Expectations - Transform you life by living it with no expectations

Posted on March 12, 2022 by Laura Pichardo, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

I recently learned a transformative lesson: Live your life with no expectations. Which is essentially like the old saying…we plan, God laughs.

This photo above was taken of me 7yrs ago – the start of a really dark time for me. I was moving back to the east coast, disappointed in myself because my venture to the west didn’t go as expected. I struggled with that disappointed in myself for the next 6yrs. When I look back at that time now and what I gained from it, I now understand why my life unfolded the way it did.

Many of us have an expectation of how our lives are going to go and we do this to keep our mind at ease. We know exactly what to do and how to prepare, but when something doesn’t work out – the career you’ve spent so many years building makes you miserable or you’re [ENTER YOUR AGE] and still not married or have children – You feel like you’ve failed, you might feel lost in life, or even worse you may think there’s something wrong with you. When you do this you’re allowing life to happen to you, rather than letting go of your expectations and living life.

When you move through your life with no expectations of how things are going to turn out this doesn’t mean you can’t have a plan or have goals, this means you’re open to whatever life throws at you with no judgement. Maybe you had to stick it out in that job you hated to find your true passion, or maybe you’ve been single all these years because you would’ve put your dreams aside to make someone else happy.

There’s a reason why things happen the way that they do and if you allow your expectations to get in the way, you’ll delay your inner growth and miss the beauty in life.

When I moved from Boston to Los Angeles I had the expectation that within a few months I would land my dream job in a boutique entertainment PR firm and within 2yrs land a job with a major entertainment company working in their PR department. I literally wanted to live Andrea Sachs life from The Devil Wears Prada.

The moment I arrived in LA I started to hustle hard and get my foot in as many doors as I could, and within a year I finally got my dream job…PR Coordinator for a boutique entertainment PR firm! It took a bit longer than expected but I finally got there and was ready to get to work! About 7 months later, just like Andrea Sachs, I quit….all I can say is be careful for what you wish for. I wanted my life to be like The Devil Wears Prada and I got exactly that. But unlike Andrea I didn’t land my dream job right after, instead I found my self unemployed (fair to say, I wasn’t working of a Miranda Priestly, so I probably shouldn’t had expected the same outcome). But I was crushed and felt like I failed. I sacrificed a lot to move across country and failed the first moment I got my foot in the door.

I was so scarred from my experience with this PR firm that I never wanted to go back to industry again. For the first time I felt like I failed. I sacrificed so much to move across country and the moment I got my foot in the door, I quit.

I stayed in LA for about a year then decided to moved back east, which bring us back to the photo above. Though I didn’t accomplished what I was expecting to accomplish in LA, I didn’t return empty handed. In LA, I met the love of my life, the partner that I have still until this day and the photographer of this photo. It’s funny because he’s also from the east coast and also went out west to follow a dream that ultimately didn’t work out either. We have this ongoing joke that the only reason we went out west was to find each other.

So if we go back to how we started – we can plan all we want and have an expectation of how it’s going to turn out but God is always going to laugh. Not because you’re going down the wrong path but because he has better plans in mind.

I challenge you to try a day with no expectations and see what comes from it. You may find yourself in more control of your life.