Expectations: Killers Of Dreams, Slayers Of Happiness.
As a millennial, I have a hate/hate relationship with expectation, yet expectations continue to keep a vile hold over my brain. I form them over and over again. Then the rug gets pulled out from under me time and time again. I was led to believe I’d own a house by now. I say this to emphasize the fact that no matter how many times your expectations have been proven wrong, slaying your expectations will be like playing Hades. You will make progress, but you’ll have to repeat the same journey over and over and over. Kill the same entities you’ve killed whenever they respawn. Hone those killing reflexes and beat the same gods that rule you again and again. Grow stronger each time you repeat the cycle, even if you don’t feel like you’re growing stronger. Kill, kill kill!
Most of the harmful expectations we form tend to fall into three categories:
Expectations of normalcy/stability/meritocracy/over-productivity: These are the expectations our brains cling to because we so desperately want the world to be fair. We want to believe that if we work or try hard, everything will be ok. (Or alternatively, if we just manage to live like ‘normal people’ do, everything will be ok.) I’m not saying don’t work or try hard, but if you hold these expectations too closely as you try your absolute best, and your efforts are not met with the results you associate with that, you’ll probably crash and burn. At the very least, productivity guilt will rule your life beyond reason, slowly crushing your mental and physical health via overwork and stress. To quote Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek: TNG: It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose.
Expectations born of fear/worst case scenario: These expectations may have started emerging in your life once that first ‘crash and burn’ scenario happened to you. Or they may be born of anxiety or Part X in general. So slaying these will be much like slaying part x. Sometimes these worst case scenario expectations become a cascade or spiral, a runaway train where one terrible “inevitable” thing logically leads to another terrible thing, leads to another. Like a part of your brain is creating a horror version of If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. (I know I keep linking to the Part X articles over and over again, normally I’d apologize but given the other blog entries I’m editing now, that’s not happening.)
Expectations of others: These can really kill a relationship, be it romantic, familial or platonic. Everyone has an idea of what the “right” partner, family member, colleague or friend will be, and it’s just not realistic for the other person to be that thing 100% of the time. It’s not realistic for them to anticipate your needs all the time, always be emotionally available, always be confident or always have time to do a task even if you’ve both assigned it as ‘theirs.’
You can try to slay all three types of expectation the same way: living in the world of these expectations and the beliefs around them. Exploring them down to the minute details. This may sound counter intuitive for the expectations of normalcy and stability (or even expectations of others,) but once you dig deep into the rigidity and highly specific details of your expectations, you’ll see they’re just as absurd if not more so than the worst case scenario expectations. They don’t conform to how the real world works, or how people do. I mean, Elon Musk exists and you’re expecting the world to be fair?
Lean into the minutia of your expectations of each type. If you’re a writer, write every little detail of every expectation out, under all three types of expectation. If you’re a talker, talk them out. See how absurd they are. Feel that you can, in fact, live in an absolute worst case scenario if you have to. Really feel the rigidity and silliness of the stability related expectations. Feel the fear and instability of the fearful expectations, and how the level of fear they inspire is sometimes worse than it’d be if one of these worst case scenarios came to pass (if you experience the cascade/runaway train thing, follow the train as far as it goes and take time to examine each “logical” leap.) Gain clarity around your expectations of others, find and express the realistic ones clearly, but then put yourself in that person’s place where they must meet the realistic ones all the time no matter what’s going on in their lives, not to mention the unrealistic ones! Once in awhile, they will not meet even the most basic expectations you have, no matter how clear you are about them. There is a difference between this and that person not trying at all. This is just life. To sum everything up: I want you to live in all the feelings and improbable realities your expectations have laid out for you. Observe how each expectation comes to you physically, emotionally, spiritually - and what thoughts are born of them.
Even if you’re not necessarily an artist, I’d like you to create art that highlights the insanity of your expectations as they pop up at you throughout the day. Start three projects: one for the stability/fairness expectations, one for the fearful ones and one for expectations of others. I don’t care if they’re drawings, scripts, stories, sculpture, fiber arts, etc. The more you express the emotion(s) behind the specificities of your expectant thoughts within these projects, the better. This will prime you for when you or the world around you does not meet said expectations the vast majority of the time. I don’t care if these projects take a day or years to create, as long as they give you an outlet for expressing these expectations that are unhelpful to keep expressing to yourself as gospel. These projects might also serve as an informal guide to spotting how expectations show up in your mind in the future or even identifying new ones.
Once you’ve gotten used to your expectations, have developed an idea and art around what they’re like, you can more easily cut them off. You’ll feel when these expectations start to come on. You’ll have documentation, proof of your expectations’ weaknesses (weaknesses usually lie in their rigid nature.) Go for their weaknesses. Develop a shorthand for doing so over time. Kill them. Kill them as many times as you need to, then refocus on the journey of life, on the present moment, the task or activity at hand. Having to go back and kill these expectations over and over again and bring yourself back to the present moment constantly is often inevitable, so you can’t expect to feel ‘success’ or ‘failure’ around this. The constant need to kill a respawned expectation is part of the journey, part of life, no matter how frequently it crops up.
I’ll have more tips later when it comes to combating the fear of the unknown, as these are what all expectations are probably born from. In the meantime, you can look into the Jungian Digging Method, as this is one of the things I’ll be suggesting around fear of the unknown (with the caveat that this method was developed over a century ago) and it’s something readily available online and adaptable to fit your needs. Seriously, you can find meditations surrounding this method all over the internet. Some won’t feel right to you and that’s cool, find one that does or make one out of component parts (especially since you may have to ignore some problematic things, again, this method was developed around 1912-1913ish. Just trying to curb your expectations.)
