With every high expectation there is a low expectation. After every victory there is a letdown. With every Blessing there comes a testing. But let it be our motivation to pray more and turn to God.
Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. Colossians 3:2
It is a spiritual as well as a psychological fact: we move toward what we see in our minds. Our lives will follow our expectations.
My thoughts have been on on expectations! Let me explain. Without realizing it, most of us spend much of our time trapped inside the "busy-ness" of daily life. We are effectively unconscious to the world and sleepwalk through our days. Being locked inside such busy-ness can erode a vast chunk of our life by stealing our time. We all have expectations, right? We have low expectations and high expectations. I wrote a list out of some thoughts that detour our thinking about high expectations.
They are: Our Situation Has Lasted So Long, And We Don’t Think It Will Ever Change We put more trust in people than we do God. Our Friends Enable Instead of Empower We Ask God For Just Enough To Get By We have a hard time focusing on what is happening right now We are "running on automatic," without much awareness of what we are doing We rush here and there and never really be attentive to them. We find ourselves preoccupied with the future or the past.
In other words, are we driven by the daily routines that force us to live in our heads rather than in our lives?
Quantity isn't everything, of course. But those who practice mindfulness are also less anxious and stressed, as well as more relaxed, fulfilled and energized, so not only does life seem longer as it slows down and you begin to "show up for it," but it seems happier, too.
God is extremely interested in what we see through our "spiritual eyes." What I mean is this; if we have a vision of victory in our life, we can rise to that new level. But if our gaze is on the ground instead of our possibilities, we are hurling our selves in the wrong direction. If our gaze is on the ground, we are missing great things God wants to do in and though us.
Our life will follow our expectations.
Let me say that one more time.
Our life will follow our expectations.
What we expect is what we are going to get.
EVERYDAY. WE. NEED. TO.KNOW.OUR.EXPECTATIONS.
Don't let them down.
Don't look down.
If we raise our level of expectancy, our vision will be enlarged.
On the opposite side of my list, I made a column of what we can do to help get our expectations back on track.
They are: Appreciate Happiness. Happiness is looking at the same situation with different eyes. Life is happening at this very moment. Tomorrow and yesterday are only thoughts. So make the best of today. Think of all the circumstances or people that make you happy and write them down. Why do they make you happy? Turn off Social Media. This has been the biggest and best action I have taken to help me look up. All the likes, shares and etc. are not going to get us to heaven. Everyone has ups, downs, good days and bad, they just don't share them all with us. So while it may look like they have it all together, I can assure you they don't. I have picked Sunday to turn off all Social Media.
Breathe. I know we are breathing right now, but really whenever you feel tired, angry, stressed, anxious or unhappy, take a breather. I can remember my coach in high school, when our team was getting off track, he would say "go take a 5 minute breather." So we would all go to the water fountain, take a drink, walk back to the gym and then continue on with practice. He was really smart. (Don't tell him I said that!!) You know why? Because when we would get back to the gym, everything that had been really bugging us, didn't seem as big as we thought. So whenever life seems to be getting off track, take time to breathe.
Write in a diary. This one has really help me. I have been writing in a diary every night. I write my goals, my thoughts, what we did for that day. I write down what I am thankful for. I write down what I need to work on. I am telling you what, just this little 5 minute exercise, sure gives me a fresh new look.
Our level of expectation is the level of our faith. If you show me a person with low expections, I will show you a person using very little faith. Show me a person with high expectations, I will show you a person with a lot of faith. We need to remember that we are talking about having our expectations in God. We need to trust in God to take care of us and everything that concerns us.
Our focus everyday should be on higher things. Left our eyes to those things that are Godly.
We will not be able to take earthly things with us, right? So why not focus those things that we CAN take with us.
This week I am choosing to surround myself with people that choose the light of God, that bring optimism. Choosing to find the good and the happy in every situation is hard, but it can be done. I believe that I need to raise the bar, raise my level of expectancy and choose to make the best of my life today.
Running miles on Sunday smiles. Thanks for reading friends. Do you have any ways that help you keep your expectations up? I would love to hear them.
