Imagine:

There’s a famous hill close to your location, and lately, you have been seeing many of your friends posting pics of the sunset from its peak, with captions like, “The view was worth the climb.” You are mesmerized and decide to see the sunset yourself as well. So, you set on the 4-hour hike to the top, all determined.

The day finally comes, and you drive to the base of that glorious hill. But by the time you reach there, something looks different. The sky is covered with dark grey cloud, and rain seems around the corner. On your way to the hilltop, you cross a few people on their way back, and everyone is praising the view, so you ignore the clouds. You tell yourself, “If not today, then when?” You rush faster to the top in the fear of missing the glorious view.

But, by the time you reach the top, your fears come true. The sun is behind the clouds and it starts to rain heavily. You are disheartened, with broken expectations, already thinking how you could have saved this hassle of four hours and rather watched a good movie in the comfort of home. In fact, you end up complaining about your experience to others in the coming weeks as well.

This simple phrase, “The view was worth the climb,” often used to express how the goal was worth all the hassle, reflects a great problem today – Expectations.

The Pain of Resistance

Expectations are totally human. We expect an ideal lifestyle, a family of dreams, the perfect job, and so on. Expectations help us navigate life in a certain direction, guiding us through the multitude of day-to-day choices. As such, expectations are good.

The problem lies in our attachment to the expectations. When we hold on to our expectations, the truth is concealed. Expectations cloud our vision. Our emotional investment in our goals hides the truth from us, but the truth cannot be hidden for long.

Eventually, our expectations collide with reality. A subpar job, family tensions, and an overall unexpected lifestyle. We resist the reality, but this only makes things worse. What is the solution then?

A change of attitude. Expect, but do not hold on to your expectations. Embrace the reality as it comes. Live life with the acceptance that life is random. Things just happen, and the best you can do is make the most of every moment. Are we asking you to give up on your dreams? Not at all! In fact, if you are open to see the reality beyond your expectations, you become more resourceful. You start seeing opportunities even in things you could not fathom in your expectations earlier. You allow hope and happiness to spring from everywhere.

Do not be the person who lives for “views worth the climb.” To such a person, a cloudy sunset can nullify the value of a four-hour climb. Let go of the expectation of the ideal sunset. When you let go of the expectations, you open up to the present. You start seeing the beauty that the four-hour climb has to offer, the birds on the trees, the fresh air, and the shade provided by the clouds. In fact, even if it rains at the hilltop, you feel blessed as the raindrops touch your skin, and their sound soothes you. Yes, you could not see the sunset, but that does not stop you from enjoying what the present has to offer.

The Happiness Equation

Mo Gawdat was doing great in life by most societal standards. By 28, he already had a corner office with promotions. At one point, he even bought two vintage Rolls-Royce cars online! After all, he was successful and had the money to do anything to feel happy.

But personally, Mo was depressed. The burden eventually overshadowed the glitter of money, and he quit his executive job at Google at age 51. In his book, Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy, Mo writes:

Happiness is very much like staying fit. You start with the decision that you are going to get fit, you find out how – but knowing that is not enough, you have to go to the gym to work out and eat healthily. To me, the whole topic of happiness is exactly the same. First, you understand that happiness is a choice, that you can actually achieve it, and that there is a method to make it happen. Happiness is not a coincidence, it is not given to you by life, it’s entirely our responsibility.

Mo’s quest for happiness was put to a tougher test when he lost his 21-year son, Ali, to a preventable surgical error. What kept Mo going through such excruciating pain? An engineer by profession, Mo had created a happiness equation:

Your happiness depends on how you perceive reality in comparison to expectations. The higher the perception of reality, the happier you are. The higher the expectations, the lower the happiness.

P.S.: To make further sense of this equation, you can run the previous visualization of sunset on the hilltop through it, and see when someone is bound to be sad vs happy.