’t know why; perhaps I feel so confident with the scenarios in my head that I disregard the major factor of ‘what if it doesn’t go the way I planned?’ I flip the coin, hoping for heads, but failing to recognise that there will always be the equal chance of tails.
I read an article by Mark Manson a few days ago titled “Heck yes or no” (okay, so the first word wasn’t actually ‘heck’, but for the sake of this post that’s what I’ll refer to it as). Manson introduces the law of “Heck yes or no” which can be applied to friendships, relationships – any decision-making as it suits your current needs. However, if the decision involves two people, they both must be saying ‘Heck yes’ to the decision in order for it to happen. He says, “If I’m not saying ‘Heck yes!’ to something, then I say no.” I found this a really interesting approach to making decisions about various situations in life. If you aren’t one-hundred percent committed to something, then why let it consume you?
My Nan said something to me the other day that really made me think twice about everything. She was telling me a story about one of her friends (keep in mind, this friend would be about seventy-something) and how she only ever sits in her home by herself watching television. She never goes out of her way to meet new people let alone look outside every once in a while. My Nan believes, “that’s not living, that’s existing.” I found this so powerful, particularly because my Nan is also seventy-something and I am only eighteen. If she believes that, then what am I doing with my life? We are only given one shot at it, so why not make the most of it and not just exist, but live?
So after lots of thinking, I’ve decided I am going to try my best to no longer create expectations in my head about things that are going to happen in my life. This doesn’t mean my life goals are going to be thrown away, but rather I am going to make the effort to take each day as it comes and be realistic about it too. I am going to take on the “Heck yes or no” approach to my decision-making in life and I don’t want to just exist, I want to live! I don’t want to let my life be consumed by ‘what if’s, because I have realised that if we live with no expectations of the people we know or meet, no expectations of the places we travel to and no expectations of situations happening in our life, it’s a win-win. We won’t be as disappointed if things don’t go our way, because there won’t be a prior agenda we were trying to achieve. And more often than not, you will find yourself surprised with the outcome, because you hadn’t already decided how it would work. Why try to control things that weren’t meant to be controlled? No expectations. No regrets.
Keep smiling. x
Keep smiling. x