As a speaker, coach, and trainer, I spend a lot of time flying to and from workshops, conferences, and events. This means I also get to spend a lot of time in airports, and more than my fair share of delays. Certain airports serve as hubs for major airlines, so depending on which direction I’m traveling, and which airline I’m flying, I often find myself making a connection in these hubs.
Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) is one of those hubs.
CLT serves as one of American Airlines’ major hubs (and one of the busiest). It’s part of American Airlines’ core “hub-and-spoke” network and serves as a major connecting point for flights across the U.S., Caribbean, and Europe. CLT is one of American Airlines’ highest-volume connecting hubs, often ranking near the top of daily departures for the airline.
CLT’s terminal is about 2.2 million square feet in size, consisting of five connecting concourses. The design of the airport, while vast, makes it large enough to handle one of the busiest airport operations in the U.S., but it is compact enough that passengers can walk everywhere without trains or shuttles.
It’s a 20 to 30-minute walk from the E terminal to the A terminal, which can be a challenge when you’ve got a short layover. (Ask me, I know.) But if you’re not in a hurry, CLT is known for its rocking chairs (when you can get one), as well as a great food court.
I was recently departing CLT after speaking at a conference and struck up a conversation with an older woman as we were waiting to board. She was smiling, happy, and engaging with everyone around her, making it easy to start a conversation. I asked her how her day was going, and her response to me was unexpected:
“No expectations. No regrets. That’s how I live each day.”
No expectations? No regrets? Her words echoed in my thoughts as I flew back to Little Rock. How can you live life with no expectations? An expectation is a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future, or a belief that you (or someone else) will or should achieve something.
I asked AI how one can live a life with no expectations. AI replied that this was possible by embracing the present moment and accepting situations as they unfold, rather than how you want them to be. It requires letting go of control and focusing only on your own actions. It requires releasing any attachment to specific outcomes.
That’s only possible if you have no goals, dreams, or ambitions.
Let me note there’s nothing wrong with embracing the present moment and accepting that you can’t control. After all, the present is the only time there is. Embracing the present moment and accepting what you can’t control are important elements of resiliency. But resiliency also requires that you control what you can control.
This requires an expectation that you have the capacity to control certain things in your life.
I then asked AI why having expectations is important in life. AI replied that “having expectations is important because they act as catalysts for motivation, goal-setting, and personal growth, allowing individuals to envision a better future and work towards it. They provide direction in life, shape relationships by establishing mutual respect, and can create positive feedback loops where higher expectations lead to better performance.”
So, living a life with no expectations means you set no goals, you don’t pursue your dreams or ambitions, you reject personal growth, and you go through life directionless, with nothing motivating you to excel or succeed.
In essence, you end up going through life without ever really living life. Rather than striving to achieve, excel, or succeed, you simply allow life to dictate what happens to you. To me, this is a fatalistic approach to living life, putting life in control of our outcomes.
No expectations, no regrets.
How can you live a life with no regrets? Regret means to feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over something that has happened or been done, especially a loss or missed opportunity. Living a life with no disappointments or regrets, according to AI, requires that you go through life denying past mistakes, stifling self-reflection, and ignoring valuable feedback that is necessary for personal improvement.
This is only possible if you’ve never attempted anything.
I then asked AI why experiencing regret is important in life. AI replied that “regret is a crucial, functional emotion that acts as a powerful teacher for personal growth, rather than just a source of pain. By analyzing past actions, regret fosters better decision-making, increases empathy, and motivates corrective action. Properly managed, it transforms mistakes into future wisdom and encourages more fulfilling life choices.”
Regret is one of the emotions you often experience after experiencing failure. You are disappointed that a decision made, or left unmade, didn’t result in a positive outcome. Regret, rightly used, allows you to learn, grow, and improve. A life without regrets is a life without a journey. If you never try, you never fail. If you never fail, you never regret. If you are never disappointed, you never learn.
If you miss your exit while traveling, you regret it. If your flight is delayed due to weather and you miss a connection to an important destination, you’re disappointed. If you lost your lottery ticket that held the winning numbers, you regret it. If you weren’t paying attention to the speed limit and got a speeding ticket, don’t tell me you don’t regret that.
I’m not sure how you can go through life with no expectations and no regrets.
Once a baby is formed within a mother’s womb, she is expectant. That’s something to look forward to with anticipation. Once that baby is born, the parents remain expectant for the first words, first steps, the first day of school…lots of firsts. Life is a series of expectant moments, as we await something to happen or someone to do something.
We experience expectancy our whole lives. As infants, we can’t wait to sit up, crawl, stand, walk, talk, or ride a trike. As children, we can’t wait to go for a hike, learn to ride a bike, learn to swim, play sports, take dance classes, try out for the cheer team, or make the honor roll. The early, formative years of our lives were one expectant moment after another.
Why then, as adults, do we stop expecting?
Children have high levels of optimism. They believe anything is possible. As a result, they dream big dreams. Children possess a positivity bias, a belief that they can do or achieve anything they put their hands to do. Sadly, as we get older, a positive, abundance mindset is all too often replaced with a limiting, scarcity mindset. We stop believing anything is possible, rationalize our limiting beliefs, and choose to settle for a life of “less.”
Why do we do that?
Perhaps you don’t want to be disappointed, experience regret, or have to face failure once again. Maybe you set some lofty goals but failed to implement a plan to achieve them. Or perhaps you started listening to that nagging little voice between our ears speaking negativity and chose to believe it, so you simply quit trying to succeed. Whether a combination of life experiences that didn’t turn out well, or you didn’t want to go through the pain of personal growth, you chose to give up on our dreams.
