FEATURE STORY

Why Your Expectations Could Be Undermining Your Happiness

A single-pointed focus can yield great results. But what if your expectations actually push fulfillment further and further away? Sadhguru lays bare the link between expectations and your level of happiness, and what you can do to find real success in your life.

Questioner: I tend to get overly attached to people, and I expect too much of them. How do I get rid of expectations?

Sadhguru: What you call attachment is a natural consequence of exclusiveness. The moment you choose between one and the other, you are naturally getting tangled up with it. We accept both filth and fruit. But when it comes to eating, we choose the fruit – this is a choice we are making.

When it comes to a specific activity, we choose. But when we just sit here, where is the need to choose? Inclusiveness means not to make choices every moment of your life.

Attachment and Aversion Are Two Sides of the Same Coin

Inclusiveness does not mean to lose your discriminatory sense. You have your discriminatory sense, but you use it only for performing action – not for being here. For being here, you need not be discriminatory in any way. To be alive, it will not work if you discriminate. But to act, you need discrimination; otherwise, you cannot act sensibly.

Getting overly attached to one naturally leads to having a deep aversion to many others. To balance your so-called love with one person, you have a deep aversion to a whole lot of people. You cannot stand them. Please carefully watch and see how it is.

What Needs to Change

Your expectations are not just about people – they are about everything. “Life is not happening the way I think it should happen.” This is the only source of misery in human life. It is easier to change your thinking than to change the world. And first of all, when what you think is so important for you, have you taken charge of this faculty of thinking, or are you in a state of mental diarrhea? If everything that happens in your thoughts came true in your life, you would be finished. Fortunately, it does not come true.

It is easier to change your thinking than to change the world.

My blessing is, “May your dreams not come true.” Because your expectations are coming from a very limited picture of life. If you want to yield the maximum in this world – not even in spiritual but in material terms – there should be no expectations.

The Unhealthy Spiral of Expectations and Its Source

No expectation does not mean no orientation. But you do not calculate, “I didn’t get what I want. What I want did not happen.” You want to move in a certain direction, but how far you will go, will depend on how much gas you have. And if you have expectations, you are wasting all your gas in revving up the engine all the time, and you will not go far.

There are so many expectations because right from your childhood, people have been asking, “Tell me, what will you become? Will you become a doctor, an IT engineer?” The expectations that parents have of their children are mostly unrealistic and stupid. They are neither good for them nor for the children. Right from an early age, you cultivate the same trend.

The reason why your expectations have such a powerful grip on you is because you think, “Only if this, this, and this happens, will I be happy.” You always think happiness is a thing of tomorrow, not today. When the things that you want move a little further away from you every day, the power of the expectation becomes stronger and stronger, and you get more and more miserable.

The One Approach That Changes Everything

Right now, let us say you are really blissed out, but you want a certain thing to happen. You have been chasing it, but tomorrow, instead of getting closer, it is going further away. Then because you are joyful, it will not create any great amount of suffering.

First establish that what happens within you is determined by you, and no one else but you.

Without fixing yourself, you are trying to do things in the world. A long time ago, Krishna said, “Yogasthah kuru karmani.” That means, first establish yourself in Yoga; then act. But you started your action in a mess, and now you come to Yoga. Forget about what you want from yourself, from other people, from the world. First establish that what happens within you is determined by you, and no one else but you. If you just do this one thing, naturally, you will choose to become pleasant.

When you are very pleasant, then your thinking changes: “Still 10,000 things have not happened in my life – so what? With joyful zest, I will go after it, and the chances of fulfilling those expectations are far better. If they don’t happen, who cares? Because my experience of being here is wonderful whichever way.”

Moving from Expectations to Gratitude

Without fixing the fundamental, we are trying to go somewhere – that is the trouble. If you want to drive your car, you must first see if it is properly fixed. If two of its wheels are loose, if it is on the jack and you still try to drive it, it will be a disaster.

When you are young, this is the time to establish yourself, not to drive. If you drive before you fix the wheels, it is going to be painful and disastrous. Do not do that to yourself. If you look at life just the way it is, you cannot help being overwhelmed by the magnificent nature of creation. The mountains, the lakes, the oceans, the limitless cosmos, and the tremendous amount of life that is happening on this planet.

Looking at the life process – its variety, its brilliance, and its balance of all the zillions of creatures that exist on this small planet as one cohesive force – you cannot help being overwhelmed. May you experience a profound sense of gratitude for all life in this creation.