I have very high expectations. I could either blame it on being an INFP or I could blame it on growing up in a household where nothing but excellence in everything was expected and demanded from all of us without exception. So of course, I grew up having high expectations of myself and at times of people. Needless to say that living from this place in life did not turn out well for me. The depth of my disappointment's pit had only match the high expectations I carried around and demanded from the world. Times and times I have heard people say that the best way to avoid being disappointed is to have no expectations, but can you really walk this earth without having any kind of expectations whatsoever? No expectations to be loved? To be respected? To be acknowledged and appreciated? Even when you mess up, hurt someone or act like a twinkly little prick, you expect some kind of reaction to some extend so allow me to ask again: can you really live life and walk this earth without any kind of expectation hoping that it will save you from the heartache of disappointment?
See, I do believe that disappointment is an inescapable part of live and by the same token, I do believe that expectations and disappointment are different sides of a same coin. Just as disappointments are part of life, so are having expectations: they are both part of the human experience and are to the Avengers what Thanos was: inevitable. Unless you are dead inside and genuinely don't care. In that case, cheers to you mate. For the rest of us, very much alive and vulnerable to the messiness of life, the key to weathering to some extend the disappointment tied to our expectations is to manage the latter when it comes to our experience of people and the world we live in. So here are five things that can be helpful in managing our expectations in order to avoid unnecessary disappointments.
1- Don’t expect yourself from others
I have heard it before from my mother and other people around me. There was a time where I seriously believed that the things I expected from people were a no brainer. But then little by little, I had to come to terms with the fact and reality that not everybody was raised the way I was. Not everybody came from the background I came from so of course some expectations did not make sense to them. Some of the things I upheld did not have the same weight to other people. Not expecting myself from people, not expecting they would display the same capacities and abilities that I displayed significantly softened the blows from disappointment.
2- Be realistic
I sometimes check-in with friends and family to assess on a scale from zero to extra how realistic some of my expectations are. I do that because it is so easy for me to revert to my default mode and to get stuck and insist on some very unrealistic expectations to be met. These check-in allow me to be leveled and sometimes to scale down my expectations. Just because I can personally meet them doesn't mean someone else can. Just because I can handle a full plate doesn't mean someone else can do the same. We all have our limits and thresholds and I had to realize that some of my expectations from people although realistic for me were absolutely not for them.
3- Know your audience
Even when your expectations are at a healthy level, you have to know who to place expectations on. Sometimes the problem is not our expectations but rather, who we place our expectations on. You cannot expect a man who is inconsistent to somewhat become consistent overnight nor can you be disappointed by a lack thereof, at least not after he has showed you consistently how inconsistent he is. In the same fashion, you cannot be upset at or disappointed in a friend for not being there when you need them when they have a history of being unreliable. Maya Angelou once said : "when people show you who they are, believe them" and I believe it is more than relevant when it comes to our expectations of people and circumstances. See them for who/what they are: don't extrapolate them but don't discount them either. Instead use what you see and experience as a barometer to adjust your expectations and be wise about where and who to invest them into.
4- Don’t assume: Ask
Assumptions make an A-hole out of you and me. In all the years that I ever lived from a place of assumptions, it never turned out well for me. You've got to ask what is expected from you and you have to say what you expect.
5- Communicate
A continuation of point 4: communicate at all time. People change and with them, expectations. Adjusting expectations is hard if there is no line of communication. And sometimes, communicating expectations comes with some hard conversations but we have to excavate the things that are left unsaid. We have to run towards the hard conversations instead of running away from them no matter how afraid we are to break a heart, to lose a friendship, a relationship or an opportunity. It is better to say "I can't" or "I can't anymore" than to build someone's hope up and let them down by acting in a way that is anything less than the expectations you agreed to meet.
Disappointment is an integral part of the human experience and so is having expectations. Those intricately and intimately linked experiences constitute an obligated passage of life. However bad and heartbreaking disappointments are, they do not have to be as long as we learn to manage our expectations of people and self.
Until next time,
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