Quotes & Sayings About Expectations In Life

Living well has something to do with the spirituality of wholeheartedness, of seeing life more as a grace than as a penance, as time to be lived with eager expectation of its goodness, not in dread of its challenges. — Joan D. Chittister

I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected - an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There had never been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I had got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hid in its shadows. — Marilynne Robinson

The attachment to parental figures I am trying to describe here is an attachment to parents who have inflicted injury on their children. It is an attachment that prevents us from helping ourselves. The unfulfilled natural needs of the child are later transferred to therapists, partners, or our own children. We cannot believe that those needs were really ignored, or possibly even trampled on by our parents in such a way that we were forced to repress them. We hope that the other people we relate to will finally give us what we have been looking for, understand, support, and respect us, and relieve us of the difficult decisions life brings with it. As these expectations are fostered by the denial of childhood reality, we cannot give them up. As I said earlier, they cannot be relinquished by an act of will. But they will disappear in time if we are determined to face up to our own truth. This is not easy. It is almost always painful. But it is possible. In — Alice Miller

He wants to do something amazing in your life. Get in agreement and say, God, this is for me today. I'm raising my expectations. I'm shaking off doubt, negativity, disappointments, self-pity, little dreams, and little goals, and God, I will make room for a flood of Your goodness. — Joel Osteen

Sylvia possessed a deeply conditioned respect for authority. She wanted desperately to live up to the expectations of a society that viewed her as a bright, charming, enormously talented disciple of bourgeois conformity. On the other hand, she ached to experience life in all its grim and beautiful complexity. The poetic eye was always at work examining the nuance and measuring obscure detail, turning conversation into ultimatum (Steiner) — Elizabeth Winder

Everything in life is literal, direct, and personal - and very demanding. But that demand seems to be necessary. Your commitment is to be present. You're going to experience life as it is, rather than your expectations from the past or your desires for the future. You're going to relate with life in the fullest sense. — Chogyam Trungpa

Social pain does not trigger endorphin the way physical pain does, except for a brief laugh or cry. A broken heart doesn't trigger endorphin the way a broken bone does. In the past, daily life held so much physical pain that social pain was secondary.Today, we spend less time suffering the pain of physical labor, predator attack, or deteriorating disease. Our attention is free to focus on the pain of disappointed social expectations. This leaves us feeling that life is more painful even though it's less painful than in the past. 33 — Anonymous

Bible publishers are not selling Bibles. What they're selling is that iconic idea of the Bible. Their value-added biblical content promises to provide answers to questions, solutions to problems, and speaks in no uncertain terms about God's plan for your life and how to live it. Adding value to the Bible almost always means adding "biblical" values that are either missing or really hard to find in the Bible itself but that provide that feeling of Bibleness so many seek. — Timothy Beal

One of the obvious implications is that a person will have to face the fact that she cannot meet other people's expectations. This signals the end of what might be called the "camel" phase of human development. I believe it was Nietschze who suggested that for the first part of life, we are camels, trudging through the desert, accepting on our backs everybody's "shoulds" and "don'ts." Camels only know how to spit; they don't think for themselves or talk back. As the camel dies, a lion is born in its place. Lions discover both their roar and the art of preening. The lion may be a little shaky at first, so support and encouragement are vital. But once the camel begins to die (e.g., signaled by depression), there is no turning back. Symptoms occupy the space between the death of the camel and the birth of the lion. A therapist can be a good midwife during this liminal phase. — Stephen Gilligan

Unfortunately we often get praise for things that weren't particularly difficult to achieve. If we focus on the props and encouragement of those who have low expectations for us, we become mediocre. It can be challenging to set our sights on excellence, particularly when we're hearing that we're already there. One of life's greatest lessons, which we all must learn, could be expressed in the phrase "That was nothing. Watch this." Challenge yourself and others to call the normal things normal and save that word excellent for things that really are. — Alex Harris

Being in control of your life and having realistic expectations about your day-to-day challenges are the keys to stress management, which is perhaps the most important ingredient to living a happy, healthy and rewarding life. — Marilu Henner

