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Are Your Expectations Helping or Sabotaging You?

<Awareness>

To let go of our expectations, we have to first understand why our expectations are doing us such a disservice.

“Expectations” is just a word, but it is what the word represents that causes problems. Expectations almost always carry the concept of “should” in our minds, which brings with it furious thoughts of unfairness and indignation. When we think something is unfair or “should be different,” we think we have a right to feel upset, so it drives us to hold on even tighter to all the negative emotions that don’t serve us.

Imagine that there is no “should” in your vocabulary. If someone were to do something you don’t understand, that would just be a fact. Your train of thought would be, “He doesn’t understand” rather than “But he doesn’t understand!” which implies that he should understand. In both trains of thought, the situation remains exactly the same—the person doesn’t understand. However, the second thought (“But he doesn’t understand!”) changes the way we feel about the situation or the person—we are more upset and less able to communicate effectively.

Being calm and not getting upset doesn’t mean that we become doormats and let people walk all over us—it means that we are able to go through undesirable situations without our emotions affecting us so badly that it stops us from effectively addressing those situations.

People can certainly be wrong, and we must take action to solve problems, but our concept of how people should be can truly hamper our ability to think clearly and communicate effectively. Expectations sabotage us because instead of addressing the problem, we are addressing our emotions. It’s almost like expectations blind us to solutions to a problem because our minds are too focused on what the situation should be and getting upset over how someone should behave.

At some point in our lives, it helps to ask ourselves what our expectations of people are really doing for us. What do you gain from your expectations of people? What do you lose due to your expectations of people?

Often, we gain righteous anger from our expectations of people and we lose our peace of mind due to our expectations of people.

In my relationship with Yuri, I used to experience frustration over the concept: “Why aren’t you more helpful?” I would always feel so hurt whenever he didn’t immediately offer to help me with simple things like carrying the shopping bags or when he seemed reluctant to lend his time to help me with work or to fix something. In my reality, it was a normal thing to expect that a person who loves you would not only volunteer to help, they would happily help. That’s what I would do.

It was only after a few years into our relationship that I realized that:

a.I was subconsciously comparing what he was doing to what I would do if I were him, which was why I always arrived at the conclusion that his not meeting my expectation must be because he didn’t care enough; and

b.My expectation of “If people love you, they will unquestionably and happily want to help you” is a direct manifestation of my upbringing. I realized that it was because while I was growing up, my parents had helped me so much in my life that to me, it was normal to want to do things for the people you love.

Similarly, Yuri, too, felt unhappy when certain aspects of his ideals weren’t fulfilled; and he had his own discoveries and work to do when it came to his expectations of me as a partner.

All along, our unhappiness with each other was because we had all these ideas of how a marriage was supposed to be. Even though we were not consciously doing it, we were always measuring each other against some kind of standard, which is where all expectations were born.

Without expectations, we see someone for who they are—in all their flawed imperfection—without judgement. It doesn’t mean we have to agree with them, it doesn’t even mean we understand them, it just means we are not upset at them, which allows us to communicate better.

When you have a relationship with someone, it’s often impossible to say who is right and who is wrong, or whose standard works better or who should adjust or change. We all have needs, fears, desires, and preferences, and the best we can do is to take responsibility for them as our personal preferences instead of imposing them onto our partner under the belief that our expectations are universal standards.

When we understand that other people’s realities are different from our own, then we know that it is entirely possible to talk about something that we think is wrong without accusing the other person of being wrong.

This is the very foundation of good communication—if we cannot talk to someone without getting upset, then we will be really lousy at communicating with people even if we have intelligent points to make. Intelligence is not wisdom. Letting go of expectations, and therefore, letting go of the concept of “should,” helps us let go of righteous anger, which makes it much easier to verbalize our thoughts.

Don’t let your expectations sabotage your relationship and your happiness.