You don’t have to live your life
the way other people expect you to.
~ Chris Guillebeau
expectation |ˌekspekˈtā sh ən|
noun
• a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future : reality had not lived up to expectations | an expectation that the government will provide the resources | he drilled his men in expectation of a Prussian advance.• a belief that someone will or should achieve something
I'm better off when I don't have any expectations, but that's hard to do on a day-to-day – sometimes even hour-to-hour – basis.
I expect the mail to be ready to pick up at 10:30 a.m., because that's when the sign in the post office says it will be ready.
I expect that when I follow a recipe, the resulting dish will be edible, and might even be something I'd like to make again.
I expect that if I stop eating sugar, I'll lose some weight and feel a million percent better. (I've been sugar-free before, and that was my experience.)
Have I stopped eating sugar? No, I have not. Do I want to lose some weight and feel a million percent better? Yes, I do.
I'm pretty much okay with where I am now, but I think that's mostly because my continued efforts have resulted in, um, staying the same (overweight and uncomfortable) for long enough (far too long) that I have no choice but to accept where I am now. If I didn't accept, I'd be fighting myself day in and day out (been there and done that) and I'd still be overweight and I'd be even more uncomfortable.
Emotional discomfort added to physical discomfort sucks.
I said out loud to someone last week that I probably need to stop eating sugar. That's a hard, hard thing for me to do. I'm going to give myself a couple more weeks to make the decision. August 1 falls on a Monday, and it's hard to ignore a sign from the Universe like that.
If I do (that's a big if, I've got a years' supply of homemade strawberry jam in the pantry), you'll be the first to know.
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