Set goals, not expectations

Rather than set expectations, we should aim to establish clear-cut goals.

Though these may sound similar, they vary in terms of how a person generally approaches not meeting a goal vs. not having their expectations met.

When you set goals, you're doing so knowing full well that you may not achieve them. And even if you don't, you recognize that you can try again by retooling your strategy, or changing said goals altogether.

When you set expectations of yourself or other people, you're already anticipating a certain outcome. If that outcome doesn't live up to what you had in mind, you're bound to feel upset and defeated.

While being confident and "expecting" to achieve a goal isn't necessarily a bad thing, we need to remain humble and open to the possibility that things may not go exactly as planned, often through no fault of our own.

For example, you might get psyched about landing what seems like the perfect job, but fall a little short in the end. Though you may beat yourself up for, say, not preparing enough for the interview, it's possible they had an internal candidate in mind from the get-go.

Eventually, you may find a wonderful job near home that pays far better than the one you didn't get, or you discover the company who passed on you has gone out of business. At that point, you might feel relieved you were turned down for the first opportunity.

Something like this may very well play out in the dating arena as well. You hit it off with someone, give them your number, and anticipate they'll be calling the very next day. Left waiting, you try calling them only to find that the phone is out of service, or they gave you the wrong number.

You might be bummed out for a couple of weeks, but then -- when you least expect it -- someone wonderful comes into your life and sweeps you off your feet. Like in the previous example, you didn't realize at first that a door being closed simply meant another was opening.

If you must set expectations, you're better off setting general ones ("I want to be healthy, hook with a decent person, and have a good job") than the kind you know deep down are very restrictive if not wholly unrealistic ("I must have the body of a 20 year old even though I'm 45, marry a millionaire athlete, and work as a CEO at ABC Company or else I won't be happy.")

If there's one thing we can be sure about, it's that life isn't perfect. Things will never be exactly as we would want them to be. There are tradeoffs to be made and opportunity costs to every decision we make. By taking a risk, we might change our life in a positive way, or end up regretting the move for a while. Then again, we may kick ourselves for not taking any action at all.

The key is to remember that there are no certainties in life, no matter how you've painted a situation in your mind. Sometimes you imagine things will turn out a lot worse than they actually do. Other times we may assume there's one specific path to achieving happiness, but life takes us along a different road -- and we're later glad it did.

And as I alluded to earlier, setting your expectations of people too high can come back to bite your hard.

In sum, by setting goals rather than expectations in your life, you won't be as disappointed if things don't turn out exactly as planned.

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