What Did You Expect

Daily Reflection
The choice lies in front of you. What do you decide? What are the results of that choice? They are often very different from what we expect. Let's take an example. Let's say you decide you want a new job. There are some problems at your old job and they begin to be intolerable so you decide that a new job is the answer. You begin searching for a new job and you apply to 50 companies. You go on some interviews and finally you are hired. You are very excited and maintain that excitement for a few months. Then, you begin to see that this new job was not quite what you were expecting and that some of the features of the old job no longer seem as annoying as they once were. The environment of the new job is very toxic and after 6 months you begin longing to be back at your old place of work. You start planning a way to leave and to approach your old boss. Your old boss is happy to take you back and addresses some of the previous problems you had. You are back at your old job and some of the old tensions have been resolved.

Our expectations of what is happening and how something might happen in the future are usually different than what actually happens. It can be very helpful to your spiritual practice if you let go of your expectations and just let things unfold. The more tightly we cling to our expectations, the more dissatisfied we become.

In your journal today reflect on a situation similar to the example I gave above. Discuss a particular situation in which you became dissatisfied with something and thought you might be more satisfied if you made a change. Look at your expectations. What did you expect to happen? What actually happened? What might have happened if you never had any expectations in the first place?

Swami K