The mother gazes at the baby in her arms, and the baby gazes at his mother's face and finds himself therein ... provided that the mother is really looking at the unique, small, helpless being and not projecting her own expectations, fears, and plans for the child. In that case, the child would find not himself in his mother's face, but rather the mother's own projections. This child would remain without a mirror, and for the rest of his life would be seeking this mirror in vain. — Donald Woods Winnicott

Real leaders have to live a paradoxical life, where they must break the rules in order to maintain them. If your expectations are high, you're setting yourself up for disillusionment. The land of governance is paved with gray streets, not black or white ones. — Beau Willimon

She'd been living in a prison since the day she'd been born, even after leaving her mother, a prison of fear and shame and lowered expectations, and she'd been so accustomed to her circumscribed life that she had not recognized the bars. — Dean Koontz

: Hypnosis works and the empirical support is incontrovertible in that regard. Hypnosis is using from centuries because it works as a pain killer which gives relief too many people and gives them distress life. Masha the hypnosis serves the positive expectations of improvement in health, mind and soul of the victim. — Masha

It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man! — Ralph Ellison

The absence of utopianism in the Constitution, law, and traditional political culture has been ... important in limiting expectations concerning what can be achieved by politics. The history of the last two centuries confirms what the framers of the Constitution understood: that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and the search for unalloyed virtue in public life leads to unalloyed terror. — Jeane Kirkpatrick

The only life I have left to live is future life. The past is not in my hands to offer or alter. It is gone. Not even God will change the past. All the expectations of God are future expectations. All the possibilities of faith and love are future possibilities. And all the power that touches me with help to live in love is future power. As precious as the bygone blessings of God may be, if He leaves me only with the memory of those, and not with the promise of more, I will be undone. My hope for future goodness and future glory is future grace. — John Piper

This is the secret to satisfaction in anything: doing what gives you life and not trying to live up to others' expectations. — Jeff Goins

Without faith to act as a governor, the human mind is a runaway worry generator, a dynamo of negative expectations. And because your life is yours to shape as you wish with free will, if you entertain too much anxiety about too many things, if you place no trust in providence, what you fear will more often come to pass. We make so many of our own troubles, from mere mishaps to disasters, by dwelling on the possibility of them until the possible becomes inevitable. — Dean Koontz

Trust that some of the best days of your life haven't even happened yet. There are going to be parties that leave you dancing until 6am, spontaneous adventures that teach you more than you ever learned in a classroom. There are going to be nights that will stay burned beneath your eyelids, memories that dance underneath your skin. Life is going to exceed your expectations, it is going to astonish you with its timing.

Remember - you have not felt it all.
The world still has so much left for you — Bianca Sparacino

It's easy and natural to be thankful when your expectations are met. The real test of your faith is when things don't go your way, or when you are in pain. — Maddy Malhotra

Like an enemy I knew as intimately as any friend, I came to know the nagging, constant emptiness of the incongruent life. I ignored myself and lived for people, purposes, and goals that weren't my own. I betrayed who I was and instead accepted a fictional substitute that was defined from the outside in. — Phil McGraw

Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs, and that if they want something, it is they who want it. But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves. A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort. — Erich Fromm

In life, you often get what you expect. — Michael Hyatt

It wasn't so much that Lola Plum believed she'd learned her lesson in love. Lola Plum was just realistic about life. — Shannon Noelle Long

Admit it or not, you care about what others think about you. People who declare they don't are more likely pretentious. You cannot stop caring. It is in your nature. But it is absolutely wrong to live your life for others, to make your decisions based on other people's perceptions and expectations. — Grace Scott

And that's the crucial element of life experience that so many of us avoid, you know. Trying something new, taking that single leap of faith into the utterly and absolutely unknown. Into the different. Those who take that leap are the ones who challenge whatever fate they might otherwise have. They fly in the face of societal expectations, determining for themselves who and what they will be and not allowing the bonds of birth, class, and bias to make that determination for them. — Elizabeth George

After that, a strange thing happened: Amy couldn't stop her expectations from rising. She imagined herself transformed and beautiful, like Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink, with her homemade dress and mysterious lace boots. She pictured her hair in an upsweep of loose curls. In the fantasy, her prom face looked like the one she only wore asleep, loose and relaxed. She imagined a photographer asking her to smile and, for the first time in her life, being able to do it. — Cammie McGovern

