“I can’t believe she said that!” “I can’t believe he did that!” “I can’t believe that happened!” “I’m shocked that yadda yadda, and blah blah blah blah!” I actually find it astounding that people think and say these types of things—which I see is quite ironic.
You’d think after all these years of living, we’d finally understand we should always expect the unexpected because life is full of surprises. I think one of the main reasons we find ourselves regularly in one of thoses shocked states is because most of us walk around with preconceived notions of how we think life should play out, and how people should behave.
If we all walked around expecting the unexpected, not much would come as a surprise, and any negativity that arises due to that shock would cease to exist. This doesn’t mean we would never feel sad or angry or hurt, but the resistance that comes from the disbelief would not create additional suffering.
On top of those pesky preconceived notions, we also tend to give added meaning to those surprises. Making the assumption someone doesn’t care about us if their words or behaviors aren’t as expected, is just one example of adding meaning that A: in most cases isn’t true, and B: only makes us feel worse.
Life’s many curveballs are sure to catch us off guard at times, but we get to decide if we want to pile on an extra dose of resistance to what is reality.
Of course she said that, of course he did that and of course that happened. Wouldn’t it be weird if these things didn’t happen? I don’t know about you, but I think if everything always turned out as expected, life would be kinda boring.
Expecting the unexpected can be exciting if we choose to see it that way. It can be thrilling that we never know what tomorrow will bring—because maybe it’ll bring something awesome! We can feel giddy knowing we cannot predict the future—because maybe it has something so incredible in store for us that we can’t even begin to imagine it today! We can feel a sense of relief that we don’t know how things will pan out—because sometimes we don’t expect such great things.
Instead of getting all worked up the next time things don’t go as expected, try and remember we are here to learn. If everything in life was predictable, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to do so. When we make the choice to stop resisting those things we cannot control and stop adding meaning where there doesn’t need to be any, life’s surprises stop being so surprising. They actually start becoming expected because—hey, wouldn’t it be shocking if there were no surprises?!
That’s it—that’s all I got for ya!
Happy day!
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