If you have no expectations, you believe you’ll experience no regret.
But that’s not always the case.
To borrow a phrase from Inigo Montoya: “Get used to disappointment.”
Life involves uncontrollable events, human limitations, and unpredictable outcomes that often take us by surprise. We need to understand that this is part of the Human Existence. Many of the setbacks we experience are nothing more than setups in disguise, teaching us a valuable lesson we can apply next time we try, so we have a better chance at succeeding.
When you live a life with no expectations, you are training your mind to stop seeing and seizing opportunities that show up, often unannounced, every day of your life. You’re training your heart to stop dreaming and your mind to stop imagining what’s next, or what’s possible. Rather than push forward toward “What’s Next,” you choose to say, “Oh well, that’s life.”
That, to me, is a dull, uneventful life.
Rather than live life with a hope that tomorrow will be better, that you can be better, and inviting opportunity and abundance into your life, you choose instead to simply accept what happens as inevitable, even if you could have taken steps to prevent it.
No hopes. No dreams. No aspirations. No vision. No goals. No purpose.
This is NOT the life we were meant to live.
What if, instead, you chose to live an Anticipation-Filled Life? What if, every single day, you expect something good, positive, insightful, enlightening, transformative, miraculous, eventful, amazing, or extraordinary to happen to you, or to others because of you? What if you chose to live a life full of hope, dreams, aspirations, vision, goals, and purpose?
Which of the two is the better life? No expectations, no regrets, or a daily anticipation of what if or what’s next? One sets you up for more of the same dull, boring existence you’re already living. The other sets you up for endless possibilities and countless opportunities.
Living an Anticipation-Filled Life means approaching each day with a sense of joyful expectation, active hope, and a purposeful mindset that actively looks toward the future with eagerness. Anticipation is not passive. It’s a form of “active waiting.” In German culture, it is the concept of Vorfreude, which says the joy experienced while looking forward to something can be almost as enjoyable as the event itself.
It involves actively preparing for what is to come. Living an Anticipation-Filled Life means approaching the world with your eyes wide open, looking with anticipation at what is to come, deliberately choosing to expect good things to happen. It’s often described as having an “anchor of hope” that keeps us grounded, even in the midst of the storms of life.
Remember, what you focus on expands. Your mind quietly seeks it out and amplifies it in your thinking. Buy a new car, and now you see that same make and model everywhere. When you choose to focus on living a “no expectations, no regrets” life, you will miss out on all the opportunities in life that await you. Why? Because your thoughts are not tuned in to seek and see more of that. Sadly, you won’t even realize they are there.
Why not live an Expectant Life where you, like a pregnant mother, anticipate what’s coming, prepare in advance, and choose to look forward to what’s next? It’s a combination of “watching and working” as you’re taking time to learn, grow, and prepare for the next chapter of your amazing life.
Living a “no expectations, no regrets” life can feel monotonous, boring, and futile. If you have no expectations, you have no hope. Contrast that to living a life with anticipation. Each day becomes an adventure, filled with purposeful preparation, practical application, and hope for what’s just ahead.
Will we experience hardships if we choose to live an expectant, Anticipation-Filled Life? Of course. A mother experiences birth pangs before she gives birth. She expects it, prepares for it, endures it, and experiences the joy of childbirth as she holds that newborn in her arms. I’ve yet to meet a mother who says the joy wasn’t worth the struggle.
In the same way, our current struggles are temporary, but rightly used, lead us toward fulfillment of a dream, achievement of a goal, or experiencing a breakthrough in our lives.
I think back to that nice older lady in the airport. I’m sure she packed a bag in preparation to get on a flight to another city. That’s preparing for what’s next. I’m sure she drove herself or got someone to drive her to the airport prior to her departure. That’s anticipating what’s next.
Perhaps, there’s hope for her after all.
Was she simply going through the motions, or was there a twinge of excitement, a sparkle of anticipation, as she prepared to board a plane, fly to another city, to go experience something or see someone important to her? Surely, she wasn’t really living a “no expectations, no regret” life.
Some people have been hurt so much, experienced disappointment and regret so many times, they don’t want to go through that again. When that happens, a part of themselves disconnects with the world around them, and they stop truly living life. They cautiously go through the motions, taking no risks, so they don’t have to experience yet another disappointment in life.
Life is worth living, so live it to the fullest.
Yes, there will be disappointments. Yes, there will be regrets. People will disappoint us. At times, we will disappoint ourselves. To again borrow a phrase from Inigo Montoya: “Get used to disappointment.” This is life. Remember, like success and failure, disappointment and failure are only a moment in time.
How you view life is how you do life.
How you see life is how you experience life.
As you think, you say, do, and become.
Living a “no expectations, no regrets” life can feel monotonous, boring, and futile. If you have no expectations, you have no hope. Contrast that to living a life with anticipation. Each day becomes an adventure, filled with purposeful preparation, practical application, and hope for what’s just ahead.
Let me leave you with an affirmation statement to help you maintain the right mindset as you set your thoughts on living an anticipation-filled, expectant life:
“I will greet each day with anticipation in my heart, expecting something good, positive, insightful, enlightening, transformative, miraculous, eventful, amazing, and extraordinary to happen to me or through me today. I will actively seek it, search for it, and prepare for it, so I am ready to see it, seize it, and experience it to the fullest. I expect good things to happen, and I will celebrate when they do. I will greet this day with expectant anticipation.”
