“Expectations lead to disappointment, so expect nothing and you will never be disappointed!” An officer in the Air Force shared this wisdom with me in my early years of service. This seemed like good advice at the time and I honestly tried to apply it. The difficulty, at least for me, was that I did have high standards of the world around me and I felt that leaving expectations on the back burner was lowering my own standards in life.
For example, I expected to be treated with equality and respect. I expected to be compensated for my effort and work. I expected to have a right to my own feelings, voice and body. So I decided that I would rather be disappointed in life than disrespected. And that was fine–until recently.
I read an article about Gandhi. A mother went in search of Gandhi’s wisdom for her son, who was diabetic and had a difficult time giving up sugar. They sought the advice of this spiritual leader who her son admired. When the arrived, they waited for several hours before they were invited in to see the great leader. After the mother shared their dilemma, Gandhi looked at her and said softly, “Please come back in 30 days.”
When 30 days passed, they returned to Gandhi’s home. This time Gandhi addressed the young boy, “My son, you must stop eating sugar.” The mother was furious. She asked Gandhi, after all this time, why this was his only advice.
He replied, “Madam, I could not ask your son to do something that I myself could not do. Only yesterday was I able to completely cut sugar out of my diet.”
We cannot expect others to do things that we are unable to commit to for ourselves. With this thought, I reflected on my list from my Air Force days. Here is my short list that contains the expectations that I from others, but had not quite mastered for myself…
Treating Myself with Equality and Respect: I spent years battling an eating disorder, regrouping from a torn childhood and trying to learn to take care of myself instead of self-destructing. I could not expect others to treat me kindly when I was still learning these lessons myself.
Compensation for Effort and Work: Abundance Theory is that there is enough wealth for all of us. I know I did not embrace this thought in my early 20’s, I instead embraced poverty mentality. I have only learned, over the last decade, the art of giving and receiving with grace (and am still learning more each day.)
Rights to Feelings, Voice and Body: It wasn’t until after the birth of my middle son, Zach, when I started listening to my inner voice and acknowledging my feelings. In other words, I was in my mid-thirties when I started to “get real” with myself. I could not expect others to allow me to be authentic, when I was afraid to be me. I could not ask others to listen to my voice, when I did not know the sound of it.
After reading Gandhi’s story, I realized that the challenge for many of us is not in the expectations we have of others, but instead it is with the expectations we have of ourselves. We often do not meet our own criteria and then we spend our lives beating ourselves to bits because we do not measure up.
Switch your self-expectations to self-empowerment and treat yourself how you want others to treat you. Take time this month to explore your own limiting beliefs when it comes to what you really expect from you!
July 31, 2008 at 2:05 pm
In college I was a cross country runner. I was on a small scholarship and I earned a letter after our team qualified for nationals. I was a college athlete and good enough to earn a letter and a scholarship, but I was the slowest runner on the team. In my mind, that meant I was not very good and no matter how hard I worked, I was never going to be a better runner than those other six girls. I was focusing on being the slowest on the team, rather than what my part was for the team. After each week, our coach would write out each runners’ goal for the week on a board. These were very detailed for each runner. However, my goal was always the same “Keep Improving”. I was a little miffed one day, after reading the same two words of “encouragement” for the 4th week in a row. I asked him why the other girls more. He explained that my race was against myself. I would never win a race. I would never even be in the top ten. “Knowing this, you still come out and run. That takes courage. Most don’t even try.” my coach explained. He also said that by improving my time, I am winning. I am better than last week. For my team my job is to be better than the other teams 6th or 7th runner. At Nationals, I ran my fastest time and still came in 157th. I was excited that I made my PR, but discouraged by my placement. The season is over and I was beaten by 156 other women. My coach pointed out that I actually beat 227 other women. There were 384 runners from all over the country. I was running against the best and beat more than beat me. Every woman running trained just has hard as me, and I still beat them. More importantly, I learned that my expectations were misplaced. My goal in life is now “keep improving”.