Most of the frustration we feel in life doesn’t come from what actually happens — it comes from what we expected to happen.

We expect our kids to behave a certain way.
We expect people at work to “get it.”
We expect things to go smoothly, because we’ve planned, we’ve prepared, we’ve done the right thing.

Then life strolls in, looks at our expectations, and laughs.

The Stoics talked about this a lot. Epictetus said, “When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.” Marcus Aurelius reminded himself to start each day knowing he’d meet “the ungrateful, the arrogant, the deceitful…” and to accept it calmly when they inevitably appeared.

They didn’t say this because they were pessimists. They said it because they understood reality.
When you expect people to be perfect, or life to go your way, you set yourself up to suffer twice — once when things go wrong, and again when you’re angry that they did.

I’ve had this lesson handed to me in about every way possible.

In business, I’ve expected clients to behave rationally, people to keep their word, and projects to run on schedule. (That one always gets a laugh from the universe.)
At home, I’ve expected my kids to listen, my plans to work, and my wife to read my mind when I’m being grumpy for no reason.
Each time, reality has politely reminded me — “That’s not how this works.”

The truth is, expectations are heavy. They turn joy into frustration, gratitude into resentment, and people into problems to be fixed.

Kids are great teachers of this. You can plan the perfect Sunday — breakfast out, a beach trip, maybe a quiet afternoon. And then one of them spills juice on the new couch, the other’s fighting about which towel is “hers,” and the dog decides to eat a crab on the beach and vomit it up in the car.

You expected peace.
You got chaos.

And in that gap between those two things — that’s where all your stress lives.

It’s not that we shouldn’t plan, or that caring is the problem. It’s that we attach certainty to things that were never certain to begin with.

Seneca said it best: “He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.”
In other words — you’re not just dealing with the bad day. You’re dealing with the imagined version of how that day “should have” gone.

I see it in myself all the time. When a campaign doesn’t perform how I thought it would. When one of the kids ignores me for the forty-third time. When someone doesn’t text back.
That inner voice kicks in: It shouldn’t be like this.​
But the reality is — it is like this. Always was. Always will be.

The Stoics would say our expectations are just ego dressed up as logic. We think the world owes us order because we’ve done our part. We think people should behave the way we would behave. But everyone’s fighting their own battles, living their own logic.

Marcus wrote, “Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast, and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained you to live.”
That line hits different when you apply it to real life — your business partners, your spouse, your kids, the person who just cut you off in traffic.

It’s not saying roll over and accept everything. It’s saying: drop the illusion that life should be fair, smooth, or predictable.
When you do, you don’t lose standards. You lose the constant disappointment that comes from trying to control things that aren’t yours to control.

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I still have my moments.
I’ve snapped at the kids for spilling milk like it was a criminal offence. I’ve stewed over emails that didn’t get the response I wanted. I’ve cursed my computer like it had a personal vendetta against me.
Then I catch myself, take a breath, and laugh — because the only thing that really went wrong was my expectation.

Life doesn’t owe us calm seas.
But if we can lower the sails, adjust the course, and accept the weather — we’ll get where we’re going a lot more peacefully.

So this week, when something doesn’t go your way, pause before reacting.
Ask yourself: Am I angry at what happened? Or am I angry that it didn’t happen the way I wanted?

That tiny moment of awareness — that’s Stoicism in action. That’s freedom.

Reflection​
What expectation can you let go of this week?
Because the lighter you travel, the further you go.

Until next time,
​Broden Johnson