A Mindful Approach To Managing Expectations
Having expectations is a very normal, natural, human trait. From the media we consume daily to the people we interact with, our minds have become naturally attuned to what we are supposed to expect from others. It is the way we have been told that the world should function.
When we hold the door for someone, we might expect a ‘thank you’ in return. When we share something personal with our friends, we might expect them to keep it a secret and not share the information with others. Growing up, we might have expected our parents to be perfect individuals who made no mistakes.
Having expectations is at the very core of ensuring that our society functions properly. It is important to set boundaries and expectations if not our world might become a lawless land. However, problems may arise and challenging emotions may occur when some of these expectations become unrealistic.
A typical 21st-century human might consume social media every day. Through social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok many of us might compare our lives to others. It is never wrong to gain inspiration from inspiring figures through social media or learn things from our favourite influencers.
The problem comes about when we might start to believe that everything we consume through the media is real. Social media may be contributing to many warped ideals of reality and expectations that we might hold ourselves and the people around us to.
A study done by Portland State University in 2020, revealed that the media is ‘highly influential and a stronger indicator of social ideals surrounding body image’. Many women are comparing themselves to other women online and placing expectations of how their bodies should look like on themselves.
Another way in which large corporations have capitalised on our need to fulfill expectations is the consumerisation of Valentine’s Day. On such days, our social media feeds may be filled with updates on what people all around the world gifted their partners with for Valentine’s Day. An interesting trend that even I saw on many of my social media feeds was Fathers gifting their daughters even with flowers for Valentine’s Day. This gives rise to many expectations that we might place on our partners to fulfill and promotes consumerism which is an entirely different topic to tackle.
Let us focus our attention on the expectation bit.
For many of us, we might place expectations on our partners to get us flowers or chocolates or bring us to a fancy restaurant on a night like Valentine’s Day. If our partner fails to do so, this might lead to challenging feelings like unhappiness or lower self-worth where we feel like our partner might not care about us.
In such instances, it is important to step back and take a moment to internalise and become aware of our thoughts. Perhaps certain questions we could ask ourselves could be - ‘What love language does my partner like to use to showcase their love?’, ‘What else has my partner done for me today that I could be appreciative and grateful for?’, or ‘How about I openly share my feelings, emotions, and thoughts with my partner about how their lack of gifts made me feel today and let’s work through and come to a compromise or manage our expectations together.’
Having open communication and being able to take a step back to deal with such thoughts instead of reacting is a key step in ensuring that our expectations do not get the better of us. It is also important to know the difference between our expectations and when we are actually being treated negatively or badly by our partners. Managing expectations does not mean tolerating abusive actions.
Setting clear boundaries, and managing expectations is a lifelong social skill that takes time to build and form. Many of us might not get it on our first try and we will for sure make mistakes along the way where we might over-expect or under-expect from the people around us. What is important is that we keep learning and adjusting to reach a sweet spot.
