By Kelly Johnston

The price of high expectations: Exploring the idea of living inside our heads and the importance of making it real to contribute to the world.

Action Over Expectation
Expectation can thwart what we do in our lives. When we raise the bar too high we second guess even taking that initial leap from the fertile garden inside our minds to reality. Getting caught in our heads casts the focus away, always aimed at something better, just out of reach. The cruel truth is perfectionism is just as debilitating as carelessness despite expending ten times the amount of energy; you still have nothing to show for it.

We all have equal capacity to give. But there are those of us who live imprisoned by our own minds with all our resourcefulness clamped down kept inside and then those who use their minds as the engine to bring their ideas to life and contribute themselves to the world.

We can have the best intentions in the world, but they don’t mean a thing if we don’t make them real. It’s fascinating that we can have the biggest, most colourful ideas and thoughts and have the most beautiful and intense way of seeing the world. But if we lock ourselves away because of doubt it doesn’t mean a thing.

That’s why we have to at least give ourselves a chance, the smallest thing we can give to anybody else is a leap ahead of torturing ourselves with expectation.

A thing as simple as being ourselves and embracing that energy we can each bring to the world can make the biggest difference. Allot like living on bated breath or choosing to breathe deep and full feeling everything we are.

High expectations forecast into the future things that we’re not seeing in our present realities –where they became unobtainable and we sabotage ourselves to align with our focus.

The anticipation of what we bring into the world, the judgement pertaining value, gets us stuck.
When we become too conscious of creating something ‘good’ it constricts us. We want to excel and as soon as we do, we’re stuck.Caught in the crevice torn between what really is and all we crave and desire.

There’s nothing wrong with a little constructive self-criticism but censoring ourselves too much can be paralysing. Restraining ourselves is worse than having a go, bad or not.

Standards only exist to the degree we put them on ourselves. All that is true is what you actually do, the action you take.
That ‘goodness’ you’re after is in your experimentation with now. It is everything you do and are without all the expectation.

There’s a fine line between ways of thinking that are focussed on playing and creating like a child as opposed to success and expectation that can distract us and is largely exaggerated in society today. Success should happen naturally when we are exploiting every part of who we are, it shouldn’t be the seed of our doubts and hesitations.

We can forget the joy is in the playing; in the creation. If you’re present you realize you have everything you need already. You see the value you sought and it emerges while creating, simultaneously.
‘Blinders’ come with getting serious about the whole process and about needing that value. In fact, the insistence blocks it because you’re denying its existence and effectively casting it away.

It’s healthy to see that the value you’re looking for is in the imperfection. It is in the oblivious approach. The pure ignorance of play and acceptance, as long as you’re expressing yourself genuinely.  That’s why it’s so mocking that someone completely ignorant can create a masterpiece and someone who is concentrating too hard on creating a masterpiece gets trapped inside.

The person simply expressing themselves and what they feel and accepting what comes through is fully present so that ‘gold’ has the chance to come through and isn’t blocked.

It’s about coming back to ourselves again and remembering that reason and dropping everything else.
The reason you’re doing something will likely be more meaningful if you are doing it for reasons not based only on ‘success’ or money. But for reasons as a means to an end, to express and explore yourself and share that something you have to give to the world.

We eventually have to evaluate if it’s worth the judgment of ourselves, because it’s always worth the risk of vulnerability if it’s authentic to us.

You always have to remember where you’re coming from and stay present, not casting your focus off somewhere unobtainable.

Our most basic experimentations and honest experiences of ourselves often correlate with being the most valuable because they come from a place of just exploring and following ourselves and our intuition.

Our best comes through without us even trying when we just embrace who we are.

It’s important to balance ourselves so we’re using the resourcefulness we have within ourselves for whatever action is most genuine to us, that way we can contribute ourselves to the world and that’s one of the best things we can do.