It takes three to make love, not two: you, your spouse, and God. Without God people only succeed in bringing out the worst in one another. Lovers who have nothing else to do but love each other soon find there is nothing else. Without a central loyalty life is unfinished. — Fulton J. Sheen

Maybe it was time to cut the strings of everyone's expectations and free-fall for once in her life — Miranda Liasson

So for the people in your life who have not known your worth, who have been reckless with your heart or fallen painfully short of your expectations, sincerely wish them well, forgive yourself for holding on to it and preventing yourself from really living, forgive them for their shortcomings (as well as your own), scoop up that huge beautiful life lesson and all the pieces of your heart, and sail on. You have mountains to move, dreams to dream, and a world to change, even if the only world is your own. — Alexis Jones

Suffering happens when we expect life to be something more and different than what it is in the present moment. When we let go of all expectations, there is peace. — Kim Eng

Things have gone beyond my wildest expectations and dreams, and I feel like I've been given so many blessings in my life, between my friendship with the guys in the band, our wonderful audience, being able to play this music, and then my family. — Trey Anastasio

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you. In short, entertainment fulfills our expectations. Art, on the other hand, makes no compromise for public taste as it inspires us to consider life's complexities and ambiguities. Art is the opposition testing the strength of societal and cultural values-values that are thoughtlessly adopted by the mass of individuals living unexamined lives and all who cannot imagine a different way of seeing life. — William Missouri Downs

Every time I felt the pain coming on I'd go downstairs and hammer out an idea. After a few months I started to take a look at what I was making, I had for the first time in my life written a large grip of songs completely alone and without any expectations or plans of what they would be for. — Frank Iero

It is unrealistic to assume that if all goes well in a child's life, he or she will be happy. Happiness is not something one can ask of a child. Children suffer in a way that adults don't always realize under the pressure their parents put on them to be happy. — Adam Phillips

It's a lot to live up to. These pressures of achieving. From the moment you're born, you're pounded with the expectations of what you need to actualize in order to become a success. Go to college. Get married. Raise a family. It's what you're supposed to do. The plans you're supposed to make. The life you're supposed to live. Diverge from the norm and you're frowned upon. Questioned. Shunned. There's something wrong with you if you're not interested in improving yourself. If you can't make a commitment of marriage. If you don't want to have children. So people earn a college degree so they can get a good job. They work at a job they hate just to earn a living. They spend two months' salary on an engagement ring. They pop out a couple of kids they don't really want just so they can fit in. Because it's what their parents did. Because it's what society expects you to do. Because it's safer to take the same path everyone else has traveled. Truth is, no one's listening to Robert Frost. — S.G. Browne

Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn't come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words "bliss," "passion," and "rapture" - words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books. — Gustave Flaubert

Believe you are great and you will be great. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The hope that God has provided for you is not merely a wish. Neither is it dependent on other people, possessions, or circumstances for its validity. Instead, biblical hope is an application of your faith that supplies a confident expectation in God's fulfillment of His promises. Coupled with faith and love, hope is part of the abiding characteristics in a believer's life. — John C. Broger

We are all made good and positive declaration about the year 2015. We are all expecting breakthroughs in our lives, new things to happen to give us life changing. Guess what my friends, nothing is going to happen without action. We can't fold our hands and expect life changing or expect others to do it for us, that's impossible. The Bible says, 'God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to (Deut.15:10). That means whatever we are expecting to happen today has to come out of hands. God promotes hard work and hard work is honourable. — Euginia Herlihy

The great political, artistic, and religious project of modernity has been to find a meaning to life that is not rooted in some great cosmic plan. ...But we are still convinced our lives have meaning. As of 2016, humankind indeed manages to hold the stick at both ends. Not only do we possess far more power than ever before, but against all expectations. God's death did not lead to social collapse. Throughout history prophets and philosophers have argued that if humans stopped believing in a great cosmic plan all law and order would vanish. Yet today, those who pose the greatest threat to global law and order are precisely those people who continue to believe in God and his all-encompassing plans. — Yuval Noah Harari

