Your goals affects perception
According to psychology, having goals is natural, and it is our ability in achieving them that causes us to feel good. Furthermore, the way that reality is presented to us is altered by our desires that we have and expect of ourselves.
There was a psychology experiment made years ago called Selective Attention, the objective of it was basically to present how your desires often blinds you from the reality of what's happening. This experiment reveals two things: that we are missing a lot of what goes on around us, and that we have no idea that we are missing so much.
The Possibility of Desires (Expectations) Leads to Disappointment
The desires that we have in our mind is the cause of splitting the world into positive or negative. Sometimes we have to acknowledge that our desires may have caused us to move forward, or sometimes, it may be an obstacle, for some, it may be so insignificant that it is forgotten.
For instance, some things that are insignificant may perhaps be while you're reading this article, you may have forgotten how comfortable your sofa is, how beautiful the lights are or how soothing the background music is playing.
On the other hand, some of us may have the desire to go out fishing on a weekend, hoping to get a catch, but unfortunately, you came back empty handed.
Then there's also the chaos of the world. What if you did everything right but circumstances still prevented you from achieving that goal? Would you spiral into defeat and self loathing (be honest), or be able to brush it off like it was nothing in the first place?
Having expectations is the source of disappointment, especially if they don’t reflect reality.
Break Free from Disappointment
There are two ways to go about doing that. The first is to expect less. You could be less disappointed in life by expecting less. Practice being grateful for what’s in front of you in the present moment.
The second way is to adjust your expectations and desires to reflect reality. Choose new goals in the light of the fact that reality is ever changing. Rather than expecting concrete outcomes, just move in a positive direction. Rather than expecting positive motion, choose to put in the effort to step forward.
You can’t control reality, but you can slowly reshape your character and mind. Put your goals in those terms, go slow, and then you can’t fail.
Well, perhaps just reading what's above may make you confuse, don't get me wrong, I'm not asking you to lower the expectations on yourself, but the purpose of the above mentioned, is to encourage you to set lower expectations at the beginning and gradually built it up from there.
Let me take myself for an example, I've decided that 2023 is a year for change, and with that, I made myself a promise to start working out in the gym. At first, I told myself that I'll start in January 2023, but I knew, if I were only wait till January, I would perhaps start to procrastinate when January came, therefore, I started heading to the gym in my condo since November 2022 when I decided that change has to happen now. With that, I set a goal of going to the gym every alternate days, and then came January, I realised that on some weeks, I'll be heading to the gym thrice a week, and for some week, it's 4 times a week. Now, that is because of the goal that I told myself to, which is to go on every alternate days.
There came the mid of January, after consistently achieving what I set forth for myself, I decided to move my goals even further now, I started to head to the gym 6 times a week, and the rest is history.
Now, the purpose of me explaining this was to give you an example of setting small goals, celebrate small achievements, make yourself feel good of achieving them, and then set a bigger goal. The aim is to always improve along the way, and not set yourself such high expectations and desires from the start, only to procrastinate or blame it on the situation that doesn't pushes you to achieve them.
Always remember, you cannot change reality, but you can always reshape your character and mind. Set your goals in those terms, go slow and consistent, and that would prevent you from failing.
Putting everything to good use
Desire (having goals and expectations) causes you to interpret your apparent reality through the lens of positives and negatives. Having desire causes you to judge the world, more often as negative, because our desires are very often unrealistic.
That gap between our desires and reality is what causes suffering. We can escape this kind of suffering by renouncing our unrealistic desires, and setting new ones that are more in line with what is possible. Rather than staking our emotional well-being on very specific external outcomes that we can’t ultimately control, we can extrapolate from them some general, internally guided ones.
The ultimate thing we are after is to feel good — to be at peace. Keep living your practical life, but put less emphasis on outcomes, and more emphasis on living each moment mindfully and skillfully.
You can still achieve things, but keep in mind that how you live, think, and feel in the present moment is more important than what you have or will have achieved.