Change Your Expectations Into Preferences And Watch The Suffering Disappear (Personal Development Wisdom Snippets) | #635

[Agi Keramidas]
Welcome to Personal Development Mastery Podcast. This is another snippet of wisdom, a moment from the podcast archive that I felt deserved to be heard again. Today's snippet comes from Hans Willen, spiritual teacher and author whose books have sold over 40 million copies worldwide.

He shares a simple but transformative idea, that our suffering comes from unfulfilled expectations and that one small shift in language can change everything. Let's dive right in.

[Hans Wilhelm]
Now, let's look at it. What are the situations which really, really upset us? It is always something where something is working differently or has worked out differently than we had expected.

There may be loss of job, suddenly divorce, etc., illness. We didn't expect it and we are fighting with all our might to bring the situation closer to our expectation. I want to hold on to the job, on to the partner, etc.

This is where the struggle is. The pain is that we are not willing to accept the new situation. Therefore, all our suffering comes from unfulfilled expectations.

But life doesn't care about our expectations. Life gives us what is right for us. There was a book written many in the 60s by Ken Keyes, The Handbook of Happiness, and he gave a wonderful suggestion.

He says, change all your expectations into preferences and you take the sting out of them. He says, I would have preferred to kept my job, but I will now do whatever is king. I would have preferred to stay married.

I would have preferred to have that money. The moment we can honestly say, I prefer it versus it must be the way I want it or my ego wants it, suddenly a lot of weight, a lot of tension will disappear and we will be more open to face the new situation. So let's look at whatever it is.

To your listener, anybody can ask, what is it that really upsets me right now and occupies my mind over and over again if I truly can say, all right, this was my unfulfilled expectations, but now I would have preferred if it would have gone the other way. Wouldn't it feel much easier and better to solve? Because life does not care what we expect.

Our expectations are usually programs which we have picked up from our childhood. These are just only things which we learned. You have to get married, you have to get a good job, you have to get healthy, name all this stuff which upset us so much.

These are all programs which we learned from our teachers, from our parents, from the environment. They were never really ours in the first place. We are all, in a way, other people because we have taken over all the stuff from other people and we have never really questioned it.

Can we really now question keeping that job? Is it really such a good idea? Could there be an opening for something new?

So by questioning our expectations, we may also question all our beliefs and say, where do they really come from? Do they really come from me or is it maybe my father's men kind of energy still in this one or my mother's or my grandparents or the religious beliefs here and so on? I have to do.

So let's look at that one as well. But the key element, I think the first step is, as you say, but we can do it much easier if we change our preference of how we think life should have gone expectation into a preference.

[Agi Keramidas]
Thank you for listening. You will find the full conversation with Hans Willem in episode 520. The link is in the show notes.

If you enjoyed this podcast, can you think of one person that would find it useful and share it with them? Until next time, stand out, don't fit in.