Someday, sometime, you will be sitting somewhere. A berm overlooking a pond in Vermont. The lip of the Grand Canyon at sunset. A seat on the subway. And something bad will have happened: You will have lost someone you loved, or failed at something at which you badly wanted to succeed. And sitting there, you will fall into the center of yourself. You will look for some core to sustain you. And if you have been perfect all your life and have managed to meet all the expectations of your family, your friends, your community, your society, chances are excellent that there will be a black hole where that core ought to be. I don't want anyone I know to take that terrible chance. And the only way to avoid it is to listen to that small voice inside you that tells you to make mischief, to have fun, to be contrarian, to go another way. George Eliot wrote, 'It is never too late to be what you might have been.' It is never too early, either. — Anna Quindlen

When life hands us a beutiful bouquet of flowers we stare at it in cautious expectation of a bee. — Dean Koontz

Women in general are expected to hold less power than men and there are different expectations as to the tasks we will perform and the positions we will subsequently hold. Women tend to be offered less opportunities in life and are generally treated with less respect than men. We tend to receive less reward, tangible and intangible, for the work we do and the roles we play; we are often made to feel less important and our opinions less valid. Women are encouraged to compromise rather than question; to acquiesce rather than agitate. — Gerrilyn Smith

I've seen so many people in my life struggle tremendously to fit into those boxes or to live up to those expectations or pressures put upon them by whatever society's concept of 'normal' is. I get frustrated by rules and regulations. I'm frustrated by things that are exclusive to one particular life choice. — Jennifer Westfeldt

Charles's conversation was as flat as a sidewalk, and everyone's ideas filed along it in their ordinary clothes, exciting no emotion, no laughter, no reverie. He had never been curious, he said, when he lived in Rouen, to go to the theater and see the actors from Paris. He did not know how to swim, or fence, or fire a pistol, and he could not explain to her, one day, a riding term she had come upon in a novel.

But shouldn't a man know everything, excel at a host of different activities, initiate you into the intensities of passion, the refinements of life, all its mysteries? Yet this man taught her nothing, knew nothing, wished for nothing. He thought she was happy; and she resented him for that settled calm, that ponderous serenity, that very happiness which she herself brought him. — Gustave Flaubert

We are creatures deeply marked by our expectations. We go around with mental pictures, lodged in our brains, of how things are supposed to go. We — The School Of Life

The fantastic postulates that there are forces in the outside world, and in our own natures, which we can neither know nor control, and these forces may even constitute the essence of our existence, beneath the comforting rational surface. The fantastic is, moreover, a product of human imagination, perhaps even an excess of imagination. It arises when laws thought to be absolute are transcended, in the borderland between life and death, the animate and the inanimate, the self and the world; it arises when the real turns into the unreal, and the solid presence into vision, dream or hallucination. The fantastic is the unexpected occurrence, the startling novelty which goes contrary to all our expectations of what is possible. The ego multiplies and splits, time and space are distorted. — Franz Rottensteiner

From time to time I try to imagine this world of which he spoke
a culture in whose mythology words might be that precious, in which words were conceived as vessels for communications from the heart; a society in which words are holy, and the challenge of life is based upon the quest for gentle words, holy words, gentle truths, holy truths.
I try to imagine for myself a world in which the words one gives one's children are the shell into which they shall grow, so one chooses one's words carefully, like precious gifts, like magnificent gifts, like magnificent inheritances, for they convey an excess of what we have imagined, they bear gifts beyond imagination, they reveal and revisit the wealth of history.
How carefully, how slowly, and how lovingly we might step into our expectations of each other in such a world. — Patricia J. Williams

What is it about our expectations, plans, or ideas that hold such sway over us? It is as if we've written a script for a play of our lives that runs about a month ahead of actual life; if reality varies from what we've created in our minds we disengage or pout. — Holly Sprink

People who have never suffered in life have less empathy for others, little knowledge of their own shortcomings and limitations, no endurance in the face of hardship, and unrealistic expectations for life. As the New Testament book of Hebrews tells us, anyone God loves experiences hardship (Hebrews 12:1-8). — Timothy J. Keller

