What makes you happy? You might think that spending time with friends and family makes you happy. Perhaps you find happiness in relaxing with your favorite snack or beverage. Maybe you live to take that tropical vacation. These activities may be enjoyable, but the reality is not as important as expectations. Setting low expectations tends to lead to greater satisfaction when our expectations are exceeded. This tends to be most useful when applied to others. We want ourselves to improve, and subsequently, need to set expectations for our own behavior. Ultimately, we do no control the behavior of others. Low expectations for other people tends to lead towards greater happiness and compassion. As you work on keeping your expectations low, remember these two tips.
- Social Media is Not Reality: People usually post interesting things about their lives on social media. You may only see all of your friend’s profiles showing exciting and interesting things. You may feel like your life is lacking in fun and excitement. It’s not. Your friends also do tedious and mundane activities. That’s part of life. They just don’t post that part of social media.
- Ignorance is Bliss: The more you understand something the more you will realize how far you are from understanding everything about it. If you start to make movies with the goal of being a famous director, you will quickly become more and more of a film critic. Of course, staying in ignorance to be happy about everything is terrible advice. The important lesson has already been mentioned. Set your expectations for others low. When you make a movie, set your expectations to be better than the previous movie you made. When you watch someone else’s movie, assume it’s going to be just another heartless rehash calculated to make money.