High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Expectations’

Already, on the hillside, the first tinges of autumn’s hues whisper from treetops.  It’s as if Mother Nature dipped her brush in a pool of watercolor and swept gently across the scene with washes of subtle burgundy and rust.

“Before long,” I thought to myself as I gazed at the sight, “we’ll be seeing the geese head south.”

Most of us here, in my part of the country, would prefer to have summer linger awhile.  Autumn, the bridge to winter, can take its time.  We’ll gladly revel in the green warmth of summer as long as it chooses to stay.

Nevertheless, the shelves in the shops are beginning to fill with back-to-school gear and merchandise for the football fans.  The corn is high, and roadside stands are selling the first of their harvests.  The hints are everywhere.

You can feel the mood of it settling on people. Some look ahead with eagerness and excitement.  Some with a touch of melancholy, some with dread.  But all of us sense that it’s coming.

And it will hold for us whatever we expect, as do all the seasons of our lives.  We’ll harvest the crop we planted and tilled and fed.

The morning tiptoed over the horizon to a welcoming chorus of birdsong, spilling its colorful possibilities all over the new day.

Some woke to notice only its darker clouds and concluded they meant another gloomy day of rain.  But the wise ones observed the rising gold on the horizon and expected good fortune.

As it turned out, the day met both sets of expectations.  The morning’s clouds held a little meeting and laughed tears of joy onto the day.  When they adjourned, sunshine followed in their wake and breezes, filled with the scent of summer flowers.

The gloom believers were justified early on and kept to their track throughout the day, seeing only shadows when the sun appeared, pointing them out to all who would listen, blaming them for their misery and grief.

On the other hand, the ones who anticipated good fortune found its coins heaped at their feet and smiling at them from every face in the marketplace.

And so it ever was and will be.  What you expect determines where you’ll look.  Where you look determines what you’ll see.

“We must learn to reawaken and to keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.” ~Henry David Thoreau

“An infinite expectation of the dawn.”  Isn’t that a beautiful phrase!  It resonates with the most joyful note of hope within us, and something in it actually does awaken us.  It reminds us that miracles lurk around every bend, that at any moment – if we’re awake – we could be assaulted by beauty, or realization, or by a rush of inspiration.

Oh, I know some slothful souls counsel that expectation is a vain thing that seldom leads anywhere except to disappointment.  My guess is that they placed their bets on narrow specificities, not on the dawn.  They expected things to go precisely this way or that, to obtain defined outcomes based on the wants of foolish ego.

That’s not what Henry David is talking about.  To infinitely expect the dawn is to believe in the ultimate and imminent triumph of light, in the dispelling of the clouds of illusion that hide true reality’s wondrous and illimitable joy.  It’s sensing the power of the mystery in which we live to reveal its daysong to us, to shoot sunbeams on our paths.  It’s about listening for that song, and looking for that light, and knowing in our hearts that its there, quivering with eagerness for us to know it.

Stay awake.  Stay awake. No matter how deep the present darkness, infinitely expect the dawn.

Before you even open your eyes, you feel the subtle tingling of it.  A tiny shiver of excitement sparkles through your body and as you take in a deep draft of the morning air, a huge smile spreads over your face.

You have no idea what it will look like, what shapes it will take.  All you know is that it’s going to be great, and you’re going to love it.  Today is going to be an incredibly lucky day.

Last night, as you were drifting off to sleep you fantasized that you were rubbing the genie’s golden lamp, and having been promised that your wish would come true, you said, “Tomorrow is going to be an extraordinarily lucky day.”   It was just a game you were playing with yourself, but you pretended it was real because that was one of its rules.

On the surface, it looked like a silly superstition.  But you knew what you were really doing was programming your subconscious mind to be alert for beneficial opportunities and to guide you in their direction.  The subconscious, you knew, likes images; it responds to them.  It uses them, after all, to speak to you in dreams.  It’s a right-brain kind of thing.  You decided to try it, just for fun, curious to see how it would work out.

The second rule of the game was to wake up feeling that your wish had been granted.  Then you just had to look for the ways it showed up during the day.  And even though you knew it was a game, you were delighted to find that you really did wake up filled with this delicious anticipation.  It really was going to be a fantastically lucky day!  You just knew it.

And, sure enough . . .

Be watchful here.  This is another one of those times when I need to remind you about the four most dangerous words in the English language:  “I already know that.”  Familiarity with a common truth, remember, isn’t the same thing as actually living it in your very own life.  And if you really want to make that one precious life of yours juicier, this is one happiness practice you will really want to master.  It’s the practice of expecting the best.

It’s teaching yourself the habit of looking forward to seeing all the good experiences that will unfold throughout your day . . . the bits of pleasure and friendliness, the pieces of valuable information, the opportunities to use your strengths.   When you wake up in the morning, before you even move, let yourself suppose that it’s going to be a great day—an especially interesting day, with all kinds of happy surprises tucked in its curves and corners.  Then get up, and go out and prove it to yourself.

How?  By collecting evidence.  Here, let me give you a big Tupperware container with a snap-tight lid and a big comfy handle.  (Since it’s invisible and weightless, you can easily carry it everywhere.)  Now, every time you catch yourself enjoying something, make a mental note of it, and stick it in your Tupperware and take it home.  Get a smile from someone?  Stick it in your Tupperware.  Hear a joke?  See a piece of beauty?  Get a lucky message?  Learn a lesson?  Stick it in your Tupperware.

Here’s the deal—the part where you have to be careful to hear with fresh ears:  What you focus on expands.  Ask and you shall receive.  Seek and you shall find.  When you form an expectation, a powerful little part of your magnificent brain (the reticular activating formation, to be exact) filters through all the millions of bits of data coming in through your senses and calls your attention to the things that you are expecting to see.

Expecting to be cucumber cool, regardless of the situations you find yourself in?  Expecting to be surprised by beauty?  By kindness?  By humor?  By opportunities to serve?  Expecting to connect with the people in your life in uplifting ways?  Expecting answers to some of your puzzles?

Look for evidence of your expectations and then put them in your Tupperware.  At the end of the day, open it up and see what you have found.  Expect to be delighted and amazed.