Intuition is a capacity of our heart. Our heart is the door to allowing Existence to guide us, instead of being directed by our ideas, desires and expectations. Since the days of Aristotle's, we have been taught that logic is the only way to reach a solution. But while logic works in a step-by-step-process to reach a solution, intuition simply takes a quantum leap to a solution without any intermediate steps. — Swami Dhyan Giten

Apart from this ultimate hope, the created world would be a dungeon of despair for God's children. But faith animates our lives with an eschatological anticipation of the presence and glory of Christ. We will not find our full and permanent happiness here. Nor will we find Christian joy automatically, like a daily newspaper at the door. God intends for us to find joy kinetically, in action, as we work out our faith with fear and trembling, as we fight the good fight of faith, as we worship, fellowship, and engage in all the various dynamics of the Christian life together.62 But even in this, our hope of eternal joy sobers our expectations for the joy we can expect to experience in this life. — Tony Reinke

Using the phrase business ethics might imply that the ethical rules and expectations are somehow different in business than in other contexts. There really is no such thing as business ethics. There is just ethics and the challenge for people in business and every other walk in life to acknowledge and live up to basic moral principles like honesty, respect, responsibility, fairness and caring. — Michael Josephson

Now, even when I make an outfit for myself, I wonder what other people will think. The truth is that I secretly love what seems to be my own individuality, and I hope I always will, but fully embodying it is another matter. I always want everyone to think I am a good girl. Whenever I am around a lot of people, it is amazing how obsequious I can be. I fib and chatter away, saying things I don't want to or mean in any way. I feel like it is to my advantage to do so. I hate it. I hope for a revolution in ethics and morals. Then, my obsequiousness and this need to plod through life according to others' expectations would simply dissolve. Oh, — Osamu Dazai

The expectation that every neurotic phenomenon can be cured may, I suspect, be derived from the layman's belief that the neuroses are something quite unnecessary which have no right whatever to exist. Whereas in fact they are severe, constitutionally fixed illnesses, which rarely restrict themselves to only a few attacks but persist as a rule over long periods throughout life. — Sigmund Freud

Nothing is truly free. Every gift has a price, paid for by someone in coin, favors, expectations or goods.
Things get a little sticky when Life shows up wanting to collect on something you thought was free.
Always ask the price. — Jaime Buckley

When I was young, I believed that life might unfold in an orderly way, according to my hopes and expectations. But now I understand that the Way winds like a river, always changing, ever onward.. My journeys revealed that the Way itself creates the warrior; that every path leads to peace, every choice to wisdom. And that life has always been, and will always be, arising in Mystery. — Socrates

The fun thing with the newer characters in the movie was that anything goes. The life they brought to it just exceeded my expectations. It was just above and beyond. — Coley Sohn

Having no expectations for some people in your life can be depressing, if not devastating. But with others, it's what is necessary. The hard part is not just figuring out which one applies, but accepting it. — Sarah Dessen

When I was in my teens, I made an appraisal of how comfortable my life could turn out when I became the age I am now. Because of a mechanical failure, the prediction was inexact. — Arthur Nersesian

The purpose of Sabbath is not simply to rejuvenate yourself in order to do more production, nor is it the pursuit of pleasure. The purpose of Sabbath is to enjoy your God, life in general, what you have accomplished in the world through his help, and the freedom you have in the gospel-the freedom from slavery to any material object or human expectation. The Sabbath is a sign of the hope that we have in the world to come. — Timothy Keller

Amd I am not blind to the fact that I have been given gifts you never had. Living a godly life was expected on me, and it was an easy path for me to follow. No one ever had such expectations of you. For you to embrace the Lord at this point in your life would be nothing short of heroic, Alex. It would take an act of such strength and courage that it would be humbling for all who have ever know you. You can begin building a life of valor today. — Elizabeth Camden

One of the reasons the team on NCIS works so well-is that they live by their leader's rules-which are not a secret .
What are your rules/standards? Do the people in your life know what they are? Do you hold grudges/resentments when they don't measure up? Do you pretend that everything is fine-when it's not-and close up a little every day?
And most importantly-
When was the last time YOU reviewed/upgraded your standards/expectations rules-and took a look at the impact around you/checked in?
(Hint-most people live from rules/standards/expectations created from reactions/perceptions formed around the age of six)
Might be time for a review/upgrade ... — Dave Rudbarg

