are you future-focused and expecting big things to come?  i hope so.  expecting something amazing not only gives you motivation but also the opportunity to accomplish amazing things. when we believe in a future that is greater than our current situation (no matter if it’s good or bad)  we are happier and more likely to create a future that resembles our high hopes, despite what difficulties we may encounter.  but when we limit our expectations or develop negative expectations our future becomes bleak and a gap between what we actually accomplish and what we could accomplish develops.  consequently, despite what is going on in your life, you have to find a way to maintain high expectations for your future.

there are a few ways we allow our expectations to be less than what they should be:

• we get stuck in the past. life is full of ups and downs, either one can be damaging if we dwell on them so much that we fail to create new expectations for our future.  jan glidewell, said “you can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present” and your heart unavailable to consider the future (the last part i added on).
• we only believe the negative picture of the future our past pains have created. sometimes, we hit down so hard or long that we can only see a future connected to that negative season.  because one thing didn’t go right, nothing is going to go right going forward.
• we are afraid of being disappointed. there is a cost to having high hopes; it’s makes us vulnerable.  it sets us up for the chance to be disappointed and  some of us have decided we would rather have no expectations than have high expectations and open ourselves to disappointment.

we must recognize all of these as traps to prevent you from being happy, creating your desired reality, and stepping into the fullness of who you can become.  we can’t allow our past (good or bad) or fear of disappointment to reduce our expectations of the future because it is our expectations that will drive our behaviors and our behaviors that create our future.  as thoreau once said, “our circumstances answer to our expectations…”   so, what are you waiting for?  i hope it’s something amazing.