No One Owes Me Anything.

So recently I have been reading a few books. 1) The Mastery of Love, 2) Remembering Wholeness, 3) The 4 Agreements, 4) The 5th Agreement and so on... After reading these books I guess you could say I continue to have personal awakenings. I have been pondering for the last few weeks about the power or Expectations and Choice.

The phrase The Power to Choose has really hit me...the power of choice is just that, POWER, this is one power that we never run out of. It's a catalyst for change. It can either elevate us to heroic heights or it may just hurl us to desperate levels of despair. Emotions are directly related to our choices. When we are mad we are literally choosing to be mad. No one can make you mad, if they can or do then YOU are giving/ letting them have that POWER over you. It's the same with all emotions being sad, angry, jealousy, hate, frustration, revenge...It can also be positive emotions as well happy, excited, love, compassion. People may come into your life that effect or influence the feelings I have, but they are not the one with the POWER to choose what feelings I experience. It really is that easy if we but live in the moment and make each choice in the moment.

Expectations? I have battled with whether this is a word that many consider negative or positive...Could it be both? Is love given or taken away based on the expectations of parents, friends, brothers, sisters? For example a parent raises a child to go to church growing up the child goes every week with the family the parents expect him to go, as the child gets older he/she choose not to go to church any more and parents feel anger, disappointment, frustration & the parents love then becomes conditional upon whether their child does something vs. unconditional love.

I have also pondered whether Personal-Expectation of ones self could be positive as well as negative... it seems as though everyone has expectations of themselves (I do) I have heard over and over again people with the beat up stick out saying "I'm not good enough" because they feel like they aren't living up to their own personal expectations, which causes guilt, self- pity and playing the victim to our own self-expectations. Sometimes it just feels like it’s way too much pressure.

As a boss it has been hard not to have expectations of my employee's. I am letting go everyday of those expectations because with them I walk into work everyday disappointed and angry that things weren't done a certain way. What I have realized is when they ask me what I expect of them instead I am able to give them an objective and have them explain to me what they would do to accomplish the objective. It's a work in progress but it's just that progress.