unhealthy expectations

Expectations are when you imagine in your mind how something will turn out or how someone will act and assume that you’re correct. We all have conscious or subconscious expectations about almost everyone and every situation in life.

But anticipating that every detail in life will turn out exactly how you want generally leads to discouragement and disappointment. I’m not saying it’s bad to have standards about things like how people treat you or to trust in the knowledge that God will keep His promises! But creating unrealistic expectations for mortal people and situations can set yourself up for frustration.

When unfulfilled or unhealthy expectations involve other people not behaving the way you expect them to, these feelings can also lead to resentment.

Holly Hudson

"Managing Unrealistic Expectations," YA Weekly April 2021

how we know what we know

One of the pillars of philosophy is the examination of how we know what we know. How can we prove that what we believe is true? In most cases, we can’t.

In reality, even many of the things we think of as hard facts aren’t. They’re half-truths. They’re assumptions. They’re misinterpretations. They’re guesses. They’re based on cognitive biases, faulty information, or conditioning. Use science as an example. What we believed five, ten or twenty years ago has since been disproved. We have made radical leaps in understanding and those leaps are continuing every day. What we know today will one day be looked upon as archaic and outdated. 

Gary John Bishop

Unfu*k Yourself: Get out of your head and into your life by Gary John Bishop. Harper One. 2017. p.106