As a born high-sensitive I am not only fast in detecting other people's emotions, but also how and when they change. I also experience it within myself what in means to be alive: Being in a constant change and the everlasting confrontation with my own expectations.
If we look from the outside, our lives are mostly quite balanced. We have more or less fixed tasks that we need to solve during the day and live basically in the same routines. But if we take a look on the inside, then we will notice that almost no one is in a balanced state of routine and stability.
At least I can speak for me: I would never call myself a very constant personaltiy. There are hardly days where not at least one thing concerns me, while another ends in smoke. My life is more like a wild roller coaster than a zen-garden. But still there is a certain balance.
We are allowed to live to see the fullness of live in all its highs and lows.
The interesting part is, that it is not because of certain situations that our emotions are triggered. Because depending on the day, Nathans scratch-trials on me can evoke laughter and another day they make me freak out. The knowledge that we don't underlie situations but emotions has some relief.
The psychologist Julian Rotter was fascinated by the fact that humans, depending on several factors sometimes show a certain behavior and sometimes they don't. In his theory he described the probability of showing a behavior as a function of expectation and reinforcement values (the value, that we attribute to a consequence).
Expectations play a key-role in his theory, because they have the power to decide whether we take action or not. While the value of reinforcement stays pretty much constant, our expectations can shift quite a lot. Expectations determine whether you keep trying or stop. The most exciting thing about this theory for me is not only its plausibility but also the unutterable potential.
What if the things you are dreaming of would be only an expectation away?
What if it is no longer your circumstances or environment determining what you can achieve? What if your expectations could be a tool for your dreams and not an obstacle? How would that feel?
For me it is clear that this finding gives back self-determination. If I am no longer slave of my circumstances then I can become the creator.
Then I can decide for myself if I want to be dragged down by failure or see the potential to grow in it.
Both decisions are valid and both ways are counted among a healthy balance. Everybody has good and worse phases and of course the bad phases won't necessarily end in smoke just because we understood that we are creators. But to move on, we need both. The phases in which we feel energetic and powerful as well as the ones where we feel depressed and overwhelmed.
The art is to acknowledge both sides of the emotional scale and to understand that our expectations can be the key to change our lifes.