Success & Dissatisfaction or Happiness & Expectations?

The only way to be truly happy is to taste hardship and learning experiences.

If we examine the human world with its diverse personalities, varied life-styles and distinct circumstances, we will find that happiness favors no particular group.

You can find people skipping around in poverty-stricken areas while the wealthy might take a couple of Prozacs a day to survive.

So, we can assume that happiness, in the greater sense, is a state-of-mind. Independent of what the circumstances are around you, but highly depended on what the circumstances are to you. And that's where expectations come in.

I’ve found it’s better for me to have low expectations than have high expectations and be let down.

There’s nothing worse than to be happy and excited and let down in the worst possible way. Its way more suffering and turmoil in your mind.

Going through life with low expectations makes you better able to handle all the inevitable negative stuff that will happen to you. Because you don’t expect that much so when the bad stuff happens, you learn to accept it as a part of life.

It’s like the difference between a rich spoiled kid who never knew misfortune and a poor person who just accepted their situation. Misfortune is inevitable, that’s just how the universe works.

So it’s better to be prepared than to have no experience with misfortune and then it hits you in the face and you have no idea how to cope. Balance is everything.

Life as a series of transactions

Human life (through the lens of time) is a continuous set of complex transactions. Every moment a decision (transaction) is made, a price paid and a result (good/bad) acquired. So each transaction has a cost and a return.

These decisions are interlinked, they bounce around through time being impacted by other decisions & their costs, like light in a hall of mirrors. Each mirror slightly altering the original ray until some finally cascade back into your life, while the rest continue.

When and how these costs cascade in contrast with how you expected them to, I think is the secret to happiness.

Disclaimer:?The information on this POST is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional advice. The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this article is for general information purposes / educational purposes only, and to ensure discussion or debate.

Thank you….Lower exceptions leads to happiness - but it's fake

By always expecting things to be unpleasant you can reduce the dissonance. So when the rays (costs) come crashing into your life, it's not as bad because it was always expected. And since the worst is expected, when they don't come down as hard as they could, it is considered a positive. This easily reduces the negatives and artificially boosts the positives and makes the person happy.

This lowering of expectations might be the reason you can find some of the happiest people in some of the most dire places. But I consider this form of happiness a coincidence of adversity and not the true solution.

Adversity naturally pushes expectations lower to the point where there is little else that can go wrong and the only way is up. It’s a sign of defeat and an impossible task to accomplish outside of adversity. I’m the happiest man alive on a single meal, when facing a drought in Africa. But you can expect a scowl if my Tim’s Steeped-Tea isn’t a double-double. So, you can't lower your expectation to an unreasonable level (not without adversity) and if you do, it will cost you your will for change and contribution.

Being considerate about things often limits the outcomes, low expectations and happiness are both related and not in other ways. Its just the way things work for some but not for others. Expectations are natural tendencies so one do not have a control over them, low expectation may lead to more happiness but instead realistic expectations are what which can lead to a happier life in my point of you.

I consider lowering expectation an extreme. You expect the worst and don't contribute to the world, but end up happy because it's better than you thought it would be.

But if you have high expectation, you can accomplish more. This will come at a cost of happiness because everything will be worse than you thought. So what is the key to happiness then? Personality flaws.

Do you want to add a word or two?....

The key to happiness is personality flaws

If humans were devoid of heart and full of head. We would be able to choose exactly when and how we cash out the costs. And if there is a choice, then we would all, always choose the most logical option. Like an algorithm running for optimization.

We would always work when we have to, sleep when we should and party on your allotted times.

But humans can’t always choose. We can’t always optimize every decision… if it were the case, we would all end up on the same conclusions. We are diverse and so are our decisions. There isn’t a single answer any one person will pick to a single situation. But there are patterns to these choices and these patterns are what our personalities become.

Since unhappiness is bad experiences and bad experiences the result of bad choices. We can safely say, that our tendency to choose bad options is what we call personality flaws. And that's where I think the key to happiness lies.

Your comments........?

A lazy person with the key to happiness

If I’m inherently lazy (obviously fiction :), I should know this. There isn’t anything wrong in enjoying bumming around, all I need to know is the cost I pay. Some costs of being lazy to me can be:

The stress that comes close to deadlines

The frustration of people who are expecting you to deliver

The embarrassment when people call you out on it!

Low expectations with regards to yourself will make you feel unproductive like you’re wasting your talent and potential or eat away at self-confidence. Low expectations of others could be ok as long as you’re still getting your important needs met.

.I’d say set realistic and reasonable expectations with respect to both self and others..This bit of self-awareness lets you enjoy the lazy bits and handle the costs well. I can now change my expectations to include the constant embarrassment I will carry throughout life for my laziness, all the while knowing the sweet addiction of the few extra hours of sleep. I can now also smile at my problems and expect them.

Maybe I will start pulling all-nighters close to deadlines.

Maybe I will compensate for other’s frustration by sweetening the pot and delivering more than expected.

Heck, I will even join the embarrassment next time, crack a few jokes… tell them how I can sweeten the pot and get on to it.

And once I am done will all this, I can go back to enjoying extra sleep and little work for days on end. And one day, when the cost for being lazy gets higher than the return and I can’t power-through, top-up and laugh through my personality flaws I will always know the fun I had while I could be lazy and happily exchange one flaw for another!

So in the end, happiness is identifying your costs of being you and learning to make adjustments using your strengths. You get to be who you are, for a long time and with least resistance you from the rest of the world – the key to happiness.

Does happiness depend on your expectations of life?

?To a certain extent, yes. A lot depends on your attitude.

If you go through life, for instance, in the conviction that you are something special and that life, the universe and everything “owes” you success, wealth, recognition, a Lamborghini, etc. Then you are very likely to end up disappointed, frustrated and miserable.

But if you are grateful for the lucky breaks life gives you and are prepared to put hard work into your career, respect other people (as long as they are respect worthy - I don’t do “blanket respect” for everybody, regardless of their behaviour), be kind and supportive to your partner… then you will have bad stuff happen to you, but also good. And you’ll be able to appreciate and enjoy the good stuff.

So if you don’t expect too much from life, you’re more likely to be happy than if you expect life to shower you with diamonds.

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