What you want life to be and what life is are two different things. The gap between the two is expectation. And when you are not accepting reality and you stick with your thoughts about what reality should be, the "should" is what creates the friction and will distort you for the worst.

Mo Gawdat author of "Solve for Happy" puts it in a very simple example.

His wife Nibal was driving his favourite car, and she had an accident where the car was destroyed. But he was happy. Why? Because his wife was safe and sound, nothing happened to her.

Imagine the same thing happened, car destroyed but his wife was at home and his car was in the parking lot.

He would've been upset and the same situation would have made him unhappy just because his wife was not involved.

If you have a cat and dies after 2 years it would make you upset and sad because your expectation is that the cat would die after 13 years and not 2. Put the same situation, cat dies at 2 years old but the life expectancy this time is 18 months. That would make you feel grateful for the time spent. The only thing that changes is expectation, the "should".

If you remove expectation and accept reality, unhappiness can be a thing of the past, embracing the present and reality as one. Get rid of the should's. Nothing "should" be nothing. The waiter should not be kind to you, you expect them to be kind. You go around life expecting from others. If you only expected for yourself and not others, an accepted reality for what it is and not what you would like it to be, you would be one step closer to effective stoicism.

Karam Zarkitou