Tengo had no particular desire for other women. What he wanted most of all was uninterrupted free time. If he could have sex on a regular basis, he had nothing more to ask of a woman. He did not welcome the unavoidable responsibility that came with dating a woman his own age, falling in love, and having a sexual relationship. The psychological stages through which one had to pass, the hints regarding various possibilities, the unavoidable collisions of expectations: Tengo hoped to get by without taking on such burdens.
The concept of duty always made Tengo cringe. He had lived his life thus far skillfully avoiding any position that entailed responsibility, and to do so, he was prepared to endure most forms of deprivation. — Haruki Murakami

I recognized that Christianity had taught me that sacrifice is the way of life. I forgot the neighbor who raped me, but I could see that when theology presents Jesus' death as God's sacrifice of his beloved child for the sake of the world, it teaches that the highest love is sacrifice. To make sacrifice or to be sacrificed is virtuous and redemptive.

But what if this is not true? What if nothing, or very little, is saved? What if the consequence of sacrifice is simply pain, the diminishment of life, fragmentation of the soul, abasement, shame? What if the severing of life is merely destructive of life and is not the path of love, courage, trust, and faith? What if the performance of sacrifice is a ritual in which some human beings bear loss and others are protected from accountability or moral expectations? — Rebecca Ann Parker

We're in our own world, and we're in the world that has been given us outside, and the problem is to achieve3 a harmonious relationship between the two. I come into this society, so I've got to live in terms of this society. It's ridiculous not to live in terms of this society because, unless I do, I'm not living. But I mustn't allow this society to dictate to me how I should live. One has to build up one's own system that may violate the expectations of the society, and sometimes society doesn't accept that. But the task of life is to live within the field provided by the society that is really supporting you. — Joseph Campbell

So far are we generally from thinking what we often say of the shortness of life, that at the time when it is necessarily shortest we form projects which we delay to execute, indulge such expectations as nothing but along train of events can gratify, and suffer those passions to gain upon us which are only excusable in the prime of life. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Life isn't all perpetual bliss, nor is it one woeful weeping session. But you can concentrate so hard on noticing moments of one or the other that either a bright outlook or dim expectations becomes your regular illusion. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Being in love can change almost anything: from your expectations and limitations to your very life plans. It's a completely unpredictable force. And how it operates within any particular relationship is a total mystery to anyone outside of that ... — Zack Love

I suppose the most important thing, the heaviest single factor in one's life, is whether one's born male or female. In most societies it determines one's expectations, activities, outlook, ethics, manners - almost everything. Vocabulary. Semiotic usages. Clothing. Even food. Women ... women tend to eat less ... It's extremely hard to separate the innate differences from the learned ones. Even where women participate equally with men in the society, they still after all do all the childbearing, and so most of the child-rearing ... — Ursula K. Le Guin

If you want to change an external part of your life, then you are first required to change the internal beliefs that hold these patterns in place. If you want others to respond to you or your work in different ways and with more appreciation, then examine your expectations for your work and your efforts. When you believe in yourself, chances are others will find your worth also. — Meredith L. Young-Sowers

When you let go of expectations and just dive in, possibilities you couldn't have dreamed of emerge. - L. R. W. Lee — L.R.W. Lee

The main function of System 1 is to maintain and update a model of your personal world, which represents what is normal in it. The model is constructed by associations that link ideas of circumstances, events, actions, and outcomes that co-occur with some regularity, either at the same time or within a relatively short interval. As these links are formed and strengthened, the pattern of associated ideas comes to represent the structure of events in your life, and it determines your interpretation of the present as well as your expectations of the future. — Daniel Kahneman

My expectations from the university were perhaps too idealistic. I had dreams of learning things about innovation and discovery in the field of technology, but all of it hit the ground hard, when I faced with the pathetic reality of the so-called higher education system. To my surprise, I found myself stuck behind the walls of meaningless facts, figures and rankings. It occurred to me that, it was not actually a place for education, rather it was a place where you go to get your head filled with useless undigested information, that you'd probably never use throughout your entire life. It was not education, and moreover, it was definitely not science. — Abhijit Naskar

