Expect what you want

There is something I've come to realize and that is that the way you act and feel about and with other people will have a great effect on how they act and feel toward you. Other people become what you expect them to be.

Expectations
If you expect them to be mean to you, be impersonal, ignore you etc. then you will yourself act in various ways to either counter what bad will come by protecting yourself or avoiding that person all together.

Now if you instead expected that person to be kind and open toward you then you instead would be letting your walls down and meeting that person on the same level.




Choose your thoughts
Taking this a step further; we all have the power to choose what we expect of others. We all have the power to talk to ourselves and change our thoughts and thus our feelings (since our feelings are our guidance system telling us what is good or bad for us individually), and in doing so we can also change our expectations. Not many realize this and it often comes with a renewed sense of empowerment that we have control of our thoughts. That's the power of our mind, to think freely.

Commit to change
So with a little effort on your part you could start turning bad relationships around on the right path with just a change of mind, I assure you that the other person will respond in a different way than you would have expected in the first place... try it. An addition to this can be to state to that person that you now have changed your thinking, this will make it even stronger as you commit to the change. And if the other person will commit too then you're almost home.


When me and my partner have discussed this we have found examples of that only one part in our relationship has to change their thoughts or feelings to the better and it becomes very hard for the other one to stay in the negative field when confronted with a positive one. It's only when both parties are negative that it spirals down.

Expect of yourself
This can also apply to yourself. If you expect of yourself to be a certain way then it paves the way for you to become that person. So if you want to change something you don't really like about yourself or have a dream of who you want to become, make yourself a favor and start expecting yourself to change into that which you want to be.


As always, thanks to my partner, friends, books, blogs and life for these valuable lessons.