How To Lower Your Expectations

To start out, find something you have little to no expectations about but still enjoy. Probably a food source would work best for this. For instance, I chose Taco Bell. It is important that this something is not particularly meaningful nor very good, but still brings you unreasonable joy.

The next step is to pretend like you’ve never experienced the something before. You might need someone to help you with this and you may need to bring up a conversation, for example, strategically before coming upon the something you want to pretend to experience for the first time. Example:

Me: I’m hungry.

The Boyfriend: Well, there’s a Taco Bell right up here.

Me: What is this Tah-ko Bee-al you speak of?

The Boyfriend: Taco Bell. You ask to go there on a daily basis.

Me: I’m sorry, but you must be confusing it with something else; I have never heard of a Tah-ko Bee-al. Will you tell me about it?

The Boyfriend: Okay, what game are we playing that I don’t know about?

Me: *Sigh* Please just tell me about Taco Bell like I don’t know about it.

The Boyfriend (because he is great and humors me): Taco Bell is a fast food restaurant that has various Americanized Mexican foods.

Me: Is it good? (stage whisper) Tell me that it’s bad.

The Boyfriend: Umm, is this turning into a sex game? Because I don’t know if I like where it’s headed if it’s going to involve food that gives you diarrhea.

Me: Just tell me the quality of the food is very low.

(Side note: Step three is happening now! You have to convince yourself that the something you’re about to experience for the first time for pretend is awful.)

The Boyfriend: The quality of the food is very low.

Me: Well, I’m hungry anyway. We may as well give it a shot.

The Boyfriend (pulling into the drive thru): God, you’re weird.

Step four is pretty simple–have the experience. Unless you’re really unlucky and something goes wrong like you find a toe in your burrito then whatever something you take part in will exceed your expectations.

So that’s just laying groundwork for the rest of your life and giving you a fallback experience. Now, repeat steps one through four with increasingly bigger and higher expectationed things. And, as a bonus, whenever someone or something lets you down, you can re-experience that original something. For instance, when I get an email from the Red Cross about a job I was super excited for and envisioned myself in for a few weeks that tells me I am not qualified, I can just go to Taco Bell and be blown away by toe-less tacos.

It’s not really that complicated and I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.

Why is no one employing me to just be a genius? Probably because I can’t spell “genius” without spellchecker.