#9 — Expectations

In life, you need to learn to manage your expectations. Why? Because your expectations could end up hurting their author, you. You can die at the cross of your expectations — a self-induced death.

Fact is, you need to manage your expectations of others because you can’t control other people. You just can’t. People have free will. They will do what they want, when they want. Obsessively trying to control outcomes based on your expectations sets you up for disappointment because in so doing, you can tinker with individual free will. You can’t poke the baby dragon and expect to come out of its den unscathed, lest it resents you.

[Note: Resentment emerges when someone or something tinkers with human free will. When someone tries to control or limit the extent to which another human can freely exercise their free will, resentment can brew, quite easily. Moreover, the more a person perceives you to be a tyrant — the person aimed at consistently diminishing their free will, often forcefully, the more resentment festers. Eventually, with time, it could explode.

That’s why it’s important to learn to negotiate. You can’t impose your expectations on others and expect things not to backfire. That’s not a very good strategy. In fact, it’s a terrible strategy. Rather, if you want to win, negotiate, lest you become a tyrant or something close to that.

Tyrants use fear, deception, and force to get what they want. Also, they’re terrible negotiators because it’s usually about, ‘what’s in it for me?’ But if you have that mentality in negotiations, you’ll lose because it belittles the sentiments of the other party. It’s as though only your sentiments matter and theirs don’t. But, no one likes to lose. If it’s not a win-win outcome, then there’s no proper grounds for negotiation at all.

For example, if you play tyrant tricks on people in your circle, provided they’re courageous and wise enough to resist the injustice that you’re serving them, they’ll cut you off because you don’t like playing a fair game. And, would you blame them for cutting you off?

There’s nothing wrong with counting on people to help you when you need help. But you should always realize that look, people are living their own lives apart from you. What will you do if they let you down (don’t meet your expectations)? Are you going to live past it? Are you going to hold onto the disappointment? Are you going to return the same energy when the roles are reversed in the future? Are you going to get angry? (Why get angry? Is that not just a manifestation of pride? — as in, “I did not get what I want from you and I expected you to give it to me. How dare you not give me what I want, when I want, how I want it!”).

Understand that everyone is going through something and they too are trying to deal with their issues. If you put people on a pedestal, you risk disappointment. And most of the time, you have no one to blame but yourself. After all, they are YOUR expectations, and consequently, they are YOUR problem. The only one whom you can trust come hell or high water is your God. People are fallible. And guess what, you are just as fallible as everyone else. You need grace just as much as other people need grace. So when you hold people to the standard of the expectations you have of them, don’t blame them when they disappoint you. It’s your fault. They didn’t ask to be judged by the standards you set for them. Who are you to judge them based on your expectations?

If you are so concerned about why they did not show up for you, why they said no to you, why they did not invite you, why they did not lend money to you even when you knew that they could (when you were expecting otherwise), then you’re more selfish more than you think. A humbling truth is that you battle with self-centeredness just as much as everyone else. The struggle is to get over yourself. You have to be fine with the fact that you will not always get what you want. From God (because God is not obliged to give you what’s bad for you), or from people.

Therefore, managing your expectations becomes more of a necessity than a choice. Because many opportunities to be offended and to whine will come. But the only expectations you can truly control are those you have of yourself, not others. And if you are wise, you have to learn to deal with that fact. Your expectations are your problem, not theirs.