I was thinking to write about stressors in our daily lives and when I thought of unfulfilled expectations as one of the major stressors, it appeared too big a topic in itself. I finally decided to talk about unfulfilled expectations first before talking about the rest.

Sadness, grief, frustration, helplessness, sleeplessness, depression and other negative emotions have their origin in various causes. Do you think that most of the time unfulfilled expectations from others and self could be the source of these negative emotions? (I am not considering the death of the near ones and illness here. BTW, both the topics could still be unfulfilled expectation of being around or of being healthy)

I think logic is illogical when it comes to the domain of emotions, but when the emotions get too disturbing then maybe it’s a good idea to try to enforce some logic.

Many a times we are frustrated because of someone not behaving or acting the way we want. We start thinking that they are the reason for our frustration and unless they correct themselves our frustration will not go away. We are very convinced that the source of our frustration lie “outside” of us over which we have no or very little control. It’s very easy to blame others, and so we choose to do the same. Whining feels so good sometimes, and then we attract the moaners and groaners around us who reinforce the same thought instead of challenging it.

I am no exception. Very recently I realized and accepted one fact in myself. It was very hard to do so in the beginning, but finally I accepted. The realization was: the more I am dissatisfied with self, the more I expect from others. The dissatisfaction could be due to trivial reasons like my lesson didn’t go that well as planned in school or I made a typo (in spite of spell-check!) in the question paper, or due to the big ones like I am missing my three-monthly deadline to achieve my set goals or the like.

Now during some weak moments when I find myself bothered by unfulfilled expectations from others, I ask myself a question. Is there anything I can do over which I have direct control over? Fortunately I have so many things on my agenda which I am struggling to do right now that wasting time on somebody else’s behavior or expecting something from someone appears very distant.

Don’t you think it’s a good idea to be selfish and focus on what “one can do” instead of focusing and complaining about what “others” are doing or not doing?