The Little book of Contentment by Leo Babauta

Watch Your Ideals & Expectations Our lives are a series of fantasies — ideals and expectations — but unfortunately we’re not often aware that we’re having them.

And while we all have fantasies, and sometimes they can be nice, the problem comes when life doesn’t live up to the fantasy.

Reality is amazing, but when we compare it to the fantasy (which isn’t real, of course), it doesn’t measure up. As amazing as reality is, in all its glory, it falls short if we expect it to be some fantasy. This is a big reason we’re unhappy with ourselves. It’s a reason we’re unhappy with others, with our lives.

It’s also the reason we seek happiness in external things — we have fantasies about how great they’re going to be, how incredible our lives will be once we have these external things, how happy we’ll be once we have them. It’s not true, though, and when we get those external things (food, a boyfriend, new clothes, etc.), they fall short and don’t make us as happy as we’d