Are Your Expectations Too High?

"I thought that he would at least call."

"The company said that it would be easy. This is one of the most difficult I have ever done!"

"She came, but she didn't bring everything with her."

"You didn't do it? What on earth were you thinking?!"

In every one of the above expressions, expectations were not met. Our expectations are what we think will happen. They give us a look at the future. We expect the sun to rise in the morning, the eggs to be on the shelf when we go to the store, and the money to come in after we have put in our hard work and effort.

These types of expectations are based on facts, contracts, and natural laws. Unfortunately, the expectations we have for human beings are based on what we think "should" or "could" happen. Nothing is guaranteed, and we frequently end up hoping for more than we get. This phenomena leads to the emotional issues of disappointment, disbelief, discouragement, disagreement, distrust, dissatisfaction, disrespect, and discontentment.

Every one of these words begins with "dis" - "a Latin prefix meaning 'apart,' 'asunder,' 'away,' 'utterly,' or having a privative, negative, or reversing force" (Dictionary.com). When our expectations get the best of us, we have a disconnect between what with think ought to happen and the reality of life. This space gets filled with all sorts of negative thoughts and feelings.

Our expectations are the sum total of what we have experienced in the past, what we have done with those experiences, and how we want our future to be. We develop beliefs that govern our actions and what we think is right and proper.

These beliefs are in the form of statements that we tell ourselves. We use them as the basis of our expectations. We assume that they are true and valid because the circumstances of our lives substantiate them.

We may even adopt statements that are irrational or unrealistic. We think that certain things are true because we see them played out in our lives. This complex web of cause and effect connections plants seeds of negative emotions that eventually undermine our emotional health.

These unrealistic expectations become skewed, upside down and inside out. We find ourselves disillusioned, disheartened, and disappointed with our lives. See the table below for examples of some unrealistic expectations and how we skew them to make them even more detrimental to our feelings of self-worth:

Having unrealistic expectations is like having a cracked windshield on a car. Each time we look through it, we see a distorted view of reality. We think that we are close to an object, only to find out that we are farther away. We think that we see someone approaching us from the right, and in reality, they are driving down a street next to us.

Unrealistic expectations give us false alarms. We think that something is happening, or going to happen, and it doesn't. We end up on a roller coaster ride with the highs of hope in between the lows of disappointment. We develop issues with anger, frustration, and grief as part of the package. If we don't correct the problem, we end up in despair. Despair is the prelude to emotional heart failure, the most tragic of all human conditions.

It is possible to change our expectations, but we first need to understand what they are and how they affect us. We start by looking at our relationships. If we find that we are often impatient or critical with ourselves and others, we may be dealing with expectations that are overly perfectionist in nature.

For example....

Unrealistic expectation - I have to get it right the first time.

Problem - this particular expectation is problematic because we all make mistakes during the learning process. No matter how talented or intelligent we are, we will need more than one attempt to get everything right. Even then, there are many variables in life that can affect us at any given moment, changing the outcome of the things that we do.

Solution - Allow room for error. Change the expectation to the following: If I don't get it right the first time, I will keep on trying until I get it. That way, we don't beat ourselves over the head and feel bad when we make a mistake, we give ourselves encouragement to try again instead.

Preparedness allows us to learn more about ourselves and to change our expectations so that they are more realistic. When we prepare, we feed our knowledge bank of how the world works and how we affect the things around us. As we do so, we program ourselves with statements that are more likely based on fact than assumption or estimation.

We are in a better position to develop high quality relationships with others, and to have our time with them be more pleasant and encouraging. We become a positive force in the world, and are less likely to be tossed about by the whims of chance or change. Preparation gives us the power to choose more wisely.