Having something to look forward to is a great way to feel happiness and anticipation for the future. However, with all of your thinking and planning about some future event, there’s a very good chance that everything that you’re hoping will happen may not actually come to fruition. And when this happens, it’s easy to feel disappointed and sad, even if the reality of the situation wasn’t really that bad. Luckily, there are things that you can do to help keep your expectations from ruining things for you.
To help you see how this can be done, here are three ways to cope when your expectations don’t match with reality.
Practice Flexibility And Adaptability
In life, some of the best skills that you can develop are those of flexibility and adaptability. Oftentimes, the way that you wish and hope things will happen don’t actually happen that way. But if you’re flexible and adaptable to the reality of any given situation, you’ll be much more likely to make the best of it.
If you have people in your life that seem to be good at this, like your elderly loved ones, consider visiting them at their senior living facility to ask them how they’ve managed to maintain this flexibility throughout their life. Their insights and experience could be just what you need to start developing this in your own life.
Avoid Making Comparisons
One reason why many people have a hard time when their expectations don’t meet with the reality of what’s happening is because they are not only wishing that things happened as they’d imagined, but they also are comparing their situation to what they’ve seen happen to other people in their lives.
While it can be hard not to make comparisons, when you are always pitting yourself against other people and wanting to meet or exceed the experiences they’ve had, anything less than that can leave you feeling disappointed. But if you can learn not to compare yourself to others, in this way or any other way, you’ll find that you’re much happier in life.
Seek To Keep Expectations Grounded In Reality
Although it’s good for your mental health to have things that you’re looking forward to and to have a positive outlook on future events, having overinflated expectations will usually only serve to leave you feeling disappointed. So before you set your expectations too high, make sure you’re trying to expect things that are grounded in reality.
If you wouldn’t expect someone else’s situation to turn out the way that you’re hoping or imagining yours will, you might want to reel your expectations in a bit to help them better align with reality. This way, in your mind, you can mentally under-promise and over-deliver.
If you find yourself always being disappointed about how things turn out in your life, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you better manage your expectations.
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