Daily Gratitude: “HAPPINESS is equal to reality minus expectations.”

Isn’t this a different perspective on happiness? I like it though and if we examine it, we’ll see that it’s true.

So often we hope for (expect) something to turn out a certain way. We then focus on that outcome. If things happen in a positive and good way BUT don’t end up happening like we expected them to, then the degree of happiness we have is muted compared to what it would have been if we hadn’t had any hopes or expectations.

Can you remember any instances in your life where this played out? I can.

Let’s say you’re really looking forward to a vacation so you can rest a lot and spend time with your family. You see yourself out hiking or sitting on the beach or shopping in quaint stores.

Turns out it rained or snowed or was cold the whole time you were on vacation. You didn’t get any time hiking or sitting on the beach. The vacation didn’t meet your expectations. But wait a minute – it didn’t meet all your expectations but the first thing I wrote above when I mentioned the vacation was that you could rest and spend time with your family. You got to do all that and maybe got even more of each since you couldn’t go do the other stuff. If you didn’t let your expectations rule your happiness, you’d be really happy with the results. But because of the expectations, your mind discounts the good parts and your vacation is deemed “not so good”, “horrible” or maybe “OK”.

Remember this the next time you set expectations on something. Anything.

Daily Gratitude: “We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”

Wow this is so profound. Each part has gold in it.

Fear manifests itself as hurt because it’s also more “acceptable” to tell someone you’re hurt than it is to say “I’m scared”.

And the imagination part is key. Our imaginations are powerful even when you think you’re not a creative person. Just think about a slight pain you have or had. Pretty soon, it increases. And it’s not long before the worst possible outcome is there in the front of your mind.

In 2025 at Vol State I felt this sharp shooting pain in my foot. Every step i took was like an electrical shock in my foot and up my leg. I can tell you that within 10 steps I had at least 5 major things wrong with my foot.

By the time I was able to hobble over to a place to sit, I was sure my race was over. And of course, all the attendant emotions floated up with that thought.

Turns out it was a metal strip that had somehow punctured the sole of my shoe and gone through the insert and up into my foot. Once it was removed my foot was fine. But my imagination took off prior to having all the facts. Of course that’s a survival mechanism we humans have. If we waited to have all the facts before we acted, we’d get eaten by the big tiger pursuing us.

We just have to recognize these facts and take our time before losing control of our responses. It was a good lesson for me.

Daily Gratitude: “Excellence happens not by accident.
It is a process.”

This is another way to talk about the compound effect.

People are always being critical and envious when it appears someone became a big success “overnight”. What they don’t realize is that the success didn’t happen that way. Many many hours of work have gone into whatever they achieved.

But more importantly, this is a key thing for each of us to remember when it seems things aren’t moving forward. Just keep at it. Each day that you work toward your goal, something happens. There’s progress. But you may not see it and even worse, you may not see it for quite awhile.

If you keep working, though, one day you’ll see the results of that effort. Your first reaction may be that it’s a fluke but it isn’t. It means that all you’ve been doing has actually been having an effect. The more you keep going, the more the effect will show up. There may be plateaus. Realize that that’s exactly what they are, plateaus. The body is integrating all the effort and there will be another peak soon.

Just keep doing what you’re doing. You will get there!