Dictatorship of Expectations

I had the pleasure of listening in on a conference type call where well known yoga teacher Judith Lasater spoke about home yoga practices. She had many great ideas about how to improve your personal yoga practice. But more than the ideas about what to do physically in my body and in my home, she said a couple of things that really hit home for me. One of which was how many people have a certain set of expectations in their minds of how their practice needs to be and they become discouraged when they don't meet those expectations.

It seems that there is rarely a time when God is not working on me. I, like many others, am almost always in a season of learning and growing. To add to it, nearly every "holiday season" God has lead me to deepen my relationship with Him through the process of reflection and evaluation and this year had been no different. This year's focus has been all about expectation. To be honest, God has been teaching me the truth about expectations over the last 2 years. Two years ago I never really thought about expectations other than what was expected of me at school or work. But God has shown me how we are constantly living under expectations, both those that are absolute and those that are formulated in our own minds.

I have realized over the last couple of months how much these expectations have negatively impacted my life. Of course not all expectations are bad. Only the ones that you allow to take root and begin to take over your life. I have decided no more! No more will I allow myself to live under the dictatorship of expectations! I have lived long enough feeling bad or guilty or whatever because I did or didn't do something for myself or someone else. I only have this one life on earth. Why should I feel anything but happy about the decisions I make? Life is too short to continue to live the way I have. I know it will take time and a lot of help from God to be freed from this stronghold, but I know it will happen and I will be a much healthier person because of it.