Expectations

[caressa]

Your expectations

Your expectations can make things more difficult than they would otherwise be. Or they can make things go better than they would otherwise go.

Much depends on what you expect. Positive expectations often pave the way for positive experiences.

Other people pick up on your expectations and, more often than not, will act in accordance with them. So it pays to expect the best of others.

The person most influenced by your expectations is you. When you genuinely expect the best of yourself, something inside you will do everything possible to deliver.

The great thing is, your expectations are yours to decide.

No complex skills or scarce resources are needed in order for you to expect the best of yourself, of others, of this day and this moment.

Your expectations set the range within which your reality operates. Expect the best, and you greatly increase your chances of getting it.

Ralph Marston

[caressa]

Like this, it is generally my expectations that take me from sobriety to being just sober. My sponsor told me sobriety meant soundness of mind.

Living with my dysfunctional family growing up, didn't make for much soundness of mind. With all the fear, insecurities, and discontent, I didn't expect much good, in fact as my life progressed, and I was married, I expected the worse. There didn't seem to be any good. If it was there, I didn't see it or chose not to see it, incase it ruined my pity party.

I had no thought of lowering my expectations, didn't know there was such an animal. I wasn't taught a lot of living skills, didn't have much interaction with the world at large and found it to be a big scary place when I emerged out of my box, only to move into another one. A guy who heard me speak said, "Jo you are the only person I know that would refer to a 200 acre farm as a box." I later saw the box, in the institution of marriage (twice), but the truth of the matter was, I was a prisoner of my own mind. I didn't need bars or walls to keep me in, my mind told me that I dare not venture out, I would only get hurt or hurt more. I wasn't willing to take that risk.

Risk and stretching our boundaries are part of our recovery. The readings have been sharing on allowing ourselves to become vulnerable. The scariest thing I had to do in recovery.

Thanks for letting me share.

[majestyjo]

When I have expectations, I don't have much acceptance. Some people are just not capable of meeting our expectations and we set ourselves up for hurt and disappointment.

I have always put a lot of expectations on myself. I have had to learn to lower them and not be so hard on myself.