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A wonderful article

Thanks to Marc And Angel Hack Life for this article

The biggest disappointments in our lives are often the result of misplaced expectations.  This is especially true when it comes to our relationships and interactions with others.

Tempering your expectations of other people will greatly reduce unnecessary frustration and suffering, in both your life and theirs, and help you refocus on the things that truly matter.

Which means it’s time to…

1.  STOP EXPECTING THEM TO AGREE WITH YOU.

You deserve to be happy.  You deserve to live a life you are excited about.  Don’t let the opinions of others make you forget that.  You are not in this world to live up to the expectations of others, nor should you feel that others are here to live up to yours.  In fact, the more you approve of your own decisions in life, the less approval you need from everyone else.

You have to dare to be yourself, and follow you own intuition, however frightening or strange that may feel or prove to be.  Don’t compare yourself to others.  Don’t get discouraged by their progress or success.  Follow your own path and stay true to your own purpose.  Success is ultimately about spending your life happily in your own way.

2.  STOP EXPECTING THEM TO RESPECT YOU MORE THAN YOU RESPECT YOURSELF.

True strength is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles.  It’s about having faith and trust in who you are, and a willingness to act upon it.  Decide this minute to never again beg anyone for the love, respect, and attention that you should be showing yourself.

Today, look at yourself in the mirror and say, “I love you, and from now on I’m going to act like it.”  It’s important to be nice to others, but it’s even more important to be nice to yourself.  When you practice self-love and self-respect, you give yourself the opportunity to be happy.  When you are happy, you become a better friend, a better family member, and a better YOU.  (Angel and I discuss this in more detail in the “Self-Love” chapter of 1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.)

3.  STOP EXPECTING (AND NEEDING) THEM TO LIKE YOU.

You might feel unwanted and unworthy to one person, but you are priceless to another.  Don’t ever forget your worth.  Spend time with those who value you.  No matter how good you are to people, there will always be one negative person who criticizes you.  Smile, ignore them, and carry on.

In this crazy world that’s trying to make you like everyone else, the toughest battle you’ll ever have to fight is the battle to be yourself.  And as you’re fighting back, not everyone will like you.  Sometimes people will call you names because you’re “different.”  But that’s perfectly OK.  The things that make you different are the things that make YOU, and the right people will love you for it.

4.  STOP EXPECTING THEM TO FIT YOUR IDEA OF WHO THEY ARE.

Loving and respecting others means allowing them to be themselves.  When you stop expecting people to be a certain way, you can begin to appreciate THEM.

Pay close attention, and respect people for who they are and not for who you want them to be.  We don’t know most people half as well as we believe we do; and truly knowing someone is a big part of what makes them wonderful.  Every human being is remarkable and beautiful; it just takes a patient set of eyes to see it.  The more you get to know someone, the more you will be able to look beyond their appearance and see the beauty of who they truly are.  (Read The Mastery of Love.)

5.  STOP EXPECTING THEM TO KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING.

People can’t read minds.  They will never know how you feel unless you tell them.  Your boss?  Yeah, he doesn’t know you’re hoping for a promotion because you haven’t told him yet.  That cute guy you haven’t talked to because you’re too shy?  Yeah, you guessed it, he hasn’t given you the time of day simply because you haven’t given him the time of day either.

In life, you have to communicate with others regularly and effectively.  And often, you have to open your vocal cords and speak the first words.  You have to tell people what you’re thinking.  It’s as simple as that.

6.  STOP EXPECTING THEM TO SUDDENLY CHANGE.

If there’s a specific behavior someone you care about has that you’re hoping disappears over time, it probably won’t.  If you really need them to change something, be honest and put all the cards on the table so this person knows how you feel and what you need them to do.

For the most part though, you can’t change people and you shouldn’t try.  Either you accept who they are or you choose to live without them.  It’s might sound harsh, but it’s not.  When you try to change people, they often remain the same, but when you don’t try to change them – when you support them and allow them the freedom to be as they are – they gradually change in the most beautiful way.  Because what really changes is the way you see them.  (Read A New Earth.)

7.  STOP EXPECTING THEM TO BE “OK.”

Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle, just like you.  Every smile or sign of strength hides an inner struggle every bit as complex and extraordinary as your own.

