THE CURSE OF EXPECTATIONS

     I was talking with my friend Fred Knipe (pictured here) about the power of Byron Katie's work, and how beautifully her process called The Work dismantles negative beliefs we hold about ourselves and others and life and death. Once I stop believing those thoughts, my mind clears up and there is no more stress. The story about anxious, frightful life is gone. And I am free to act and create anything I want. Or just relax into quiet bliss.

    Most of my life I have done the opposite. I have scared myself with stressful beliefs about time, death and money. And how people don't "get" me. None of that was ever true. Yet believing it was true made me a negative believer.

    In talking to Fred about all this I whimsically sent him this….something I think I heard Katie say once….or something like this…that would be good words for my tombstone:
                                          Here lies a stressful believer
                                   who created hell on earth for himself
                               and others out of his unquestioned system

     Fred wrote back that that could be on everyone's tombstone, and that they could just start making generic tombstones with those words on it. And then Fred said something profound and strange (and very beautiful):  "The coyote has no tombstone. Because the coyote never has a bad day. Neither does the coyote have a good day. Hungry all day is not a bad day.  Napping all day full of rabbit is not a good day.  Because the coyote has no judgment. He does not evaluate. No "good for me, bad for me". He avoids harm and seeks benefit without evaluation, so for him there is neither time nor eternity.  People are the only ones who evaluate, and they never stop. It may seem a curse, this process of deciding everything, of pushing all experience through a buzz saw which divides into good and bad, but the curse finally lifts when the evaluation machinery is turned back on itself.  When the experience of evaluation becomes the subject of evaluation, it becomes clear that without judgment we would become like the coyote.  Our capacity to enjoy would be shrunk along with our capacity to worry.  How endlessly engaging and thrilling and glorious it is to let things matter when we have finally judged that they truly don't."

     What does Fred know about the coyote? Are you kidding me? He is a four-time Emmy-award winning writer for PBS's show, The Desert Speaks. He has written about all the desert flora and fauna. But never quite this deeply.

     Fred also writes songs and performs comedy for a living, and if you EVER need a good laugh to pick you up, go to his website and click on one of the many hilarious little routines he does there as his comic alter-ego Dr. Ludiker. Go here: www.fredknipe.com.

                                   *   *   *   *

    Stories get in the way of real life experience.  When I teach leadership courses in organizations I contrast two types of leadership:  1) Managing agreements versus 2) Managing expectations.

    Expectations are stories we believe about how others should behave.  The more expectations I have the more I set myself up for disappointment in life.

    But with no expectations, there can be no disappointment, only loving life as it is.

    "I expect you to clean your room!"

    Imagine yourself hearing those words.  A knot forms in your stomach.  Your throat tightens a little.  Your chest feels like someone is pushing on it.  You begin to explore the consequences of rebellion.  Because people rebel against expectation.

    That's why creating agreements is so much more effective.  No expectations, just agreements.  Two people co-author the agreement in the same way that John Lennon and Paul McCartney would co-author a song.

    Parents live in a constant state of anger and anxiety when they expect so much from their children.  I know a woman I will call Courtney who walks around all day riddled with expectations for her children.  She has even more expectations for her husband.  So she is miserable.  And if she died tomorrow her tombstone would say, "DISAPPOINTED."  Because that would sum up her life.

    Take, though, the example of a different wife and mother I know named Alexandra.  Alex has no expectations.  All human behavior is an amusing surprise to her.  And her son's room is clean.  How is that possible?  Because she has an agreement with her son about the room.  She and her son respect each other.  They also like keeping their word with each other.  It's easier to live with confidence and happiness that way.

    Her son's favorite action heroes keep their word, too.  It's a matter of honor and grace.

    The stories we have in our mind about how other people should be keep us from loving them and being amused by them.  Our stories become expectations that convert thoughts to bad feelings and soon the whole body is riddled with expectations like a body riddled with cancer.

    No expectations means no stories and no disappointment.  It keeps the mind clear and open.  The mind that is open will shift, and keep shifting upward in a spiral toward ever higher levels of spirituality and amusement.

    The great novelist Vladimir Nabokov was the first person I know of to point out that a spiral is a liberated circle.  A mind riddled with expectations is nothing more than a vicious circle.  Stories about how others don't appreciate me swirl within this vicious circle.  Soon my mind is stuck and grinding and whining like a sports car stuck in first gear crying out to be shifted.

    My own mind cries out to be shifted when I'm in some vicious circle story about how you should be acting.  SHIFT and the circle is liberated.  It is now a spiral . . . opening languorously upward, in a heavenly swirl and there is no upper limit.

    In the courses I teach on mindshifting I use Nabokov's observation that a spiral is a liberated circle.  I draw the vicious circle of an unshifted mind on the white board.  Then I draw a spiral.  Up from fear and anger and worry and resentment.  Up toward creativity, compassion and spirit.  There is a gold mine up there at the top and beyond the gold mine there is even more . . . things too wonderful to even talk about in linear language, and sentences that have beginnings and endings.

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