Addiction" might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates society. Our addiction make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love. These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs. As long as we live within the world's delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests in "the distant country," leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled. In these days of increasing addictions, we have wandered far away from our Father's home. The addicted life can aptly be designated a life lived in "a distant country." It is from there that our cry for deliverance rises up. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

I understood why those who had lived through war or economic disasters, and who had built for themselves a good life and a high standard of living, were rightly proud to be able to provide for their children those things which they themselves had not had. And why their children, inevitably, took those things for granted. It meant that new values and new expectations had crept into our societies along with new standards of living. Hence the materialistic and often greedy and selfish lifestyle of so many young people in the Western world, especially in the United States. — Jane Goodall

Scientific knowledge has taught [humans] much since the days of the Deluge, and it will increase their power still further. And, as for the great necessities of Fate, against which there is no help, they will learn to endure them with resignation. Of what use to them is the mirage of wide acres in the moon, whose harvest no one has ever yet seen? As honest smallholders on this earth they will know how to cultivate their plot in such a way that it supports them. By withdrawing their expectations from the other world and concentrating all their liberated energies into their life on earth, they will probably succeed in achieving a state of things in which life will become tolerable for everyone and civilization no longer oppressive to anyone. Then, with one of our fellow-unbelievers, they will be able to say without regret: 'We leave Heaven to the angels and the sparrows. — Sigmund Freud

A lot of people never find the person God created them to be. They're too busy trying to live up to other people's expectations, or they try to create themselves in the image of a person they admire or envy. Just because we respect someone or think their life might be more exciting than ours doesn't mean God created us to be just like them. Sometimes we have to ignore the people in our lives so we can hear the voice of God ... But making a decision to put someone else first out of love isn't the same thing as putting them first out of fear. Because you're afraid they won't love you if you don't act the way they might want you to. — Nancy Mehl

The mermaids came to me finally, in the pink hours of my life. They are my consolation. For them I dove with arms outstretched, my life streaming out behind me, a leap against all proprieties and expectations, but a leap that was somehow saving and necessary. How can I ever explain or account for that? I dove, and a pair of invisible arms simply appeared, unstinting arms, like the musculature of grace suddenly revealing itself. They caught me after I hit the water, bearing me not to the surface but to the bottom, and only then pulling me up. — Sue Monk Kidd

If you see only goodness in people, then people will be good. — Debasish Mridha

Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents' expectations. This feeling is stronger than any intellectual insight they might have, that it is not a child's task or duty to satisfy his parents needs. No argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in life's earliest periods, and from that they derive their intensity and obduracy. — Alice Miller

She had spent her entire life being what everyone wanted her to be. The perfect daughter, the budding artist, the best friend, the first love. She had been so busy meeting everyone's expectations, in fact, that it had taken her years to remember exactly why it was all one big farce. She was not perfect, far from it, and what you saw on the outside was not what you really were getting. Deep down, she was dirty, and this was the kind of thing that happened to girls like her. — Jodi Picoult

In Star City, where Yuri Gagarin trained, I worked as NASA's Director of Operations in Russia from 2001 to 2003, and I learned to live the local life, really embrace it, in order to understand the people I worked with and be more effective in the role. That experience came in handy when, a decade later, I wound up living and working closely with Russian cosmonauts. Not only did I speak their language, but I knew something about myself: it takes me longer to understand when the culture is not my own, so I have to consciously resist the urge to hurry things along and push my own expectations on others. — Chris Hadfield

He had often felt anguish before, and it would be no wonder if it came at such a moment, when he was preparing, the very next day, having suddenly broken with everything that had drawn him there, to make another sharp turn, entering upon a new, completely unknown path, again quite as lonely as before, having much hope, but not knowing for what, expecting much, too much, from life, but unable himself to define anything either in his expectations or even in his desires. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I started to discover the meaning of happiness when I started to discover
and practice
the art of acceptance. When I started to accept life for what it was and I started to accept whatever situation I was in as the way things were, I started to see that my happiness depended on my own attitude. When I started focusing on getting the most out of my life the way it was rather than trying to turn it into what I thought it should be, I started to realize that I was, indeed, becoming a much happier person. — Tom Walsh