Remember that embracing your light doesn’t mean ignoring your dark.  We are measured by our ability to overcome adversities and insecurities, not avoid them.  Supporting, sharing and making contributions to other people is one of life’s greatest rewards.  This happens naturally if we allow it, because we all share very similar dreams, needs and struggles.  Once we accept this, the world then is a place where we can look someone else in the eye and say, “I’m lost and struggling at the moment,” and they can nod and say, “Me too,” and that’s OK.  Because not being “OK” all the time, is perfectly OK.

AFTERTHOUGHTS

People rarely behave exactly the way you want them to.  Hope for the best, but expect less.  And remember, the magnitude of your happiness will be directly proportional to your thoughts and how you choose to think about things.  Even if a situation or relationship doesn’t work out at all, it’s still worth it if it made you feel something new, and if it taught you something new.

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" In the beginning the price of giving great love is risking that it won't be returned. Until you understand, of course, that great love is always returned. With interest " - Mike Dooley

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"Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard". --David McCullough

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"If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him". - By the river Piedra, I sat down and wept

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"Alcohol taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness". -- Oscar Wilde

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"When your soul
Rises into Lips
You feel the kiss
You have wanted" --- Rumi

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"This is one of those cases in which imagination is baffled by the facts".-- Adam Smith

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"History has shown us time and time again that you don't have to know someone to love them with all your heart" - Shannon L.Alder

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"My head'll explode if I continue with this escapism"- Jess. C. Scott, Eyeleash: A blog novel

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"There is never a time or place for TRUE LOVE. It happens accidentally, in a heart beat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment".  -   Sarah Dessen, The truth about forever..

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"Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky, we fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness". - Khalil Gibran

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"Reason lost the battle and all I could do was surrender and accept I was in love"

-Paulo Coelho, The witch of portobello

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When someone you love dies, and you are not expecting it, you don;t lose her at all once, you lose her in pieces over a long time- the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even  from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes- when there's particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever -there comes another day, and another specifically missing part."

-John Irving, A prayer for Owen Meany

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"His eyes are so intense I want to look away....or never look away, I can;t decide".- Kasie West, The Distance Between Us

"When my eyes meet his gaze as we're sitting here staring at each other, time stops. Those eyes are piercing mine, and I can swear at this moment he senses the real me. The one without the attitude, without the facade". - Simone Elkeles, Perfect Chemistry

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"Two things are infinite:the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."- Albert Einstein

"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives." - Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

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“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”-Robert .A. Heinlein, Stranger in Stranger Land

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“People always talk about how hard it can be to remember things - where they left their keys, or the name of an acquaintance - but no one ever talks about how much effort we put into forgetting. I am exhausted from the effort to forget... There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living.”-Stephen Carpenter, Killer

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“You think the dead we loved truly ever leave us? You think that we don't recall them more clearly in times of great trouble?”

-        J.K.Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

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Reputation is what others think of us; character is what God knows of us. When you have spent what feels like eternity trying to repair a few moments of time that destroyed the view others once had of you then you must ask yourself if you have the problem or is it really them? God doesn’t make us try so hard, only enemies do.” –Shannon L Alder

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“I feel too much. That's what's going on.' 'Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?' 'My insides don't match up with my outsides.' 'Do anyone's insides and outsides match up?' 'I don't know. I'm only difference between the inside and outside.' 'But it's worse for me.' 'I wonder if everyone thinks it's worse for him.' 'Probably. But it really is worse for me.”

-Jonathon Saffron Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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“Acknowledge that some moments are just plain awful―desperate and gloomy and painful and miserable and nothing at all but anguish. No truthful, cheerful thought in the world will fix it. So let me cry awhile. Don't try to find a sunbeam where a shroud of darkness encloses me. Let me mourn. Then after the storm, when the tears have run dry and my eyes choose to open, I will look for your rainbow of hope."- Richelle Goodrich

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I AGREE...

