Expectations

 

     Regardless of who you are, where you live, your upbringing, your political beliefs, or any other criteria you may wish to use as a guide, we all have expectations!  Of course, these expectations will depend upon who you are, where you live, your upbringing, your political beliefs, or any other criteria you may wish to use as a guide!  Does that make sense?

      Of course, it does!  Our expectations will be based on a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future.  We could believe that someone will or should achieve something.  We may have high expectations in some cases and in others we may have low expectations. 

 

     It doesn’t matter what area of life we may be discussing, there will always be expectations, not only the ones we have of others, but also the expectations they may have of us.  This is true in business, in school, in the work place, even within the family arrangement.  There will always be expectations placed upon us, they may be place by ourselves or they may be placed by others.

 

     “We all carry a load of expectations with us. Expectations are firmly tied to our needs, desires, values, and beliefs. They paint a mental picture of how we think things “should” be. Expectations become problematic when they take us out of the present to solely focus on the future, or fill our heads with how things “should” be and feel and of how the people around us “should” act and feel. Our “shoulds” of ourselves reflect expectations that we feel we are not meeting.”, so states a toolkit outline form from Compassion Resilience in a seminar program [Expectations from Self and Others] placed on the internet. (https://compassionresiliencetoolkit.org/media/Schools_Section5_Intro.pdf )

 

       This outline continues with explanations of how we may, in fact, belittle our personal (self) expectations by telling ourselves that we are not doing our best because we have set our personal expectations at an unreachable level.  We thereby live DOWN to our lower expectations than making ourselves strive to obtain a loftier goal.  We can also project these self-expectations upon others. 

 

     The post includes study cases and points of self-examination designed to help identify hurtful self-expectations and transform them into positive affirmations.  You may enjoy reviewing these points for your personal benefit.

 

     We live our lives every day with various levels of expectations.  Perhaps we could strive to make all our expectations (those of ourself and those of others) be more realistic.  Don’t get me wrong.  I think that setting high goals (or expectations) of ourselves is a good thing.  But don’t aim for the moon as the first (and perhaps only) goal.  Create our achievements (and goals) in tiers, with each one being a realistic view of our current abilities and circumstances.  And once reached, place our second tier into operation and continue to move forward until our ultimate goal is reached.  You may be amazed what you and others may be able to accomplish.  Just don’t forget: We’re only human!

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"The truth does not usually match our expectations."