Limit Your Expectation ASAP

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Ironically, we tend to force our self for an unrealistic win more often.We all have an invisible sign hanging from our neck to read “I AM BEST”. To achieve that, what we do stretching our level of  desire,demand and expectations till to infinity, may be sky could be the limit.  Our inner mind is adjuring not to run for this unfair contest of life. Its pity, we rarely hear that.

The most of our problems start with over-expectations. Because we do not get the point what to expect and why. We try rule on our spouse,children future just for the sake of declared us as ‘Successful’, ‘Winner’ ‘Achiever’. We always have a zeal to be best of best.Gradually, this thought spread and control over our feeling in a such a way that we may not see the domino effect of its consequences in our life.

Everyday, we prepare a trail of soliloquy , how to be best in & out.We become helicopter parent or dominating spouse or high ambitious in career or highest scorer in school.Yet, you are upset!! Feeling queasy when your colleague get the double promotion but you get only one.Your kid scored ‘A’ but neighbor kid achieved scholarship with ‘A+’.Still you can not happy with this accolade? If so, there is a possibility , you may suffer with some mental disorder in coming days.

To overcome this problem, what to do? In this regards, I could share a story I recently read.Thich Nhat Hanh a Vietnamese Buddhist monk writes the story of COW in his book  You Are Here.

One day the Buddha was sitting in the wood with 30 or 40 monks. They had an excellent lunch and they were enjoying the company of each other. There was a farmer passing by, and the farmer was very unhappy. He asked the Buddha and the monks whether they had seen his cows passing by. The Buddha said they had not seen any cows passing by.

The farmer said, “Monks, I’m so unhappy. I have twelve cows and I don’t know why they all ran away. I have also a few acres of a sesame seed plantation, and the insects have eaten up everything. I suffer so much I think I am going to kill myself.

The Buddha said, “My friend, we have not seen any cows passing by here. You might like to look for them in the other direction.”

So the farmer thanked him and ran away, and the Buddha turned to his monks and said, “My dear friends, you are the happiest people in the world. You don’t have any cows to lose. If you have too many cows to take care of, you will be very busy.

“That is why, in order to be happy, you have to learn the art of cow releasing. You release the cows one by one. In the beginning, you thought that those cows were essential to your happiness, and you tried to get more and more cows. But now you realize that cows are not really conditions for your happiness; they constitute an obstacle for your happiness. That is why you are determined to release your cows.

Set limit of your expectations asking the question “How much COW do you need to survive in this world?”

We already know this platitude, right? But we have lack of savvy  to run our life with a limited expectations, smaller, realistic needs and goals. And in a turn, release some ‘COWS’ from our life as soon as possible.