Insight

Isn’t that what we all really want? Insight into how someone else is thinking? Insight into how to better do your job, your marriage, your life?

 

The insight we all really need, myself included, is insight into why we do things we do. I’m notorious for building things up in my head only to be sorely disappointed when it doesn’t happen the way I wanted it to. Why do I do this? And how do I stop doing this?

 

I look at my life, and the things that aren’t right, and I try to take steps to make things better. To a great extent I am successful. However, when it’s something I really, really, really (yes, really x 3) want, then caution gets thrown to the wind. I prepare for the event or action that I want to happen, and it gets built up in my head until anything less than perfection is a disappointment. And then the event or action rolls around, and as we know perfection never happens. So even when I get what I want, I’m still not satisfied because it’s not everything I want it to be.

 

There is one area in particular that I am absolutely horrible at this, and it really hurts to say I don’t seem to have learned my lesson there.

 

I have tried to start mitigating this. How? By expecting and anticipating nothing. “Well,” you may say, “that sounds like a crappy way to go through life.” I disagree. By taking away expectations, everything that happens is a bonus. I wasn’t expecting to hear from so and so, and then I do, and that’s awesome. I wasn’t expecting to have something to do on Friday, but then I do, and that’s great. The negatives don’t seem so negative because I wasn’t expecting the opposite.

 

This all goes back to experience each moment as it comes, and stop worrying about the future and things you can’t control. It’s a daily struggle, and it’s never easy. Most assuredly not easy when there are things in life you really want.