I don't know what source I owe one of my new perspectives to, but I like it, that's why I'm sharing it on here. I recently learned that in most cases, unhappiness ( or negative emotions of any kind) is brought about by the difference between an expectation I hold of a particular situation or person (or myself) compared to my perception of reality.

Now that I've realised this, it would follow that lowering my expectations would lead to being happier (or at least experiencing less negative emotion). Interesting way of looking at things, huh? That means that being easy going and not expecting to achieve much may be a better way to go than being hard on yourself and others. This just makes soooo much sense to me, yet how do I go about lowering or even dropping my expectations?

Normally the first stage after identifying a problematic expectation - e.g. one that causes distress is to work out how rational the chain of thoughts starting from the triggering event to the eventual conclusion that brings about the particular bout of misery. I know many of my female friends have this same expectation, so I'll give this example:
Lets say that you have an expectation to get a response from your boyfriend on either a missed call or text message within 2 hours, after which if you don't hear from him, you might allow for a certain number of events to occur without drawing negative conclusions, but if none of those occur, you end up feeling that he does not really care about you as much as you need him to.

It becomes really really easy to let go of an expectation after

There’s one simple reason I’ve decided to add the Law of Attraction to my belief system – it is THE single most empowering belief I have stumbled across in my life thus far.
I comprehend that the objective nature of reality can never be proven, as there’s only one thing we know for certain about reality – I think, and therefore I am. More than this I will never know for certain within the constraints of my current perception of my reality. Therefore, in a world that can only ever be subjective in nature, where our beliefs form the basis of the reality and circumstances we are capable of perceiving, my rational choice is to live in a world where I have complete control of the outcome.

I'm still at the office (yes I have a normal 9 to 5 office job!! Still working on generating that passive income ;)), just about getting ready to leave for the day and start my weekend, but decided to first add another blog entry to my site. It's quite funny how simply coming up with something to write about can be the hardest part of a new blog entry for me!

I'm on a bit of a mission to be an all round happier person these days so whenever I get the chance to think about something willingly my mind always jumps to thoughts about improving my life - most specifically my day to day feelings and attitude. Today's little thought is - would it be possible for me start behaving in such away as to no longer have any regrets? I'm talking about fairly substantial regrets that if you had a choice you would go about differently and even wish you had the opportunity to go back and undo things.

Fortunately for me, not many of those have come along, and most of my regrets in my life have revolved around relationships - both with family and romantic relationships. Somehow, any mistakes I might make relating to other aspects of my life, doesn't quite qualify for classification as a regret. Altogether I've had three such regrets thus far. Two of those relate to romantic relationships and the other the relationship I had with my father, especially towards the last few years of his life.

I'm not about to go into any sort of depth into any of the stories, but I would like to touch on what I believe the real cause of the regret has been each time. Starting with my first regret in life, this happened roughly towards the early part of 2005. I basically found myself regretting entering into a relationship with someone in the first place. Based on an array of feelings that occurred over the course of this relationship, I regret the judgment I had formed of this person's character as I was completely wrong in my perception. As a result I paid a heavy price and felt that I had gained nothing from the experience. I even refused to let it change my outlook in life. I refused to learn and benefit indirectly from this experience! I guess where that leaves me today is - everyone makes mistakes and they're difficult to avoid if you choose to live life fully. I'm not going to go and put myself into a cage! ;)

My next regret came along towards the end of 2006. From this experience I have definitely learned, and learned the hard way, that is! This is by far my biggest regret in life. My regret is that I failed to ever step out of my shoes as a daughther and relate to my father as a fellow human being. So, even though my father passed away when I was already an adult (aged 26), my relationship with him didn't evolve at the same pace I did and I'm sure he did too. It's like what we had at the time of his death was just based on a shell of the father daughter relationship we had with me as a young adult while I was still living in South Africa. I basically lived my life on auto-pilot, so as time went by with me living in the UK, we spoke on the phone less and less and I never paid any conscious attention to cultivating a better relationship with him, despite knowing at the back of my head that he didn't have much time. I really question and fail to understand how I had not thought about this. I only really needed to think about it a little bit more than I did, and I would've awoken from the bubbled existence I seemed to have had back then. Even though this was a hard lesson for me to learn, it is the main reason I've become so passionate about living life consciously and making real choices in life. I don't think any of us really comprehend how easily the unconscious mind takes control of who we are. Sure, I might just be looking for an out, as I obviously am still struggling with major feelings of guilt and regret. But, then again, why would I be so shaken by the experience if I had consciously chosen this? That's my whole point, I never did. Not at the time anyway, but probably somewhere along the way when I was younger.

My last regret once again relates to relationships. This is a rather strange one and I'm not entirely sure why I regret this or even if I really would once enough time passes. I think I regret the fact that I was confronted with a difficult choice and possibly dissapointed someone along the way. I guess it's a little easier to be the one that's hurt rather than having to deal with letting someone else down? In this case, I don't even know if the affected person cared at all, but still just the fact that the possibility exists is enough. I don't know.

Perhaps having regrets means that in essence we do not really fully understand why a certain event had to come about exactly as it did in the first place, but still realising it was all under my control and that I had made a big mistake with some rather unfortunate repercussions!

I guess my verdict on my question, can I live a life without regrets, is that maybe having regrets is not something I should try to avoid as of itself. As a person that takes responsibility for myself and my circumstances it's inevitable that mistakes will be made and regrets will be had. Perhaps it is rather the way I deal with it that needs changing?

I actually have to think quite long and hard to figure out what exactly it is that inspires me. How often do I even feel inspired? Other than the odd inspirational movie, book or person that crosses my path, there's not really much!

Maintaining that inspired feeling is even harder. That feeling of enthusiasm and lust for life is one of the things that makes life so worthwhile and gets the creative juices flowing. I wonder if I could perfect a way to inspire myself consistently and easily? Can I habituate feeling inspired, enthusiastic and excited?

I guess I need to look inwards and think back to the last time I felt inspired. Let me see... that was yesterday afternoon. I thought that I came up with quite a good business idea and couldn't wait to research it to see how plausible the idea really was. In the end, my enthusiasm slowly waned as I realised that what I need is not readily available out there and in the end the amount of effort and associated risk probably meant it wasn't a great idea.

And before then? Hmmm? I'll have to get back to that sometime. Time to go now...

Got some great ideas? Feel free to post them in the forum