“You might not always get what you want, but you always get what you expect.”

Charles Spurgeon

What do you expect from your day? Your relationships? Your life? Whatever it is that you expect, then that is what you will see. Your expectations become the “truths” that you perceive in the world.

Someone once told me “in the mind of the perceiver a perception is a fact.” This is such a vividly true statement and has helped me over the years to learn how to switch out of my own head and see things from a different perspective. In fact, this has likely been one of the most powerful mantras I have ever been gifted with.

The key here is that you learn to recognize that you don’t have to agree with another’s perception, just that from where they sit, what they perceive is reality. It is a fact, a statement of truth. When you learn to accept that another person sees the world differently, framed through the lens of their own expectations and experiences, it allows you to adjust your perspective and see new “truths” that you might otherwise not be open to seeing.

The key to growth, and achieving the life that you want, is to learn to tune your expectations. We are conditioned to see, and perceive, the world through a lens of experiences and expectations. When you realize that what you see might not be “true” at all, but could in fact just be a product of your own expectations, you free your mind for broader understanding.

If you want to tune your inner expectations and ensure that you are achieving all that God put you on this earth to accomplish then building an ability to get outside of your own skin and see the world through different lenses is critical.

I have lyrics for the The Rolling Stones song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” stuck in my head:

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, well, you just might find, you get what you need.”

How do your expectations need to change so you can truly discover what it is that you want?