Again it is 14 February. Every year this day comes along: there’s a big hype, red and white balloons everywhere, jewellers are working overtime, the Easter bunny steps aside so that the heart-shaped choccies can step in and everybody is floating on a short-lasting love bubble created by Hallmark.

99% of all single men and women are 100% almost certain they won’t receive a single thing from anybody. The problem is that we expect NOTHING but still feel disappointed when 15 Feb strikes, and we received exactly what we expected. And you ask yourself: “Why”?

Why do we play the lotto and assure ourselves that we are never going to win, and go to sleep on a Wednesday or Saturday evening feeling all bloated because we have just lost a fortune to Joe from Nowhere who had all 6 balls and the bonus ball?

We feel that way, because we might be expecting nothing, but we always hope for something. i.e. We expect that our business will only show a profit in 2010 but hope that a miracle happens and we can see it by 2009. We expect to repay our mortgage in 20 years but hope that in 10 years the bank will send us a letter explaining that they became impatient with us because we are repaying at such a slow pace so they just wrote the rest off!

The fact is - HOPE is not the reason we are disappointed: WE are. Try to count how many times a day you lie to yourself or hope that somebody else will do something for you, instead of you doing it yourself, or even blame someone else for things that are not happening in your life / career / business etc.

The thing is, if you are one of the single men and women who didn’t receive anything on Valentine’s day, who was expecting nothing anyway, but was hoping for something – nothing stopped you from getting it yourself.

If you are that business owner, that is not expecting to see a profit at the end of this year, but hoping for one, nothing stops you from having it.

The lesson is – everything you want (or need) you CAN have, as long as what you expect and what you hope for is the same thing. The easy part – is getting It. The difficulty is - finding out what It is!

By Jeanne Fredericks