Your Life is a Unique Experience

Rarely is the young adult adequately equipped emotionally for life.

Family custom and social dictates are embraced trustingly and emulated from early infancy, without evaluating their effects on later development.

Burdened thus with both good and bad, the young adult lumbers on by trial and error - often repeating the same mistakes with moribund monotony.

Full potential is possible, if an individual identifies and sheds those emulations which are restrictive and damaging.

The path would then be open to a lifetime of true greatness of being, hidden in all of us.

The book includes a shortened version for the young reader, titled ‘It’s my life.’

It creates the opportunity for the young reader to seek a common platform with the parent/adult, to build a bridge of understanding and trust.

Extracts from the chapter: Expectations:

Expectations have a bias towards disappointment.
Harbouring expectations of somebody else are always
fraught with danger.
Quite possibly, that person will not even know of your
expectations and will be unpleasantly overwhelmed by
them when they are recognised.
The reaction will most likely be anger, resentment,
sadness and guilt.
Why?
Let us look at some examples of typical expectations:
“You are going to write a good exam tomorrow, aren’t
you? Surely you can solve this problem! It’s about time
you take up some exercise! Shouldn’t you lose some
weight? Why don’t you drive more slowly? Why did you
not use the indicator when you turned the corner?”
These are typical expectations which others may project
onto you.
How do they make you feel?
At the very least, you will feel defensive. At worst, you
will tell that person to drop dead.
It therefore stands to reason that your expectations of
something or somebody are a waste of time, while often
being highly dangerous.
Does the outside world listen to your expectations and
react positively?
Hardly!
An expectation will usually be met with resistance.
The result for you: Disappointments.
Expectations can be compared to ballistic missiles that
you fire off randomly into neighbouring countries.
They are intrusions into another person's life without a visa.
They are viewed by the receiving party as a threat and
therefore unwelcome. Your precious emotion of hope,
turned to an expectation will be wasted, trampled on,
ridiculed and destroyed. Painful!
Expectations have many poisonous effects. Foremost,
they destroy trust. The receiving party feels resentment
and guilt, because they have not matched up to your
expectations and have disappointed you. Even unexpressed
expectations are harmful because you project them.
There are devastating effects from the constant flow of
larger and smaller disappointments. A constant drop
of water will hollow the stone and likewise, a constant
harvest of disappointments will break the human spirit.
Resentment is the emotion that rises most often after a
disappointment.
It is never too late to stop firing ballistic missiles at your
boss, your spouse, your children – in fact at your life!
If you are reaping a life of disappointments, larger or
smaller, possibly one of the first things you need to do is
to take your finger off the firing button.