One of the craziest things that I hear is when people tell me that they always expect the worst so they will never be disappointed. They somehow think this protects them against a level of hurt. It actually does the opposite. How do you think it feels to go throw life constantly expecting it to go to hell. Not very good. In addition, it shows how little these well-intentioned folks know about how life works. Even putting aside the law of attraction, let us look athte scientific basis as to why this is not your best is not your best course of action.
The brain has something called the ‘reticular activating system’. In simpler terms, think of it as a filter. It tells your conscious mind what is important to notice. We are exposed to millions of bits of information every second. What sounds are around us, how our clothing feels against our skin, how our neighbor smells or how we smell. Plus a million other things. If we tried to focus on them all, we would go crazy in a short period of time. Therefore, there is this miraclous part of our brain that picks and chooses what is important. The easy example I use for this is when you buy a certain kind of car, or are even thinking of buying a certain kind of car. Suddenly, you see that car everywhere! Did the world suddenly make more of the very car you had purchased or were thinking of purchasing? The answer is both yes and no. No obviously the actual quantity of these cars had not increased. It is just that they became more important to you so then you were more likely to notice each one. Yes, because by noticing each one of these cars, in essence, that increased the amount of them in your reality.
What does seeing more of a car have to do with the secrets to an amazing life? Plenty. The reticular activating system uses the same methods for lots of things in our life. If your brain is filled with dread and expectation for the worst senerio, guess what you are actually increasing the likelihood of experiencing in your reality? Much like our car example, challenges may not even increase in reality, but they will increase in how they appear in your reality. Just like the world didn’t make more cars, but suddenly you are seeing them everywhere. There isn’t more doom and gloom in the world, you are just noticing more.
You also steal the feeling of positive expectation. Many of these people will tell that having a positive expectation will make you feel more hurt if the thing does not happen. Is that true? Perhaps marginally. If you consider the amount of time we spend on the journey verses the destination, you will begin to see the power in changing the way you travel, or go through life. Most of our life is a journey. If yours is a journey of always expecting the worst to happen, it will be a very somber and unhappy journey. If you life a life of positive expectation, you will live a life filled with optimism and excitement. Even if there is the occasion let down when something doesn’t go quite as you hoped. Then again, if you live a life of positive expectation, you would just assume this detour would be setting you up for a bigger win later on.
You are going to have ups and downs in life no matter what. How you feel between them is based on what attitude you carry with you. That is why Einstein said the most important question is whether we live in a friendly universe. Why? Our answer to that question determines how we will experience this life we are given. As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you are right. ”
