Open to Success or Failure

This week’s journal prompt is again from the Bhagavad Gita, from the translation by Stephen Mitchell (2000):

You have a right to your actions,
but never to your actions’ fruits.
Act for the action’s sake.
And do not be attached to inaction.

Self-possessed, resolute, act
without any thought of results,
open to success or failure. (Chapter 2, stanzas 47-48)”
(20-21)

Being a goal-minded individual, this is a difficult passage to put into practice.  It's a part of my culture to have a kind of outline to life with particular results in mind or particular expectations.  Expectations, specifically, are something I struggle with on nearly a daily basis.  I "expect" that graduate school will be challenging. I "expect" to lose sleep. I "expect" that I'll have days that show me things I have seen before. In all three of these simple examples, I set myself up to miss potentially beloved moments in life. Instead of constantly expecting difficult challenges, what if I accept that sometimes learning flows easily and that I may rest peacefully? What if I pay more attention to the possibility of deeper meanings, or new applications of meanings, to inform me in different ways?  In a more practical sense, what if I go into a yoga posture, without a preconceived idea that it is going to feel bad or good or that I will be able to express the posture well or poorly?  Isn't the expression at the time it is performed just what it is - an expression alone?  With that questioned posed, I follow with this excerpt:

But the man who delights in the Self,
who feels pure contentment and finds
perfect peace in the Self—
for him, there is no need to act.

Love thyself (the whole self - not just the parts that you "expect" will look good).