Expectations

The Big Book notes that "serenity is inversely proportional to expectations". Essentially, serenity is opposite, but equal to our expectations of the things around us. If we have high level of expectation than we will have the equally opposite low level of serenity. For example if you expect that tonight you will be getting the finest home cooked meal you have ever had what is most likely to happen when you sit down at the table. With such high expectations you stand a very good chance of being disappointed or at least not having the finest home cooked meal you have ever had. When that happens you will find yourself much less serene than had you had no expectations at all and enjoyed a perfectly fine meal at the dinner table. Interesting - huh?

So your probably wondering if I believe that you should have no expectations period. After all that would seemingly be the best method to ensure a high level of serenity, right? My answer is .... yes you are right. No expectations or even low expectations WILL provide you with a mechanism to maintain your serenity at least for the time being.

A lot of people I share this with are very skeptical. After all our world works because of basic principles like if I do this then I get that. We like the orderliness of expectations, and we like to avoid chaos that we believe accompanies lack of expectations. It is true that expectations provide a sense of order, but I would offer that the current interpretation of this has become quite distorted in our industrial age.

If the past few months have offered us anything it should have been a solid look at the long term unsustainability of self-perceived order without strong foundational fundamentals. Our economic world is getting rocked (and we with it) because we are incorrectly perceiving our expectations as fundamentals. We expect that saving for retirement equals ever increasing gains, and when these gains are not ever increasing (and even become diminshing) we become frustrated. It doesn't come up in conversation that we made fundamentally bad investment decisions (investments that were going to lose money instead of gain money) instead we focus our energies on how the world is out of control economically and we fall into the victim role. The truth is if we identified risk-taking for what it is, taking risks, and set our expectations low on the likelihood of return (again emphasize risk) then many of us would have significantly less stress as we see markets in chaos.

By identifying the dangers that accompany our expectations we become more rational and realistic about fears that often drive us to obsession. This remains another critical building block to maintaining a serene life.