Don’t Expect Anything

Expectations are the death of happiness. Happy people’s expectations are within their grasp, while those of the unhappy and unfulfilled are always at a star’s distance. Your state is not a product of what you have, but how you choose to feel about it. Your family doesn’t have to support your dream to become a stand-up comedian. Your dinner doesn’t need to consist of wagyu served on a gold plate for it to be nourishing.

The thing about gratitude is that it is easy to confuse with complacency. You can be extremely grateful for the all the good and bad that happens to you and still want nothing but the best. But don’t confuse a growth mindset with empty greed. Wanting a Rolex to show how much better you are than the other guy has nothing to do with living a good internal life. The more you crave and expect status the further away peace becomes. Happiness is achieved when you appreciate the moment and come to breathe into the position. Even things that appear negative are an opportunity for us to cultivate strength, practice gratitude and reexamine our lives. When everything is good, why fix what ain’t broken? This is the gift of hard times.

Everything that encourages us to rationalize our entitlement and bitterness only serve to make us more of those things. Though self-pity, revenge or envy sometimes feel good they are a short-lived hit of dopamine that poison the lifeblood of our overall well-being. Don’t bother getting angry at the person who cuts you off in traffic or taking an off handed comment about your life choices too personally. People are complex and do and say things sometimes, it’s not that deep.

Peace as priority means letting go of your attachment to “what you deserve.”