Lately, I’ve been thinking about the expectations people have for themselves and with regards to others. Expectations can be concrete goals people have, but …
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the expectations people have for themselves and with regards to others. Expectations can be concrete goals people have, but also hopes. The questions I’ve been grappling with are: how does one evaluate whether their expectations are reasonable, is one in complete control of the their expectations’ outcome, and finally how should one react in the event that their expectations materialize or don’t?
I know I’m a very demanding person, more towards myself than others, but it depends on the degree of my relationship with other people. The more I succeed and improve the more I expect from myself. And even when I fail I know that I had to take a different approach, and change my perspective, if I wanted to lead a “good life”. Leaving aside the issue of actually trying to achieve your expectations, setting reasonable expectations for yourself can be an arduous task. It takes a great amount of self-awareness; you have to understand your abilities, judge the context, and then constantly re-assure yourself that you deserve to have these expectations.
But how can one stay objective when evaluating themselves and their expectations? I usually look for patterns in my own efforts. I think about a time in my life that I did succeed at something, how I went about about achieving it, and then try to follow that same line of thinking to tackle the new challenge I’ve set for myself. Of course its easier said than done. And being young you don’t have enough experiences to draw upon to know what to expect. Despite age I think here are some fundamental virtues one should follow before setting expectations for themselves. Integrity, honesty, rationality, and self-esteem are the four that I think are the most important. To have integrity means to act consistently and in a manner that doesn’t jeopardize your well-being. Honesty is acknowledging reality and acting in accordance to it. Rationality is using reason as opposed to feelings when arriving at conclusions. And self-esteem is valuing yourself and having self-confidence. To me the first three are the precursors that lead one to possessing self-esteem. It seems likely that people act virtuous when the expectation is self-directed, but in dealing with others their judgment gets clouded.
The prime example is when your expectations are concerning personal relationships, and specifically romantic relationships. People spend a great deal of time getting to know someone, sharing their thoughts and experiences with each other, and then for several reasons the relationship falls apart. Sometimes, the failure of the relationship can be in part due to one or both persons’ irrational behavior. But it does affect them both. Despite who was irrational both question themselves, and especially in terms of what they deserve. Hence, they both have some expectations that are unfulfilled. Leaving aside a person who was irrational, a rational person may question his judgment inchoosing a mate, or think that the time he spent was wasteful and could have been directed towards something else. When one’s expectations don’t materialize they begin to doubt themselves. Their confidence it shaken, and it usually takes them time to heal; to go back to desiring to be in a relationship, and seek someone else. A reasonable person would regain confidence, perhaps take a different approach and set differentexpectations when it comes to dealing with others.
Then there’s the case when your expectations are self-directed. For example, my younger brother recently wrote a proposal for a research project he wanted to be involved in this summer. He’s very passionate about doing research, so he spent a great amount of time on his proposal, andnaturally he expected to get it. But, he didn’t get it. He compared his proposal to the ones written by his peers, and it seemed like he had put in more effort, but hadn’t been rewarded accordingly. He thought that he deserved to be accepted to the research group, given his talents and compared to others, but when he wasn’t he questioned himself. He became critical of his own abilities, the time he had spent writing the proposal, and whether it was reasonable for him to have expected to get into the research project. I tried to re-assure him, and instill confidence in him. I asked if he had gotten anything out of this experience, and to find someone more objective than himself to read over his proposal and give him feedback. When a man is rejected tough love is hard to digest…so to shut me up he proceeded to say that he would just get over it with time.
Fortunately, my brother is also a very demanding person, so he didn’t give in to himself. He wanted to find out the root cause of why he didn’t get the research project. He went to talk to the professor and asked what was wrong with his proposal. The professor admitted to anadministrative error, and that my brother should have been accepted. Obviously my brother was overjoyed at the news. But more importantly, it speaks volumes of his character that he didn’t endlessly sulk when his expectations, initially, failed to materialize. Though his confidence was shaken, and he blamed others it was just a knee jerk reaction. Once he had time to think about the situation more thoroughly, he proceeded to take a very rational approach and tried to understand the cause of his failure so that it wouldn’t happen again in the future.
Having expectations is part of life. Its dealing with the outcomes of the expectations that’s difficult. The real issue is that irrespective of what happens its most important to evaluate either why your expectations did or didn’t come to fruition. And even more importantly to try and be virtuous to avoid a similar predicament. We should be more concerned with how we live our lives over the span of many years, and try to not repeat past mistakes or have the same negative experiences over and over again.
