Kenton and Mirabelle on Expectations

Description

To get frustrated or stressed, we must build a chain, and expectations can be the weakest link. By removing them, we break the chain.

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods

Video Transcription

[Music]

hello all my friends you've heard me talk about expectation before and don't mean to beat something over the head but this has been coming up with the forest monks out here I think it's such an important thing to recognize because it allows us to stop a chain of mental reaction we all know how reaction works right okay it's a bug-out scenario we go out to our bug-out vehicle and it has a flat tire

oh we start trying to repair that that tire and and we get in we're so flustered that we we back out and we back over the family cat now that adds a new layer of stress to the situation and boom things keep happening and falling apart but we fail to see that usually things are falling apart because we're in reaction mode and our mind is just grasping onto this grasping onto that lashing out at this lashing out at that it's not thinking clearly it's not able to see the situation whether you're bugging out or you're having a conversation with a friend or a loved one or you're trying to solve some kind of problem or puzzle so this part of our mind it's so essential not just for stressful emergency situations but for our daily life that we come into a relationship with that we understand how it works because if we understand how it works we understand the role of expectation yeah it seems complicated but watch this it's actually gonna be kind of simple yeah this is this was I'm gonna recall an instance in the past year where a forest monk got frustrated with mosquitos trying to get some sleep and got really frustrated with mosquitoes and just had an awful terrible night got so angry that his flash yeah a little flashlight with him and it was kind of malfunctioning and honey through it it got lost in the woods all this just bursting out semi-functional headlight so and I think you've been experiencing this too and your emotional journey yeah and it feels like here's the thing it feels like all of a sudden we lose it all right like all sudden were angry all sudden we're frustrated all sudden were filled with anxiety but of course is not true there's a long lead-up we just don't have the mindfulness develop to feel or be censured of that lead up as we become aware of that lead up we can catch it earlier and earlier but that's another video what I want to talk about here is the chain that is necessary to have us explode we're gonna have us fall apart or just to have us react and the really important element to understand in this chain is the element of expectation so that forest monk was reporting that earlier in the night mosquitoes were super super intense but they didn't really bother he was good at dealing with him and you and he did something and just was like okay whatever it's mosquitoes man he came back to camp and decided it was time to fall asleep expectation was injected into the situation now there's an expectation or desire and that desire is not being met because the external the mosquitoes no it's the same external that wasn't bothering him before but now with the addition of expectation that created this immense frustration and falling apart well and then it completely changes and the big difference is expectation goes into that so if we can just have an emotion let's say frustration or anger and we just have it it's going to dissipate very quickly but if we don't want to feel that anger we don't want to feel that frustration it builds right yeah and you've at some point we're gonna you have to do a video and share with people your journey because you've come so leagues with this it's amazing but noticing that this is a chain to get to explosion to get to frustration to get to reaction is a chain of things one thing is some sort of external those mosquitoes the flat tire whatever it is that external it also needs expectation right so if I have a flat tire but I wasn't expecting there to be four whole tires there I'm not surprised I'm not upset I need that expectation and so if we remove the expectation then the externals don't have the same effect on us it's time to go to bed but those mosquitoes they weren't bothering me but going to sleep gonna be hard and then it certs yeah it starts getting hard but the only reason it's not the external it's because we've attached the expectation yep and I want to get to sleep that's being frustrated by the external there's the magic of it so if I if I go out and I just have no expectations of my car starting or not starting or there being a flat tire or not being a flat tire then I cannot be frustrated about it if a person comes home you know if your partner comes home from from work and you expect them to be in a good mood then if they're not you're gonna have reaction you're gonna have frustration if you have no expectations of how they're going to be then there's nothing for the external to attach to and you're probably gonna meet them with compassion and love and then it's not going to turn into a big or a fight we live under this illusion that we need to have these strong expectations that nothing will happen if we don't but oddly when when I put people into survival scenarios or I go into those myself or we're dealing with emotions at home whatever it is it's the expectation that creates the problem yeah like for a while I'm gonna get man today but I will every day and then what happened yeah so releasing expectations it's powerful stuff the outer world the externals don't have the same power over you anymore it's not that they aren't still going to affect you we all have our limits right but this is a huge key - removing pull out your stump I Neal I was pushing I thought it was so hey that's almost kind of a little example all right that didn't really faze you that external if you came out here and you were saying I expect nature to be soft and non pokey and as comfortable as I am inside you could have got kind of upset see I told you nature's there's bees out here and there's things that poke you and there's poison ivy and ah or oh my gosh look at this it's poked right into me so share about this I know I've gone on on about it a lot here but this will change our lives it's so powerful to come into a new relationship with expectation and write in the comments what you think about it because there's a trap here where we feel like I don't have expectations I won't do anything but expectation talked about this in the past holy it like that or expectation holding it like that I hold it like this so much tension I hold it like this it may leave me but I'm not expecting to hold on to it and usually oddly when we don't expect something the thing we're giving up comes to us it's like sleep you were having trouble getting the sleep for a while you wanted to go to sleep really fatty one of the false if you want to fall asleep really bad you can't fall asleep because there's so much tension if you can say you know what I fell asleep I fell asleep if I don't I don't next thing you know

for drifting on so it's not just a way to de-stress ourselves it's actually a way to often achieve our goals or our desires in a very paradoxical sense hope that makes them sense in a paradoxical way again share in the comments your thoughts your experiences with this have you played with expectation and recognize the role that it plays in your life what does it feel like when you change your relationship with an expectation yeah thanks for watching my friends talk with you [Music]