Nobody will live up to your expectations

…. but you can choose not to be affected by it.

People behave randomly & in strange ways

Like it or not, people behave randomly and in strange ways. Most of the time, they don’t live up to your expectations.

You send a WhatsApp to your friend Alice, you know she read your message because there’s a double blue tick. However, it took her days to reply and the only words were “Ok”. You start to feel emotionally affected because usually, both of you would chat for hours on end in the past. What happened?

You can be affected by it for days, weeks or even months. However, Alice doesn’t care. Your message is not significant enough. You start to brood over it, affecting your productivity, happiness, mood and even sleep.

I’m sure there are many times in your life someone doesn’t live up to your expectations, and you get annoyed by it. You feel hurt, rejected and angry about it.

Give people benefit of doubt

You can be like a spoiled child or an over-emotional adult baby, but the other party just doesn’t know. All the love lost is only on yourself.

Next time you meet the person, your negative feelings will be noticed by them either in your body language or the tone of your voice, and this won’t do any wonders for your relationship.

Just drop the feeling of annoyance

Look around at the people close to you. I am very sure many of them are careless, lazy, ignorant, annoying, rude, etc. and most of the time their actions and behavior annoys you in one way or another. They are going about minding their own business living their lives, and yet still end up affecting you because you had very different expectations from them. 100% of the time, they are totally unaware of your expectations (and most of the time they don’t care).

The only advice I can give you is – drop that feeling of annoyance. Who in the world makes you responsible for fixing or saving other people? The only thing you have 100% full control of is how you react to their unexpected behavior.

For example, if your husband always forgets to wash his dishes after dinner, you have two choices:

• Complain and fuss over it every single time, increasing stress for yourself and your husband, or..
• Bring his dishes and wash it. Blame it on his poor upbringing and make sure your kids don’t follow their father. Just don’t make a small issue like a national disaster.

Wrapping it up..

You have the power to choose how you react to the conditions around you. Give people the benefit of the doubt and save yourself from getting too stressed out.