“If you want to always be happy, stop setting expectations.”

Someone asked me how I always seems happy about things, and I took some time to think about it.  Now, I am certainly not ALWAYS happy, but if you put me with a random group of people I would be closer to the second standard deviation of happy people (go college statistics!).  So I thought about the people that I know that are not always happy, and about myself, and I think it comes down to how we view the world, with regards to setting expectations.  Basically, I have no expectations.  I certainly have high hopes, but no real expectations.  In fact, if anything, I expect things to fail.  So when things go right, it makes me happy, and when things go wrong, I was already emotionally prepared for the event, and it doesn’t impact me too much.  On the other hand, those people who expect things to turn out right, and then things don’t, are constantly disappointed, since more than often, life doesn’t work that way.   So perhaps that explains my attitude, and helps provide a lesson that we can try to use ourselves to improve our daily life – simply don’t set expectations.