Does it sometimes seem like no matter what you plan, the universe at large has some other plan that you are, as yet, not privy to?
To quote Robert Burns, “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” but do they really…? Cast aside the control freak, the part that feels comforted and secure, when it appears that the things that are happening are doing so because of some master plan, that you would like to believe you have at least a small part of influence over, and allow yourself to consider that whether or
not you wore your luck red pants today, actually had affect on Maggie the taxi driver spilling her coffee as she rushed around this morning, meaning she had to change her clothes before leaving for work, resulting in your taxi to that really important meeting being 5 minutes late, only to discover that everyone else was held up by the road works on the motorway… WHAT IF you’d worn the purple pants???
Perhaps you have the gift of precognition and knew beyond doubt about Maggie’s caffeine based calamity, long before her alarm clock had even begun to bring her to life, and most complex traffic management patterns in play on the motorway, in which case you knew what was going to happen ahead of time and resigned yourself to the fact that even arriving 5 minutes later than planned still meant you’d be there first one there…
Ultimately what happens, happens and yet our perception can be significantly coloured by our expectation of what we either want or even expect to happen. It’s only when we compare reality to our expectation, that we can begin the process of creating disappointment in ourselves, by looking for the differences between the two. This can be quite commonly experienced when shopping for something. How many times have you said, “I can’t quite see what I’m looking for…” This show that you have created an expectation of what you are going to buy, you then go around the shops comparing your expectation to the goods on offer in the no-doubt countless shops you will drag your eternally patient other half round, before eventually muttering something along the lines of, “well, I suppose this will do…”
So what to do? You can always just ‘go with the flow’ with no real expectation or plan for anything beyond the next few moments (not terribly productive, but incredibly exciting) or you can begin to see the similarities between reality and your expectations, all the time being flexible enough to enjoy it when good things happen.
If you’ve ever bought a lottery ticket, you probably didn’t do it to dispose of a few pounds, you probably did it with the intention of winning the lottery… That’s what I’d do! But if you only win £100,000 or £10,000 or even just £100, you’d still be happy, right? Your expectation is flexible enough to enjoy good things when the come along unexpectedly.