If you have been following, you will have noticed I missed a week. I was incredibly busy and delayed in writing, but when the opportunity arose to write, I thought it might be best to delay further. Normally, I would write tomorrow, but I thought today made more sense. Ironically, all of this leads well into my discussion for today. What I often call the management of expectations.
For you, my dear reader, it is best if I keep to a schedule. That way, you know what to expect from me. If I meet your expectations, then you are (generally) not disappointed by me, as my posts will appear when you predict they ought to appear. This will make me reliable in your eyes. If I don’t keep to my schedule, as I did this past week, then you may be disappointed, and then you may also lose trust it me. In this case, I become unreliable. It affects our relationship whether I meet your expectations of me.
In my youth, I participated in performing arts. Specifically, I joined an improvisation troupe for a brief period after I had finished high school. To join the troupe, I had to take a basic class on how improve worked and what sorts of games/performances I would be expected to perform. If you’ve ever seen Whose Line Is It Anyway?, then you probably are familiar with the sorts of performances I did. Improvisation, as it turns out, has a lot to do with the management of expectations.
To be successful at improvisation, one must do one seemingly simple thing: lower the expectations of your audience, and then follow it up with doing what comes natural. That’s it. It is a ridiculously simple formula that works incredibly well. If you can reduce the expectations of your audience, then they will be impressed by almost anything. This is why improve troupes often go to the audience to ask for ideas in their performances; by asking the audience for ideas, the audience typically believes that the performance that is about to follow will be much more difficult, as the performers have had no opportunity to prepare for what the are about to do. Without appropriate preparation, acting out a coherent scene seems impossible. However, the performers listen to the audience’s suggestions and then create an often wacky scene that frequently impresses that same audience.
Of course there are those performers who are not as good at this sort of play. If the performers do not actually follow or use the audience’s suggestions, or if the scene is too far fetched, then the performance may lack the impressive qualities that one might expect. Again, it is all about those expectations. What we anticipate in contrast to what we actually behold.
Life, I have found, is much like an improvisational performance. Those around me are my audience, in a sense, though they tend to be as much a part of my performance as I am of theirs. However, much like the improve audience, those around me have expectations of me. Like this blog, my readers will probably expect that I will post once a week, and usually on Sundays, because I have created this expectation by the frequency of my past posts. As I had indicated at the beginning, my audience will probably be affected by my ability to maintain that expectation.
While I do believe it is important to manage the expectations of others in this world, where this idea really becomes important (in my opinion) is when applied to one’s self. Managing one’s own expectations. I use the above examples and explanation in order to try to make clear what has to happen, but it isn’t so much about how we manage the expectations of others that is important, as much as how we manage our own for our selves. This is how management of expectations ties in very closely with the struggle and sacrifice I was talking about in my past few posts.
Managing one’s own expectations is a challenging thing. In some sense, it is nonsensical entirely. After all, I simple expect what I expect, don’t I? How can I alter my expectations? In the part of the world where I live, expectations of the self are rather high. It seems to me that most people are very concerned with taking the greatest advantage in all situations. What I often refer to as the bigger, better deal. (I did not coin this term; it has been around for a very long time, and I do not know its actual source.) The bigger, better deal, or BBD, is the mindset one adopts when they are constantly looking for some way to improve their situation. If one has a car, one is always looking around for a faster or fancier car. If one has a computer, one is always looking for a faster or better performing computer. In relationships, the BBD is quite insidious, as most people seem entirely unsatisfied with their partners, always gazing around them for a better partner. This last issue is incredibly problematic I find.
As I see it, the BBD mindset is inappropriate to adopt in all situations. It may be helpful in a limited number of situations, such as when I am shopping around for the best computer to purchase given my circumstances. However, it is entirely inappropriate when selecting a partner in life, whether romantically or even professionally. I will address my viewpoint on interpersonal relationships in a future post; for now I will simply say that BBD is incompatible with interpersonal relationships. A different strategy needs to be adopted when dealing with people in that way.
