Your expectations, more than anything else in life, determine your
reality. When it comes to achieving your goals, if you don’t believe you’ll
succeed, you won’t.
Research from LSU shows that people who believe in themselves use
more metacognitive functions than those who don’t. This means that they use
more of their brains and have more brainpower to solve problems. Metacognition
is especially important for achievement as it ensures that you approach
problems from many different angles and adapt your approach as needed.
The tricky thing about your expectations is that they impact other
people too. As far back as the 1960s, Harvard research demonstrated the power
of our beliefs in swaying other people’s behavior. When teachers in the studies
were told that certain (randomly selected) children were smart, those kids
performed better, not only in the classroom, but also on standardized IQ tests.
Indeed, we get the most out of other
people when we believe in them. Research shows that this happens because when
we believe in someone,
• we treat them better than people we think will fail,
• we give them more opportunities to succeed than we give those we
think will fail,
• we give them more accurate, helpful feedback than we give
others, and
• we do more teaching because we believe it’s time well spent.
Letting your doubts cloud your belief in someone (or something)
practically ensures their failure. Medical professionals call this the “nocebo”
effect. Patients who have low expectations for medical procedures or treatments
tend to have poorer results than those who expect success, even with regards to
well-established treatments. If a doctor uses a treatment with a clinically verified
high rate of success but presents it in a negative light, the probability of a
negative outcome increases.
Your expectations shape your reality. They can change your
life, emotionally and physically. You need to
be extra careful about (and aware of) the expectations you harbor as the wrong
ones make life unnecessarily difficult. Be especially wary of the expectations
that follow—they give people all kinds of trouble.
1. Life should be fair. We’ve all been told a million
times (and likely told other people) that life isn’t fair, but in spite of what
we know about the intricacies of injustice, it’s a concept that doesn’t quite
sink in in practice. A surprising number of us subconsciously expect life to be
fair, and we believe that any unfairness that we experience will somehow be
balanced out, even if we don’t do anything about it. If you’re stuck in that
mindset, it’s time to get over it (work on your emotional intelligence if
this is a struggle for you). When something “unfair” happens, don’t rely on
outside forces to get you back on your feet. Sometimes there isn’t any
consolation prize, and the sooner you stop expecting there to be, the sooner
you can take actions that will actually make a difference.
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2. Opportunities will fall into my lap. One of
the most important things a person can do is stick his or her neck out and seek
opportunity. Just because you deserve a raise, a promotion, or a company car,
doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. You have to make it happen. You have to put
in the hard work, then go and get what’s yours. If we limit ourselves to what’s
given to us, we are at the mercy of other people. When you take action, think
“what steps do I need to take?” “what obstacles are in my way and what do I
need to do to remove them?” and “what mistakes am I making that take me away
from my goals rather than toward them?”
3. Everyone should like me. People
have hang ups, and that means all sorts of decent, kind, respectable people are
not liked by (some) others, for no good reason at all. When you think that
everyone should like you, you end up with hurt feelings when you shouldn’t.
(You can’t win them all.) When you assume that people are going to like you,
you take shortcuts; you start making requests and demands before you’ve laid
the groundwork to really understand what the other person is thinking and
feeling. Instead of expecting that people will like you, focus on earning their
trust and respect.
4. People should agree with me. This
one can be tough. Sure, you know what you’re talking about, and for that
reason, people should take you seriously, but expecting people to agree with
you out of courtesy or because your ideas are so incredibly sound is another
story. Something that’s obvious to you might not be so to someone with
different experiences and a different agenda, so stop being offended when
people disagree with you, and stop assuming that there is only one right answer
(yours). Instead, focus on how you can find solutions that give everyone what
they need.
5. People know what I’m trying to say. People
can’t read your mind, and what you’re trying to say is rarely what other people
hear. You can’t expect people to understand you just because you’re talking—you
have to be clear. Whether you’re asking someone to do something without
providing the context or explaining a complex concept behind a big project,
it’s easy to leave out relevant information because you don’t
think it’s necessary. Communication isn’t anything if it isn’t clear, and your
communication won’t be clear until you take the time to understand the other
person’s perspective.
6. I’m going to fail. As I’ve touched upon already,
if you expect to fail, you stand a higher chance of creating the very outcome
you’re worried about. If you fail, accept that sometimes you’ll fail and
sometimes you’ll succeed, but if you pursue an endeavor, believe with all your
being that you’re going to succeed in that endeavor. Otherwise, you’ll limit
the chances of that happening.
7. Things will make me happy. Sure, things
can make life more fun and comfortable in the short run, but they can’t make
you happy in the long run. Too many of us expect a future event (“I’ll be happy
when I get that promotion”) to make us happy, instead of looking more deeply
into the real causes of our unhappiness. If you don’t fix what’s going on
inside, no external event or item is going to make you happy, no matter how
much you want it to.
8. I can change him/her. There’s only one person
in this world you can truly change—yourself—and even that takes a tremendous
amount of effort. The only way that people change is through the desire and
wherewithal to change themselves. Still, it’s tempting to try to change someone
who doesn’t want to change, as if your sheer will and desire for them to
improve will change them (as it has you). You might even actively choose people
with problems, thinking that you can “fix” them. Let go of this faulty expectation.
Build your life around genuine, positive people, and avoid problematic people
that bring you down.
Bringing It All Together
Believing
that you’ll succeed really does make it more likely that you will. It also
means that you’ll need to let go of some erroneous expectations that will only
get in your way.
Do you see people’s expectations helping them and holding them
back? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below as I learn just
as much from you as you do from me.