“Sensitive people are the most genuine and honest people you will ever meet. There is nothing they won’t tell you about themselves if they trust your kindness. However, the moment you betray them, reject them or devalue them, they become the worse type of person. Unfortunately, they end up hurting themselves in the long run. They don’t want to hurt other people. It is against their very nature. They want to make amends and undo the wrong they did. Their life is a wave of highs and lows. They live with guilt and constant pain over unresolved situations and misunderstandings. They are tortured souls that are not able to live with hatred or being hated. This type of person needs the most love anyone can give them because their soul has been constantly bruised by others. However, despite the tragedy of what they have to go through in life, they remain the most compassionate people worth knowing, and the ones that often become activists for the broken hearted, forgotten and the misunderstood. They are angels with broken wings that only fly when loved.”

 –Shannon L. Alder

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‘WHEN two lovers are making love, and if they are both no-selves, nothingness, then a spontaneous pleasurable sensation happens. Then their body energy, their whole being, loses all identity; they are no more themselves - they have fallen into abyss. But this can happen only for a moment: again they regain, again they start clinging. That's why people become afraid in love.'

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“For God's sake,
let's take the word 'possess'
and put a brick round
its neck and drown it ...
We can't possess one another. 
We can only give
and hazard all we have.”

― Dorothy L. Sayers,    Busman's Honeymoon

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The demonic do things they should avoid and avoid the things they should do… Hypocritical, proud, and arrogant, living in delusion and clinging to their deluded ideas, insatiable in their desires, they pursue unclean ends… Bound on all sides by scheming and anxiety, driven by anger and greed, they amass by any means they can a hoard of money for the satisfaction of their cravings… Self-important, obstinate, swept away by the pride of wealth, they ostentatiously perform sacrifices without any regard for their purpose. Egotistical, violent, arrogant, lustful, angry, envious of everyone, they abuse my presence within their own bodies and in the bodies of others.

 

-Bhagwad Gita

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“So much of the language of love was like that:
you devoured someone with your eyes,
you drank in the sight of him,
you swallowed him whole.
Love was substance,
broken down and
beating through your bloodstream.”

― Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes

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My image is me.
I talk for myself.
I didn't become this
person others
wanted me to be.

Monica Denise Brown


 

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No one has ever loved

anyone the way

everyone wants to be

loved.

Mignon McLaughlin
 

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Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.

Albert Einstein

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“Acquire knowledge, it enables its professor to distinguish right from wrong; it lights the way to heaven. It is our friend in the desert, our company in solitude and companion when friendless. It guides us to happiness, it sustains us in misery, it is an ornament amongst friends and an armour against enemies.”

 

-The Quran

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“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

-Jane Austin, Pride and Prejudice

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Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you like in there and see a man who wont cheat, then you know he never will.

John D MacDonald

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Few quotes on sex

Don’t knock masturbation — it’s sex with someone I love. Woody Allen

Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place. Billy Crystal

There is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don’t need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal, picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain. Audrey Hepburn

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“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”

Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

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“I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.”  
LisaKlepas,BlueEyed Devil  
 

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“Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! - an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects their deepest vision of themselves, the person whose surrender permits them to experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem .. Love is our response to our highest values - and can be nothing else.” 

-Ayn Rand

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SIDE EFFECTS OF LOVING A SOLDIER...!!!

Loving a soldier is not just a feeling, it becomes a "way of life..!!!" because Fauji's are ordinary men with some really extra-ordinary habits.
In a course to get acquainted to such habits you get to learn many new things and habits...

Here are some such examples...

1) When your friends cry for their boyfriends when they are away, you actually feel irritated... because for you separation of months is obvious.

2) He is the most pathetically talented person, you have ever met..!!!
I mean from BUNKERS to BALLROOM he is good at everything..!!

3) You often hold his hands while walking in a mall or such place. Not out of love but because you are scared he might get lost in a place like that..!!!

4) Everytime your sweetheart gets a new posting, you almost run for an atlas to understand where the hell is he exactly going..??? [i really don't understand from where do these fauji's find such unearthly places to get posted... lol..

5) For you now, going to pune is going to Khadakwasla or Kirkee, going to Indore means reaching Mhow... and so on...

6) There are times when you actually need to settle for the fact, that he loves his ROYAL ENFIELD and UNIFORM more than you..!!!

7) Whenever you are invited for a couple entry party. Your heart aches because he is never there to accompany you..!!!

8)When your girl friends gossip how fierce riders their boyfriends are, you actually start wondering... "Mera wala toh tank chalata hai..!!!"

