I have a dear friend with whom I lived for almost two years at Alta Apartments in Utah. She and I were painfully single and there were times when it really bothered me. I would stay up late fretting about why nobody liked me, or why guy "a" didn't realize that I was the coolest person ever, or why so many of the guys I knew were lame, etc etc... very productive thinking, as you can see. ;) At times like these, my friend would sometimes repeat to me her former roommate's motto before she got married around the age of 29. It was "release expectations and open to the possibilities".
It wasn't until the last six months that I started to think seriously about what this phrase meant. By releasing expectations in dating you automatically open yourself up to the idea of potentially being interested in anyone at any time... It gives you permission to consider a guy (or gal) that you otherwise probably wouldn't, to explore and to let life surprise you. I realized after a few months or weeks of thinking about this, that adopting this mantra also allows you to give yourself permission to be happy, even when single. Honestly, when I really started to take this phrase in a lot of the dating pressures I had felt through most of my young-adult seemed to be released just like steam is released from a pressure cooker. My outlook improved, I allowed myself to be happy single and I put my energies into worrying about other things, like potential school or my calling.
Within weeks of feeling like I had adopted this motto I went to stake conference and sat down next to a guy from my ward. I had been looking for people I knew to sit with and this was the only guy I could find. We talked for about half an hour before stake conference started and then for perhaps another half hour after stake conference ended. This guy had me intrigued. He was cute and it was SO easy to talk to him.
The following Wednesday at institute he found me after the lesson and we talked for about another hour. He facebook messaged me during the week and at some point caught me online and we started chatting. The next Sunday we ran into each other at a party and ended up talking the whole night and going out for a walk afterwards to talk some more. At some point he invited himself along to a concert I was planning on going to and asked me out for the following Sunday. Except by the time Sunday rolled around we'd already decided we wanted to start dating.
Now, this is a crazy story. Within weeks of adopting this ideology to "release expectation and open to the possibilities" this guy came out of nowhere and after about two weeks of talking to each other we decided to commit to a relationship. It's not that I had never considered this guy as a potential, but we hadn't ever really talked, and I was pretty sure he was considerably younger than me (he was!) so I never really took the idea seriously, yet within weeks of changing my mentality my dating life changed -forever-.
So what's the point? Lately I've been experiencing a lot of anxiety-- the same kind of anxiety I used to feel about dating (or not dating). Anxiety about work, school, play, cleaning my house, you name it. I've become frustrated with my job and seeming stagnation over the last few years. It's something Brennen and I have talked about a lot because it is something that really brings me down sometimes. Brennen has this great ability to be happy, even when things don't relaly seem to be going awesomely. He doesn't base his happiness on how great his job is, he doesn't stress about things if he can't fix them. This mentality is an epiphany to me. Today I was thinking about this and the motto I when I wasn't dating anyone. And what I'm thinking is that perhaps this motto that I adopted while single is also applicable to other areas of my life. Perhaps if I can adopt a "release expectation, open to the possibilities" perspective about my current job then things will look up, I will find ways to be productive and contribute to my work place, and I won't feel like my happiness is entrenched in how interesting my job is (or isn't).
My thoughts are still in the process of settling here, but I'm thinking that this concept makes a lot of sense. If I can learn to be happy in a job where I am woefully overqualified and underpaid, then I can learn to be happy no matter what is going on in my life. It will essentially be me allowing myself not to stress about the little things in life and to remember what is really important-- family, friends, the gospel, my hobbies. And perhaps adopting this attitude will give me a little something extra in job interviews and on job applications that an employer will like. If not, I will be happy anyway, so I don't really lose anything.
