Chasing feelings, not goals.
Expectations create suffering.
Most people believe they are pursuing goals.
They are not.
They are pursuing feelings.
Everything we do in life is ultimately a response to a feeling.
Either:
- we want more of a feeling
- or we want less of a feeling
Most of the time, we are completely unaware that this is what drives us.
And this is where expectations enter the picture.
Expectations are not goals.
Expectations are not decisions.
Expectations are emotional causes.
They are emotional contracts we secretly create.
Contracts between ourselves and something external.
A person.
An achievement.
A status symbol.
A relationship.
A substance.
A future event.
And we expect these things to produce a feeling inside of us.
That is where the problem begins.
Let me give you an example.
If you have ever smoked, you may know exactly what I am talking about.
You are working on a problem.
You get stuck.
You cannot find a solution.
Then you light a cigarette.
You step away.
You smoke.
And suddenly the answer appears.
Many people conclude:
“The cigarette helped me solve the problem.”
“I am more creative when I smoke.”
But that is not what happened.
What happened is something called the incubation effect.
You interrupted a thought pattern.
You stepped away from the problem.
You shifted your attention.
You created distance.
You could have achieved the same outcome by:
- walking outside
- drinking water
- changing rooms
- taking a short break
The cigarette was never the solution.
But something dangerous happened.
You created an anchor.
Problem → Cigarette → Solution
The brain starts building an emotional relationship.
Not with the solution.
With the cigarette.
And eventually you begin believing you need the cigarette to access the outcome.
But you never wanted the cigarette.
You wanted the outcome.
The cigarette simply became the external tool attached to it.
This exact mechanism exists in almost every area of life.
Relationships are no different.
Imagine someone feels lonely.
So they start looking for a partner.
Nothing wrong with that.
Until the expectation appears.
The expectation sounds like this:
“This person will take my loneliness away.”
“This person will complete me.”
“This person will finally make me feel connected.”
Of course nobody says this out loud.
Most people keep these expectations hidden.
Sometimes consciously.
Often unconsciously.
But they are there.
And now something impossible is expected.
The partner is expected to solve an internal state.
But the partner has their own expectations.
Their own longings.
Their own emotional contracts.
And suddenly two people meet.
Not as human beings.
As expectations.
Each secretly waiting for the other to fulfill something they never created.
This is why so many people move through life like lemmings between two walls.
Running.
Searching.
Hoping.
Expecting.
Looking for someone or something that finally produces the feeling they are longing for.
And it doesn’t stop there.
Think back to your first car.
Can you remember how good it felt?
How exciting it was?
How proud you were?
Now ask yourself:
How long did that feeling last?
Weeks?
Months?
A year?
At some point something changed.
You saw a better car.
A faster car.
A newer car.
And suddenly the feeling disappeared.
Then you got the next car.
And the same thing happened again.
This pattern repeats itself throughout our lives.
Different objects.
Different people.
Different achievements.
Same mechanism.
We become trapped in loops.
Believing the next thing will finally deliver what we are looking for.
But the feeling never lasts.
Because the object was never the source.
The expectation was.
And expectations create suffering because they attempt to outsource internal states.
They assign responsibility for our emotional experience to external events.
To external people.
To external outcomes.
And when those outcomes fail to produce what we expected, we suffer.
The solution is not to stop wanting things.
The solution is to become conscious of the contract.
To ask:
What am I actually expecting this person, object, achievement, or event to give me?
What feeling am I trying to create?
And why am I expecting something external to produce it?
Because the moment you see the expectation, you begin to see the loop.
And the moment you see the loop, you stop confusing longing with solutions.
You stop chasing objects.
You start understanding yourself.