The secret to happiness is to lower your expectations. ...that is what you compare your experience with. If your expectations and standards are very high and only allow yourself to be happy when things are exquisite, you'll never be happy and grateful. There will always be some flaw. But compare your experience with lower expectations, especially something not as good, and you'll find much in your experience of the world to love, cherish and enjoy, every single moment.
Don't lower your expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations. Expect the best of yourself, and then do what is necessary to make it a reality.
One of the things I realized is that if you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don't prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list, your kids fall lower and lower on your list.
Your beliefs about yourself and your world create your expectations.
Your expectations determine your attitude.
Your attitude determines your behavior and the way you relate to other people.
And the way you behave toward and relate to other people determines how they relate to and behave toward you.
You become what you do. How and what you become depends on environmental influence so you become who you hang around. Raise the standard your peers must meet and you'll raise your expectations of yourself. If your environment is not making you better, change it.
I don't burden myself too much with others' expectations - or even my own expectations. I think your happiness grows in direct proportion to your acceptance, and in inverse proportion to your expectations. It's just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other - or doing the next right thing, so to speak.
I keep my expectations low, so nobody disappoints me." "Yeah, well, I have high expectations." I look toward Miranda. "I guess my friends do, too." "Expectations make people miserable, so whatever yours are, lower them. You'll definitely be happier.
Don't lower your expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations.
Raise your hand if you’ve spent nights crying yourself to sleep, raise your hand if you’ve felt as if you’d rather hide in bed all day than face the people that make you feel small or powerless! Raise your hand if you’ve felt as if you’d rather lie to people than tell them the truth about who you really are, because at least you wouldn’t be the victim of hateful behavior or prejudice! And raise your hand if lying feels almost as bad.
And they know I didn't hold expectations for them like I do for myself. But I also tell them I'm not going to lower the expectations I do have for them because we're playing Division II.
Surround yourself with the best people and then get out of their way. Give them a chance to exceed your expectations and they usually will.
One of the easiest things in the world to do is to tell other people how to raise their children. This is especially easy if you have no children of your own.
If you're fortunate, you'll meet people over the course of your career who exceed your expectations in every way. When you work or spend time with them, you find yourself wanting to be a better person.
Living up to other people's expectations is always difficult. And then you have your own expectations and you set yourself goals that are very, very high. And that's true for everyone.
Your life experience will never far exceed the expectations of your peers, because to stay connected to them there is an unconscious contract that says we're going to be within this range of each other. Now, on the other hand, if for some reason your friends have a higher expectation for life than you do, just to stay on the team you've got to raise your standard.
Real leaders have to live a paradoxical life, where they must break the rules in order to maintain them. If your expectations are high, you're setting yourself up for disillusionment. The land of governance is paved with gray streets, not black or white ones.