9) Your neend(sleep) always "HARAAM"(forbidden or disturbed) because he calls you at the most unexpected hours...!!! [:p]

 

10) You have also got into habit of telling distance in meters instead of kilometers or time[5 min. ka rasta hai.. types] because he does that..!!! [You know i go jogging for 10 rounds, 500m each every morning..

11) At times you actually envy his unit friends and their families because they get to spend more time with him than you.

12) He has knowledge about food and taste of almost every state. Actually he has a ability to eat anything and everything, I mean saap, bicchoo, kekda... [lol.. hard to believe but yes its true... :]

13) You never have to advice him what to wear when, because most of his parties come with a dress-code....

14) No matter you buy him a Versace, Gucci, Armani or any top notch brand. He will always look the best in his "Olive Green" (Belive me...!!..Simply Killing)

15) You don't demand for any pearls or diamonds, his presence on your birthday is good enough to put you on Cloud-9.

16) Songs like "aoge jab tum o saajna...", "piya basanti re..." and "ye dooriyaan..." make you super-senti...

17) Everytime your phone rings, you hope its his call...

18) On a Date you never have to wait like other girls, because your soldier is always super-punctual and is there on time...!!!

19) Now you know things like "Clock-ray method", "Contours", "Endurance run", "ragda" and sooo... on... These are the things which other people don't understand...

20) Every morning you wake up with thousand complains, but at night you sleep peacefully thinking "tedha hai... par mera hai...!!!" And you love him more...

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WHY GENERATION Y YUPPIES ARE UNHAPPY??????

Say hi to Lucy.
Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She's also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y.
I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group -- I call them Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story.
So Lucy's enjoying her GYPSY life, and she's very pleased to be Lucy. Only issue is this one thing:
Lucy's kind of unhappy.
To get to the bottom of why, we need to define what makes someone happy or unhappy in the first place. It comes down to a simple formula:


It's pretty straightforward -- when the reality of someone's life is better than they had expected, they're happy. When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they're unhappy.
To provide some context, let's start by bringing Lucy's parents into the discussion:
Lucy's parents were born in the '50s -- they're Baby Boomers. They were raised by Lucy's grandparents, members of the G.I. Generation, or "the Greatest Generation," who grew up during the Great Depression and fought in World War II, and were most definitely not GYPSYs.


Lucy's Depression Era grandparents were obsessed with economic security and raised her parents to build practical, secure careers. They wanted her parents' careers to have greener grass than their own, and Lucy's parents were brought up to envision a prosperous and stable career for themselves. Something like this:
They were taught that there was nothing stopping them from getting to that lush, green lawn of a career, but that they'd need to put in years of hard work to make it happen.
After graduating from being insufferable hippies, Lucy's parents embarked on their careers. As the '70s, '80s, and '90s rolled along, the world entered a time of unprecedented economic prosperity. Lucy's parents did even better than they expected to. This left them feeling gratified and optimistic.

With a smoother, more positive life experience than that of their own parents, Lucy's parents raised Lucy with a sense of optimism and unbounded possibility. And they weren't alone. Baby Boomers all around the country and world told their Gen Y kids that they could be whatever they wanted to be, instilling the special protagonist identity deep within their psyches.
This left GYPSYs feeling tremendously hopeful about their careers, to the point where their parents' goals of a green lawn of secure prosperity didn't really do it for them. A GYPSY-worthy lawn has flowers.
This leads to our first fact about GYPSYs:
GYPSYs Are Wildly Ambitious
The GYPSY needs a lot more from a career than a nice green lawn of prosperity and security. The fact is, a green lawn isn't quite exceptional or unique enough for a GYPSY. Where the Baby Boomers wanted to live The American Dream, GYPSYs want to live Their Own Personal Dream.
Cal Newport points out that "follow your passion" is a catchphrase that has only gotten going in the last 20 years, according to Google's Ngram viewer, a tool that shows how prominently a given phrase appears in English print over any period of time. The same Ngram viewer shows that the phrase "a secure career" has gone out of style, just as the phrase "a fulfilling career" has gotten hot.



