Expectations may cause quite a bit of suffering. Reality does serve already plenty of reality, so we should not have too much suffering on something that has not yet happened. Expectations can do this, especially the unrealistic or wrong expectations.

I thought about this earlier this week on one morning and I asked myself: “How I know that my expectations can be in line with the outcomes?” In fact I didn’t have strong Idea what kind of outcomes to expect at all.

So I decided that a simple way to start correcting my expectations would be to write down those expectations and then see how it turns out (the outcome), at the end of the day.

Now I’ve been writing down the expectations in the morning metro, just a few lines what I am expecting of the day. And on the way home I write down the outcome.

Writing my thoughts down has been a sort of magic. Although I’ve been journaling for about eight years now, it hasn’t occurred me to do this so realistically on a day level. Even more so to build upon this this idea, I picked up yesterday from Scott Dimsores TED talk the idea to reflect on a day and week level what went right, and what went wrong.

I am quite confident that by observing the expectations and coupling those with the actual results will give us a better sense of realism and ability to have more accurate expectations.

Tagged: expectations, idea, journaling, outcome, realism, reality