I used to think I was setting myself up for disappointment by expecting too much from people. Turns out I wasn't expecting too much. I was expecting anything at all. Here's the thing nobody tells you: expectation is a debt you hand someone without asking if they want it. They didn't sign up for it. You just assumed they would deliver, and when they didn't, you called it betrayal instead of what it actually was, a mismatch between what you hoped for and what they were ever capable of giving. I learned this the hard way. Not once, but enough times that I finally stopped taking notes and started changing the rule. Now the rule is simple: expect nothing. Not because people are bad, but because expecting anything from anybody is a setup. You hand them the script, they never read it, and you're the one standing there feeling stupid when the scene doesn't play out the way you wrote it. Take it as a grain of salt. Throw it over your shoulder. That's not bitterness, that's maintenance. It's how you keep showing up in the world without flinching every time somebody proves they were never going to be who you needed. The people worth keeping around will show up anyway, without you needing to expect it of them. Everyone else, you just stop keeping score.