Manage your expectations
During my retreat, our teacher, Ven. Mahinda recounted a very amusing equation he got from a documentary he watched:
Self Esteem = Success / Expectations
Say you are a car salesman and your aspire to sell 100 cars in a month. If you only succeed in selling 1 car then your self esteem is 1/100 which is very low. However if you expect to sell less cars like 10 or 5 or even just one: then your self esteem is higher, higher and even higher! While this may not be a motivating sales strategy in the capitalist world, it makes a lot of sense in the general daily application.
We need to look closely at our expectations in life. The more greed we have for material things, the harder we need to struggle in order to "create enough successes" so that our self esteem is high. What the equation tells us is that there is another way to boost self esteem: lower your expectations. What do you really need to get by? What do you really need to be contented? Examine your life: are you putting unneccessary stress on resources in an unsustainable way in the name of the pursuit of happiness? Could you possibly still get by comfortably, happily on wanting less? Be honest. You will surprise yourself.
Ven Mahinda joked with the math of the situation: As a good practice, he said, you should bring your expectations down towards nothing, having no expectations, towards zero. He said, "So you know what happens to anything that is divided by zero? It equals to. . . .INFINITY! Infinite self esteem!" Everyone laughed.
This is so true and is bourne out in a way by my simple experience on the first day of the retreat. I remember that I thought we will be given very rudimentary sleeping quarters. I went expecting the bare floor and no aircon. And I accepted that, preparing myself for that situation. Zero expectations. When I saw all the nice mattresses and pillows with blankets and clean bedsheets and pillow cases nicely laid out for us in a nice and quiet aircon room, I was SO HAPPY. I never thought I could be so happy by the sight of these things. The teachers jokingly said that we were staying in "refugee style" but I felt like I was in a 5 star situation! At many points in the retreat, I felt I could live like this always. . . which led me to think about all the other stuff in my room and my life. If we can live so happily without these things, why do we feel we need to keep on accumulating more?
Self Esteem = Success / Expectations
Say you are a car salesman and your aspire to sell 100 cars in a month. If you only succeed in selling 1 car then your self esteem is 1/100 which is very low. However if you expect to sell less cars like 10 or 5 or even just one: then your self esteem is higher, higher and even higher! While this may not be a motivating sales strategy in the capitalist world, it makes a lot of sense in the general daily application.
We need to look closely at our expectations in life. The more greed we have for material things, the harder we need to struggle in order to "create enough successes" so that our self esteem is high. What the equation tells us is that there is another way to boost self esteem: lower your expectations. What do you really need to get by? What do you really need to be contented? Examine your life: are you putting unneccessary stress on resources in an unsustainable way in the name of the pursuit of happiness? Could you possibly still get by comfortably, happily on wanting less? Be honest. You will surprise yourself.
Ven Mahinda joked with the math of the situation: As a good practice, he said, you should bring your expectations down towards nothing, having no expectations, towards zero. He said, "So you know what happens to anything that is divided by zero? It equals to. . . .INFINITY! Infinite self esteem!" Everyone laughed.
This is so true and is bourne out in a way by my simple experience on the first day of the retreat. I remember that I thought we will be given very rudimentary sleeping quarters. I went expecting the bare floor and no aircon. And I accepted that, preparing myself for that situation. Zero expectations. When I saw all the nice mattresses and pillows with blankets and clean bedsheets and pillow cases nicely laid out for us in a nice and quiet aircon room, I was SO HAPPY. I never thought I could be so happy by the sight of these things. The teachers jokingly said that we were staying in "refugee style" but I felt like I was in a 5 star situation! At many points in the retreat, I felt I could live like this always. . . which led me to think about all the other stuff in my room and my life. If we can live so happily without these things, why do we feel we need to keep on accumulating more?
