I walked out on our date.

[TillTheEndOfTime]

Originally posted by Francisco d'Anconia
Expect nothing. Expectations are the downfall of many DJ wannabes. You are setting yourself up for failure and/or disappointment if you put much weight on expectations. Decide to do what's necessary if and when something happens OR make something happen yourself.

I dislike this defeatist "don't expect anything" attitude. I've heard it before and I feel it is completely destructive and counter-productive to a healthy self-esteem.

Expect everything. Learn to deal with not having your expectations met. That's life. If you have standards and hence, expectations, don't lower them. Stick with them but learn to deal maturely with disappointment.

The "don't expect anything" attitude is a BANDAID solution to a problem with you not being able to deal with disappointment properly. Learning to deal with disappointment is the real solution to the root cause of your problems. This is my opinion and why I disagree with this advice regarding expectations.

 

[JonJack]

Originally posted by TillTheEndOfTime
I dislike this defeatist "don't expect anything" attitude. I've heard it before and I feel it is completely destructive and counter-productive to a healthy self-esteem.

Expect everything. Learn to deal with not having your expectations met. That's life. If you have standards and hence, expectations, don't lower them. Stick with them but learn to deal maturely with disappointment.

The "don't expect anything" attitude is a BANDAID solution to a problem with you not being able to deal with disappointment properly. Learning to deal with disappointment is the real solution to the root cause of your problems. This is my opinion and why I disagree with this advice regarding expectations.

Expectations are generally bad if you want to feel happy. If your expectations are "musts", like must happen, must have, must do this, must say that, then it isn't really a good thing. Usually when someone says I expect you to... , you feel as if they think you must. It is extremely difficult to cope with disappointment when you have great expectations. The greater it is, the harder it is to overcome the grief. So to deal with disappointment, you've got to have minimal expectations or small expectations or unimportant/ not critical expectations. It's obvious that time will heal some pains, but heck, I don't have time to waste on such things.

And another thing. In a relationship, the other party does not owe you anything and you do not deserve anything. You have to earn it. The only way to know whether you've earned it is if your partner treats you the way you like it.

 

[TillTheEndOfTime]

Originally posted by JonJack
So to deal with disappointment, you've got to have minimal expectations or small expectations or unimportant/ not critical expectations.

This is not true. Your ability to deal with disappointment is independent of your expectations. Your expectations are what TEST your ability to deal with disappointment. Having more expectations won't suddenly decrease your ability to deal with disappointment.

The more expectations you have, the more your ability to deal with disappointment is tested. To as much as this I will agree. Maybe that is what you were implying.

However, if your ability to deal with disappointment is very good, then you will be fine. It won't matter if you have a lot of expectations. If your ability to deal with expectations is poor, then you will have a problem. This is something about yourself that you must work on to improve as a person. Improving this helps you mature.

This is why I say lowering expectations is a bandaid solution. You're only trying to avoid dealing with the issue of not being able to deal with disappointment (i.e, by lowering expectations) instead of actually fixing it.

 

[JonJack]

Originally posted by TillTheEndOfTime
The more expectations you have, the more your ability to deal with disappointment is tested. To as much as this I will agree. Maybe that is what you were implying.

I do agree that the more expectations and disappointments one faces, the better they get at handling it. It has happened to me. And I ask myself why it is so. And it is not because I got better at handling disappointments but I got better because I knew that I would get disappointed at one moment or another. It's hard to expect for something when you know that most probably it won't materialise or that there is a chance that it won't happen. That was what I meant about having smaller expectations or minimal expectations. The expectations through time just gets smaller as you start to learn that dreams don't come true and bad things happen to good people. You basically become a realist.

 

[SELF-MASTERY]

Props on walking out, but why do you need to come here and post "did I handle this right," this is your life, you call the shots and don't let these lames tell you that you were wrong for changing the day of your date; ho's have lives to, things happen and we all have to juggle with our schedule unless your a so suave post jockey and all your time is spent reading epic posts....... Hey king of your world, you should give yourself a ball grabbing salute or not........