My advice is to remove expectations… Not meeting expectations, I find, is the primary reason people feel unhappy. Why? Because when we don’t meet our own expectations, we are disappointed. If our expectations are unattainable to begin with, guess what, we’re ALWAYS disappointed…

How do we remove expectations?

I think the first step is to start noticing that we have them. The second step is to notice exactly what they are. The third step is to change the meaning of the expectations…

One way to change the meaning of the expectation is to restate it as a desire or goal instead of something that is supposed to happen (ie, an expectation).

For example, let’s say one has the expectation that a smile is to be reciprocated… Of course, we know that often times when we smile at someone, it is ignored. If we expect them to smile back and then they don’t, that leads to disappointment on our part. If, however, we can smile at them with no expectation of them smiling back, then we just did something nice for ourselves and to someone with out demanding it be returned….

It’s just a start, but I think you might be surprised at how much this can change one’s level of happiness….

one last thing: removing expectations opens the door for you to be “surprised” by some kind deed that you didn’t “expect”....

See where I’m going with this?