How to Let Go of Blame, Confront Unrealistic Expectations, and Embrace Reality

Part 2 of 5: Overcoming Unrealistic Expectations

The reason I’m doing this five-part series is that having unrealistic expectations has been the story of my life. Letting go of those expectations has been an enormous part of my recovery and something I continue to deal with. I almost wrote “struggle” with, but it’s not a struggle the way it used to be. I see it and am much more able to let go more quickly.

But, of course, that was not always the case. Even when I could see I had unrealistic expectations, the letting go part was very rough. In fact, those were two of the top defects of character I discovered in taking a searching and fearless moral inventory of my life — unrealistic expectations and the inability to let things go.

I’d have unrealistic expectations of people and couldn’t let them go. Then, I’d make people “pay” for not living up to my unrealistic expectations. Their “payment” was mostly in my mind, but I’d also be a dick to them for not living up to my unrealistic expectations. And I’d blame them for being assholes.

And that’s one of the things I want to address in this essay — laying blame.