"Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'" Charles Schultz

Billy and I have a friend from Nigeria, named Imo (pronounced "E-mo"), who visited us once when my daughter was four years old. The week before Imo arrived, we told our little girl about our friend and how excited we were to see him. She was also excited and kept talking about how much fun it would be to have Imo visit. However, after Imo arrived our daughter barely said two words to him before running off and playing.

"Oh well," we reasoned, "a four year old is a fickle thing." Later, we talked to her about Imo and asked if she liked him.

"Yes, I liked him," she said. Then, as though she was letting us in on a secret, she added, "...but he isn't a fish."

Apparently, our kid thought we were friends with Nemo from the Pixar film.

There's enormous power in expectations.

When we anticipate events to go one way and they go another direction, we get thrown off. Sadly, many of the things I expect are based on seductive lies. Usually, the lies are little things that act like pebbles in my shoe; small irritants of no serious importance. Still, it's a waste of time to operate under falsehoods, and so I've started a list of expectations I need to toss.

Unfortunately, on a regular basis I believe 10 things which are not true.