I notice that I have a natural attitude of having a positive perspective on the future. I always expect the best. Sure, I might worry about something coming up next week or be nervous about something but in general, I expect all my dreams to come true. I know that's not reality for everyone and I'm so grateful for this attitude.

However, it creates really high expectations. Sometimes they're not fulfilled. It hurts. Yet, I don't want to lower my expectations because they're so sweet in the meantime. At the same time, it's the gap between expectations and reality that creates unhappiness. These are two of the solutions I've found to this paradox, so far:

Be general and more emotional based in your expectations. Don't latch onto details or to what other people should or shouldn't do. Keep it to a feeling and to the things that you yourself can actually do something about.
When the expectations are no longer in the future, but in your present moment, let them go and be with what is, no matter what that might be.

Do you agree? How do handle expectations that make you trip in the present?

With all my love,
Helena

For a couple of years during my teens I was a part of Christian community through I choir I was singing in. As I remember it, focus was sin. Probably not correct but this is how I remember it and as a consequence of this shame focus I left religion all together. Today I have a stronger spiritual connection than ever in my life and I've also reevaluated the meaning of sin. I didn't need religion to do that.

God doesn't want us to sin because it hurts us. That's it. We are not meant to sin because it hurts. I heard someone say, I think it was David Brooks, that sin is when we get our loves out of order. We love a lot of things in our lives. We love life, we love truth, we love being liked, we love food, we love to belong, we love nature, we love being of service. All these loves have an order though, for us to feel good. So when, we gossip, we've confused the order of our love of belonging and our love for truth. Our love for truth is higher so when we gossip to belong we betray our love for truth. When we abuse nature to get to eat what we want we feel bad because we love both but we love nature more and by exploiting it to get the other love, food, it doesn't taste as good as it could.

What do you think of this? The reasoning can get a little confusing maybe, but still, the meaning is the same. Sin is not betraying God, it's betraying ourselves. We can do it as much as we want, but life is more comfortable when we don't.

With all my love,

Helena

Keep your expectations general

The real meaning of sin