Great Expectations?

Sometimes expectations drag you down. I've been discovering that more and more! Expectations of myself, expectations of my friends, family, coworkers, God, the server at the restaurant..and the list goes on..
Ok, so I'm not saying that it's wrong to have expectations or standards, but sometimes I tend to go a little overboard. I have always been a competitive person and so I have high expectations of myself to perform well in whatever I'm competing in. Problem is, sometimes I make life a competition. haha
I seem to spread myself a little thin and the biggest problem is that I'm still not happy with the results! I'm not happy about how I prioritize and what takes precedence. So I've been thinking a bit about simplifying. Why do I make life so complicated? So I started thinking about what God's expectations of me are.
First and foremost, he expects me to love Him and love people. Simple right? Ok so that rearranges some of my priorities. In order to love God, I need to spend time with Him and nurture my relationship with Him. Read His word, praise Him and thank Him and involve Him in my life. Even if He knows what's going on, He still wants me to communicate with Him.
In order to love people, I need to have the perspective of God. All the more reason to spend time with God. I can't know God's perspective and how he wants me to view people, unless I actually know Him intimately! I know that God's love for people is unconditional. God expects me to love people as He does..that means unconditionally! Ok, now things might seem a bit harder. The problem is that most of the time when we love people, they love us back. :) We like to be selfish in love. We want to get something out of our love of others. We want to feel good!
Loving people is not as easy as loving God. God is perfect, people are not. People disappoint us..uh oh. There go the expectations again! Expectations are pretty much impossible to get rid of. They seem to be ingrained in us. Human rights, fairness and everything else that gets hammered into us from a young age. I'm not saying that all expectations are bad, but that we have to Expect to be disappointed as well. People are not perfect. People are all different and have different standards (not necessarily wrong, but different).
I guess I've come to the conclusion that I need to weigh my expectations. I need to gauge how appropriate they are in relation to myself and other people. I also need to expect to be disappointed and even hurt. Making oneself vulnerable to pain is completely against human nature..yet another reason to be in communion with God. He is completely set apart from human nature. How much pain is he vulnerable to each and every day? He has expectations that we disappoint, but yet he loves unconditionally and maintains a faithful relationship with us from his side.
I guess my challenge now is to allow myself to be vulnerable to hurt and disappointment, because loving God and people is how I need to live.

Just some food for thought. :)