To be clear, GYPSYs want economic prosperity just like their parents did -- they just also want to be fulfilled by their career in a way their parents didn't think about as much.
But something else is happening too. While the career goals of Gen Y as a whole have become much more particular and ambitious, Lucy has been given a second message throughout her childhood as well:

This would probably be a good time to bring in our second fact about GYPSYs:
GYPSYs Are Delusional
"Sure," Lucy has been taught, "everyone will go and get themselves some fulfilling career, but I am unusually wonderful and as such, my career and life path will stand out amongst the crowd." So on top of the generation as a whole having the bold goal of a flowery career lawn, each individual GYPSY thinks that he or she is destined for something even better --
A shiny unicorn on top of the flowery lawn.



So why is this delusional? Because this is what all GYPSYs think, which defies the definition of special:

spe-cial | 'speSHel |
adjective
better, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual.

According to this definition, most people are not special -- otherwise "special" wouldn't mean anything.
Even right now, the GYPSYs reading this are thinking, "Good point... but I actually am one of the few special ones" -- and this is the problem.
A second GYPSY delusion comes into play once the GYPSY enters the job market. While Lucy's parents' expectation was that many years of hard work would eventually lead to a great career, Lucy considers a great career an obvious given for someone as exceptional as she, and for her it's just a matter of time and choosing which way to go. Her pre-workforce expectations look something like this:


Unfortunately, the funny thing about the world is that it turns out to not be that easy of a place, and the weird thing about careers is that they're actually quite hard. Great careers take years of blood, sweat and tears to build -- even the ones with no flowers or unicorns on them -- and even the most successful people are rarely doing anything that great in their early or mid-20s.
But GYPSYs aren't about to just accept that.
Paul Harvey, a University of New Hampshire professor and GYPSY expert, has researched this, finding that Gen Y has "unrealistic expectations and a strong resistance toward accepting negative feedback," and "an inflated view of oneself." He says that "a great source of frustration for people with a strong sense of entitlement is unmet expectations. They often feel entitled to a level of respect and rewards that aren't in line with their actual ability and effort levels, and so they might not get the level of respect and rewards they are expecting."
For those hiring members of Gen Y, Harvey suggests asking the interview question, "Do you feel you are generally superior to your coworkers/classmates/etc., and if so, why?" He says that "if the candidate answers yes to the first part but struggles with the 'why,' there may be an entitlement issue. This is because entitlement perceptions are often based on an unfounded sense of superiority and deservingness. They've been led to believe, perhaps through overzealous self-esteem building exercises in their youth, that they are somehow special but often lack any real justification for this belief."
And since the real world has the nerve to consider merit a factor, a few years out of college Lucy finds herself here:
Lucy's extreme ambition, coupled with the arrogance that comes along with being a bit deluded about one's own self-worth, has left her with huge expectations for even the early years out of college. And her reality pales in comparison to those expectations, leaving her "reality - expectations" happy score coming out at a negative.
And it gets even worse. On top of all this, GYPSYs have an extra problem that applies to their whole generation:
GYPSYs Are Taunted
Sure, some people from Lucy's parents' high school or college classes ended up more successful than her parents did. And while they may have heard about some of it from time to time through the grapevine, for the most part they didn't really know what was going on in too many other peoples' careers.
Lucy, on the other hand, finds herself constantly taunted by a modern phenomenon: Facebook Image Crafting.
Social media creates a world for Lucy where A) what everyone else is doing is very out in the open, B) most people present an inflated version of their own existence, and C) the people who chime in the most about their careers are usually those whose careers (or relationships) are going the best, while struggling people tend not to broadcast their situation. This leaves Lucy feeling, incorrectly, like everyone else is doing really well, only adding to her misery:

So that's why Lucy is unhappy, or at the least, feeling a bit frustrated and inadequate. In fact, she's probably started off her career perfectly well, but to her, it feels very disappointing.
Here's my advice for Lucy:
1) Stay wildly ambitious. The current world is bubbling with opportunity for an ambitious person to find flowery, fulfilling success. The specific direction may be unclear, but it'll work itself out -- just dive in somewhere.
2) Stop thinking that you're special. The fact is, right now, you're not special. You're another completely inexperienced young person who doesn't have all that much to offer yet. You can become special by working really hard for a long time.
3) Ignore everyone else. Other people's grass seeming greener is no new concept, but in today's image crafting world, other people's grass looks like a glorious meadow. The truth is that everyone else is just as indecisive, self-doubting, and frustrated as you are, and if you just do your thing, you'll never have any reason to envy others.

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