“Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”
– Henry David Thoreau
You need to lower your expectations
As a teenager I was really excited to watch this movie called Hobo With A Shotgun.
It looked violent and starred Rutger Hauer, a perfect combination.
I went into the film expecting the best movie ever.
When it turned out to be mediocre, at best, I was disappointed.
The only good thing that came from that experience was a valuable lesson.
Happiness comes from low expectations.
Why you should never expect too much
Being too demanding is one of the easiest ways to become disappointed.
I’ve seen hundreds of men rob themselves of happiness from their unrealistic expectations.
You’ve witnessed it too.
Every January the gym fills up with new members.
By February they’ve all vanished.
People go in and expect that riding an exercise bike or doing bicep curls for 15 minutes will turn them into some peak athlete.
After three weeks they get disheartened and quit.
If you are new don’t have big goals
When I first started going to the gym I had lofty plans. I was going to gain 30 pound of muscle in 30 days and look super defined while having 4% body fat.
Those goals were thrown out the window once I discovered that curling 25 pounds was a challenge.
Girls were lifting more than me.
Rather than getting mad I readjusted my expectations.
Learning proper form and showing up every day became my only goals.
Work towards something that you can actually achieve.
You should have a goal, or something to look forward to, but it shouldn’t be so lofty that you can’t achieve it.
If you’re starting an affiliate site, try to earn $10 for your first month.
Don’t put yourself in competition with some guru and then get upset when you weren’t able to do what he, and the whole team of employees backing him, could.
Right now I’m working on my first full-length book on sales and copywriting.
Is my goal to sell one million copies on day one and make The New York Times Best Sellers list?
Of course not, it’s going to be a learning experience.
I’m going to be as successful as I can be, but I’m not losing sleep if the book isn’t some massive hit.
Ideas for setting realistic goals
The best goal, when you’re new to an activity, is to do that activity for an hour every single day.
Do you want to learn Spanish, but don’t know a thing about it?
Buy some tapes and download Duolingo, it’s free, then spend an hour a a night practicing them.
Do you want to get into shape?
Same thing.
Go to the gym for an hour and then read some books on exercise and nutrition.
At the start of your journey there is going to be a whole ton of stuff that you don’t know about.
Chip away at it.
Within a year you’ll have mastered far more than you’d have imagined and you’ll have done so without being stressed out or feeling pressured.