Surrender and maintain standards

“Our source of suffering is always related to our resistance to what is. The soul doesn’t try to control life; the ego does. When your ego is wrapped firmly around a desire, your peace of mind and happiness are held hostage by an obsessive need to control the outcome. After enough pain and suffering, you’ll eventually get the message: If you don’t learn to surrender your will, you will surrender your peace.”- Cheryl Richardson

I believe in developing and maintaining standards. I also believe in surrendering. Our attachment to expectations causes so much suffering and frustration. I offer surrendering or at the very least allow your expectations to change as you continue to engage with purpose and all of who you are.

The real difficulty is letting go of unrealistic expectations. Let’s surrender to what is as opposed to drawing attachment to these thoughts. Like self-love and self-discipline, standards are something that have to be established independently, unlike expectations that can be imposed from a variety of sources including culture and your up bringing. Standards grow out of your values and how you see and carry yourself. Standards are established and then others know how to treat you.

Standards remind me of the flight policy of putting your mask on yourself before you help others. At some point, we have to let go of other people’s expectations. The well wishes and good expectations others put on us should be just that well wishes. Taking the expectations on are another story. They may limit us and go against what comes natural to us. Like the sticker my mom had hanging on our door while I was growing up read, “Vive tu vida, no la mia.” (Live your life, not mine).

It’s up to all of us to manage expectations and maintain the standards we need in our lives. Surrendering to what is, allows us to let go and move from the present. Start by practicing non attachment to expectations, especially the expectations that are put upon us. As Alan Watts expresses eloquently, “Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be.” I believe this opens us up to even more than what we have dreamed up for ourselves.