Your Expectations VS Others' Expectations
Posted by Jason Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:08:00 GMT
In the world of expectations, there are two sides, your own expectations, and those of others. Many people feel that the expectations of others are a driving force in creating who you are. I disagree, and this post will explain my point of view.First of all, let's start off by saying that when speaking of the expectations of others, there are a few things that differentiate one person's expectations from another's, and how much each one affects you. The two major things are how much you are around the person and how important the person is to you, in terms of the amount of mental and emotional energy you spend on them. This is NOT the normal "how important someone is to you" concept, which generally refers to how much you like the person. In the measurement I'm referring to, someone you actively, passionately hate is more important to you than an "outer circle" friend.
Out of the two attributes listed above, how important the person is to you is far more heavily weighted in determining how much a person's expectations affect you. In other words, you may see, and receive calls from, the company receptionist every day. If that's all the energy you spend on them, however, not really thinking about them otherwise, not really liking or disliking them, their expectations will have a relatively low impact on you. On the other hand, your parents may be extremely important to you, but you may not be around them much (due to distance, schedule differences, or some other issue). Their expectations, when you know them, can still have a strong impact on you. A cashier at a store you stop by on a long trip, on the other hand, has very little impact on you, unless they take specific actions based on their expectations (ie calling security because they expect you to be a thief).
In reality, there is a special category in our heads/hearts for an "aggregate" person, which I will call society. This is, basically, our personification of what we believe the general public expects. This "person", society, has, like other people, an importance attribute. Some people place a great importance on society's expectations, and some people don't care at all. This is probably the only time in this post that I will mention society as a separate entity, and for the rest of the post will just lump this "person" in with all other people.
So now, if you're still with me, you probably think I'm contradicting my introductory statement. This is not the case, however, as you will see.
When I say that someone's expectations have a great impact on you, what I actually mean is that they have a strong influence on your own expectations. We tend to absorb the expectations of those we are around, especially if they are important (in the way discussed above) to us. This is, for the vast majority of people, an unconscious action. The more aware you are, in general, and of course specifically in reference to this, the less "unconscious" this process becomes, and the less we absorb, unless we choose to do so, the expectations of others.
This is important, because the only expectations that actually directly affect who you are belong to you. The expectations of others can only affect who you are by being absorbed into your own expectations. It really doesn't matter if everyone, including those important to you, expects you to fail, unless you absorb those expectations and make them your own. There are many examples of people who kept working away to become a success in their field, in their way, in spite of everyone around them expecting them to fail (and often telling them loudly and in detail). They stuck with it because they did not allow those expectations of failure to become their own.
The more aware you are of the process of other people's expectations being absorbed and becoming your expectations, the less it happens. Choosing to adopt the expectations of others, consciously, is not really "absorbing" them. It's simply looking at them, deciding they are what you want, and implementing them yourself. It's like the difference between decorating your house a certain way because "everybody's doing it", and doing it because it's the way you actually like it, whether or not anybody else does.
So, essentially, you have two means of controlling how the expectations of others affect you. One, as mentioned above, is becoming aware of it. The other, which can be done separately or concurrently, is to make sure you choose actively and well who is important to you. That can mean letting go of the hate (as the emotional energy directed into the hate fades, so does the person's impact on you), choosing to direct more energy toward the positive influences, or even choosing to go out and try to find new people to direct some of your mental and emotional energy toward.
Just as a note of caution, directing mental and emotional energy toward someone makes them more important to you, and someone who is important to you is more likely to receive MORE of your energy. This means that you need to be careful, if you or the person you're considering directing your energy toward are involved in a serious relationship, as things can become entangled, and you can lose some of your ability to make sound judgments.
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