Maybe part of the reason that love becomes such a volatile force in our lives when it's supposed to be so still and beautiful is that we keep reaching for that forever love. We can't just let it be what it is. We try to make feelings and interest sustain themselves for years and years when they just don't have that kind of staying power. But how much of it is a result of our own changing and how much is the fact that forever love comes with so many expectations and too much pressure? What if it's really that nobody is to blame, other than whoever instilled in us the idea that "forever" was the ultimate kind of love? Because what if we stopped expecting and started just being. I think that's what scares people. I think they choose to not love someone because of what it means for the long-term instead of having any interspersed bits of love. But those bits might be all we ever have. It's out of them that the rest grows. — Brianna Wiest

We will introduce an electric car by 2015. It will be a completely new vehicle concept for mega-cities. We would also have it developed if, contrary to expectations, it did not turn a profit in its first life cycle. — Norbert Reithofer

People can have all the expectations that they want, but I know that you never know what's going to happen in life. Everything is part of the journey. — Erin Davie

The themes of Jesus' teaching are important, but of course he was more than a teacher. All the Gospels put the end of his life at the dramatic center of his story. Here all the hopes of Israel come together - he is the king of the Jews, the greatest of all the suffering prophets. Yet Jesus transformed those expectations. He did not lead Israel to victory over Rome. Indeed, one of the remarkable features of the narratives of his last days is that his increasing isolation makes it impossible to identify him with any one 'side' or cause. The Roman governor sentenced him as a Jewish rebel, but the leaders of Judaism also turned against him. He attacked the powerful on behalf of the poor, but in the end the mob too called for his blood. His own disciples ran away; Peter denied him. He did not go to his death agony as a representative of Jews, or of the poor, or of Christians, but alone, and thus, according to Christian faith, as a representative of all. — William C. Placher

Always keep in mind that even your most dreadful expectations, are still nothing more than mere assumptions — Sherif A. El-Mawardy

Life meant reducing expectations and making-do with what one had. What was the point of boo-hooing, as she saw it, when "no man is a prince, except in the imagination"? It was the same thing Marcy had said: "No one is as good as you think they are. — Paula Marantz Cohen

Or it might be better to say that all of us need to flee blindly from time to time so as not to become copies of the world's expectations, and maybe, too, to give us the courage to remember some of those great, bold thoughts that made a child get up in the night, heart pounding, and write down a secret promise for his life. — Fredrik Sjoberg

As it turned out, my greatest fear in life had become expectations. — Julie Murphy

See, the institutions and specialist, experts, you see. Yes, yes,
experts, indeed. See, they would have us believe that there is an order
to art. An explanation. Humans are odd creatures in that way. Always
searching for a formula. Yes, a formula to create an expected norm for
unexplainable greatness. A cook book you might say. Yes, a recipe
book for life, love, and art. However, my dear, let me tell you. Yes,
there is no such thing. Every individual is unique in their own design,
as intended by God himself. We classify, yes, always must we classify,
for if not, then we would be lost, yes lost now wouldn't we?
Classification, order, expectations, but alas, we forget. For what is art,
if not the out word expression of an artist. It is the soul of the artisan
and if his expectations are met, than who are we to judge whether his
work be art or not? — Cristina Marrero

Bitterness grows in us when we fail to see the trouble and pain in our lives from God's point of view, and when our expectations of what life should be diverge from the reality of what life really is. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

History lessons remind us that the states in which we live, their institutions, even their laws, have come to us through conflict, often of the most bloodthirsty sort. Our daily diet of news brings us reports of the shedding of blood, often in regions quite close to our homelands, in circumstances that deny our conception of cultural normality altogether. We succeed, all the same, in consigning the lessons both of history and of reportage to a special and separate category of "otherness" which invalidate our expectations of how our own world will be tomorrow and the day after not at all. Our institutions and our laws, we tell ourselves, have set the human potentiality for violence about with such restraints that violence in everyday life will be punished as criminal by our laws, while its use by our institutions of state will take the particular form of "civilised warfare. — Steven Pinker

Your life will follow your expectations. What you expect is what you will get. If you dwell on positive thoughts, you will move in that direction; if you continually think negative thoughts, you will live a negative life. — Joel Osteen