The #1 Rule of Happiness is Lower Your Expectations
Why we struggle with high expectations
Happiness is something we all seek, yet it often feels elusive. We believe it will come when we reach a certain milestone, meet the right person, or achieve a particular goal. But what if the key to happiness isn’t about adding more to our lives but rather shifting our perspective?
Richard Feynman, the legendary physicist, once said, “You do not find a happy life. You make it.” This statement captures a fundamental truth: happiness isn’t something that simply happens to us. It’s something we cultivate through our mindset and daily choices.
One of the most powerful ways to create happiness is to lower your expectations.
This may seem counterintuitive at first. After all, aren’t high expectations necessary for success and fulfillment? While ambition and drive are important, unrealistic expectations—especially about how others should behave—can be the biggest barriers to happiness.
Let’s explore why high expectations often lead to disappointment, how adjusting them can transform your happiness, and practical ways to shift your mindset.
Why High Expectations Lead to Unhappiness
When we place rigid expectations on people, events, or outcomes, we create rules about how life should be. The problem? Life rarely follows our script.
People will break your rules.
When you expect people to behave a certain way—whether it’s a friend always remembering your birthday, a partner reading your mind, or colleagues acknowledging your hard work—you set yourself up for disappointment. People operate based on their own perceptions, priorities, and limitations. They may not even be aware of your expectations, let alone intentionally trying to meet them.Unrealistic expectations create unnecessary suffering.
Expecting everything to go smoothly, people to always be kind, and circumstances to align perfectly is a recipe for frustration. The more rules you have for how things should be, the more you notice when reality doesn’t match. This creates resentment, anger, and sadness.You give away your power.
When your happiness depends on external factors—how someone treats you, how well an event goes, or whether a plan unfolds as expected—you surrender control. Instead of being the architect of your happiness, you become a victim of circumstances.
My Own Struggle with Expectations
I’ll be the first to admit — I have a habit of expecting people to do the right thing, despite years of evidence to the contrary.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought, This time, they’ll show up. This time, they’ll do what they promised. This time, they’ll finally understand how their actions affect others.
And time after time, I’ve been disappointed.
There was a point where I found myself in an exhausting cycle of frustration and resentment. I would get my hopes up, only to be let down again. It wasn’t even about huge betrayals—just small, repeated patterns of people failing to meet the expectations I had in my mind.
I finally had to ask myself: Why do I keep expecting something different when history has shown me otherwise?
The truth was, I wasn’t unhappy because people were unreliable—I was unhappy because I kept expecting them not to be.
That realization changed everything.
I started accepting people for who they were instead of who I wished they’d be. I stopped wasting energy being disappointed and started focusing on the actions I could control—my own boundaries, choices, and responses.
And you know what? I felt lighter. Freer. Happier.
How Lowering Expectations Increases Happiness
Lowering expectations doesn’t mean settling for less or giving up on dreams. It means approaching life with flexibility and openness rather than rigid demands. Here’s how adjusting expectations can lead to greater happiness:
More gratitude, less disappointment.
When you expect little, you appreciate more. If you anticipate that traffic will be bad, you’re pleasantly surprised when it’s light. If you expect nothing from others, even small gestures feel like gifts. Gratitude naturally increases when you stop assuming that life owes you something.Improved relationships.
Letting go of expectations allows you to accept people as they are, not as you wish them to be. Instead of feeling let down when a friend cancels plans, you focus on the times they do show up. This shift fosters deeper connections, free from resentment.Greater emotional resilience.
Life is unpredictable. By lowering expectations, you become more adaptable. Instead of feeling crushed when things don’t go as planned, you pivot and find alternative solutions. This resilience is key to lasting happiness.Freedom from entitlement.
Entitlement—the belief that life should be a certain way—creates chronic dissatisfaction. When you stop expecting that others must behave a certain way or that the universe owes you anything, you free yourself from constant disappointment.A sense of inner peace.
The fewer conditions you place on happiness, the more content you feel in the present moment. Instead of needing life to align perfectly, you find joy in what is rather than what should be.
How to Lower Your Expectations Without Lowering Your Standards
A common misconception is that lowering expectations means lowering standards. In reality, you can maintain high personal standards while releasing attachment to how things must unfold. Here’s how:
Focus on effort, not outcome.
Instead of expecting a specific result, value the process. For example, if you’re working toward a fitness goal, focus on consistency rather than a particular number on the scale. This makes progress more fulfilling.Separate expectations from desires.
It’s okay to want people to be kind or situations to go smoothly. The key is not expecting it as a requirement for your happiness. If it happens, great! If not, you remain unshaken.Practice radical acceptance.
Accept people and situations as they are, not as you wish they were. This doesn’t mean you approve of bad behavior, but you stop being emotionally tied to changing things outside your control.Adopt a “let’s see” attitude.
Instead of assuming things will go perfectly (or terribly), approach life with curiosity. When faced with uncertainty, say, “Let’s see how this unfolds.” This mindset reduces stress and keeps you open to possibilities.Detach from specific timelines.
Often, we expect things to happen within a set timeframe—success by 30, marriage by 35, retirement by 50. Life rarely follows these schedules. By loosening expectations around timing, you reduce anxiety and increase appreciation for the journey.
The Happiness Formula: Fewer Rules, More Joy
At its core, happiness isn’t about what happens to us but how we interpret and respond to life. The fewer rules we impose on happiness—“I’ll be happy when I get that job, when my partner acts a certain way, when people acknowledge me”—the freer we become.
By lowering expectations, we don’t lower our joy. We amplify it.
So, the next time you feel frustrated, ask yourself:
Am I upset because reality is unfair, or because it’s not meeting my expectations?
Is this a true problem, or just something I expected to go differently?
What happens if I let go of this expectation?
The answer might just be happiness.
Beautiful article, Debi! I relate to it so much that I felt like I might have written it. You did a wonderful job with it.