An alternative mindset to hold is one where I am satisfied with what I have. Those around me often refer to this as settling for a thing. The term settling has a negative connotation, and so I prefer not to use that term. What I have in mind is an acceptance in what I have, allowing me to gain the most enjoyment and satisfaction from whatever it is, often in the present. This is related to “living in the now,” or “living in the present,” to share a phrase that is often used. To be satisfied with today. To be able to take enjoyment with today, instead of worrying about possible futures. If I am always worrying about the future, I never spend time enjoying what I do have here an now.
To manage my expectations properly, I need to be able to be satisfied with what I have, here and now. Not absolutely everything, but enough. I live in a home with various deficiencies. There are holes in the walls in places, the floors are not perfectly flat, I have no air conditioning and the weather has been rather hot lately. I can work toward improving these deficiencies in the future, but I can also enjoy my home for what it does offer me. It provides me shade from the hot sun on a day like today. My home also allows me to sit here and write this blog to you, and I can be happy that I have this opportunity. I am in a committed relationship with my partner, and I can be happy that I have that too.
It isn’t always easy to accept the things I have. There are certainly times when I want more. However, I don’t actually need more most of the time. And sometimes, getting that more results in a decrease in my happiness instead of an increase. Food is the best example I have of this. I tend to always be hungry. I would eat pretty well all the time if I could. However, when given the opportunity to eat as much as I can, I tend to overdo it. I tend to eat until I am unable to eat any more, and then I feel bloated and very uncomfortable for hours afterward. The satisfaction at stuffing my face full of tasty food is lost by excruciating hours of dissatisfaction. Clearly, in this particular situation, for me, more is definitely not better. I have had to learn to be satisfied with much less food, and I have had to learn to not eat just because I can. I can enjoy some tasty food, and then stop myself from going too far. I can be satisfied with enough, and learn to accept the perceived lack that follows. Or, I can recognize that the perceived lack is just that, perceived. I am not actually lacking anything. The loss is all in my mind.
This also applies with types of foods. I learned a long time ago that some foods tasted very good when I ate them, but then made me feel like crap afterward. For example, potato chips and Cheezies taste quite good when I eat them, but leave me feeling sluggish and heavy shortly afterward. However, there are other foods that are the opposite. For example, when I eat Kashi Go Lean cereal, the original cereal and not any of the plethora of other varieties available, I find that eating the cereal isn’t terribly exciting and the taste is not all that great, but for the rest of the day I feel much, much better. In other words, some activities I engage in have an instant gratification, and others have a gratification that follows, and sometimes I am lucky to find something that can satisfy both, like eating an apple or a pear. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of expectations as it relates to food that I believe is the cause of obesity in North America, as well as the adoption of the BBD with food.
Understanding how food works, and therefore recognizing what I ought to expect from my food, helps me to make better decisions and live a happier life. I understand that I cannot simply eat anything I want simply because it happens to taste good in the moment, because I expect that I will feel like crap later. Or, I expect that eating that Kashi cereal will result in a benefit to myself later. A non-food example like this is exercise. Exercising is not generally an enjoyable activity in itself. Exercising means pushing myself to do difficult things. However, if I push myself and do those difficult things, later I can enjoy a stronger body that looks much nicer as well.
Looking at this in the other direction, if I do not understand how food works, and I do not recognize the effects that it will have, then I will be left disappointed. If I think that eating all those Cheezies will make me feel good, without the feeling of sluggishness afterward, then I am disappointed later when I feel sluggish. In other words, I need to have appropriate expectations of the situations I put myself into. I cannot expect things to be better than they actually will be. This is often brought about by a lack of information, or misinformation. This is likely why I have such a significant distrust of marketing and advertising, and sales in general, as most of the time those activities lead to a lack of information or misinformation. The opposite situation occurs to what the aim of improvisation is; instead of the audience’s expectations being lowered, the audience’s expectations are raised and then when the performer/sales person does what comes natural, the audience is disappointed.
To be happy in this life, it tends to be helpful not to have such high expectations. If my expectations are low, then I will be impressed and happy with what the world offers me. On the other hand, if my expectations are high, then I will be disappointed by what I find in the world. This again seems like a simple situation and a simple solution to happiness, but as with all things there is much more to the story. After all, why would millions of people adopt a mindset like BBD then? It is often argued that having those higher expectations is what motivates people to try and make an effort at projects. Is there a situation where one can have low expectations and yet still be motivated to their projects?