I was recently thinking that the biggest source of most frustration is hanging on to specific expectations.
You may be thinking, well, if a contractor says that he will finish a project by X date or a friend says she will show up by 7 pm, isn’t it only reasonable to expect those things to happen?
Yes and no. It is reasonable to have a general expectation of how something will unfold, but only subject to the impact of the usual human foibles, negligence, and mediocrity, and subject to acts of God like Toronto traffic or Hurricane Irma.
And once it is clear that the expectation hasn’t been met, there’s little to be gained by ruminating about it.
Bottom line: add in a generous margin of error to expectations and – even more important- once they are now longer expectations but instead the contractor saying the project will be another week, it’s time to drop the future and get in the now.
In my experience, this is easier said than done but worth trying.
