Expectations vs Experience: Are We Holding Ourselves Back?
Expectations. We’re told to lower them. We’re told to not expect too much. But also to expect more of ourselves. But never, never do something just because someone is expecting it. But wait, actually, you should fulfill certain expectations, at least academic ones…
Confusing. And how do they actually influence us, these expectations? (I promise I’ll use the word less from now on). While there is much to be said about how expectations exist and impact us daily, today I want to focus on them through the perspective of social experience. When I say that oftentimes we have the most fun when we least anticipate to do so, I’m sure a fitting anecdote will come to your mind. Mine? Meeting up with a friend from school, whom I hadn’t seen for a year. We went for a drink. We went for a paddle boat ride on the lake. Then walked through the town hall and ended up deciding to sneak into a random school’s graduation ball. Met people, went out to their afterparty with them. So random, so unexpected, yet so fun. But is the correct word ‘yet’ or ‘and’? What is the link between expectations and experience?
Events like Halloween, the ones we anticipate and prepare for, are often very enjoyable. But what makes such events different from a chill evening at the pub, is the engrained, subconscious vision of how it will play out. The fun you think you’ll have, the plan that you’ve devised for the night. I think, and consider if you agree, that for such events, we are always watching ourselves from ‘afar’, judging the experience we are having by what we imagined, what we expected. There is this constant comparison of what you are doing now and the level of enjoyment you are experiencing that almost diminishes the experience itself. And to zoom out for a moment, I think this principle applies across domains. The expectation of having to do tons of work induces anxiety and the anticipation of getting a lot done.
When you get to the time at which you can work, you are so occupied with the expectation of productivity that you consistently compare your actual progress with what you imagined you’d get done. Now that isn’t being very focussed, is it? Another example would be a really cool holiday. You’ve been looking forward to it so much, had such amazing visions of it that the moment is weighed against the version of it you rendered in your head. And that's the thing: the expectations we have in our head almost always don’t translate to reality, for one, because of the deliberate exclusion of external factors; expectations tend to be self-centered, life is not.
So what I am trying to communicate with all this is the following: a conscious effort to live in the moment will limit the effect of evaluating the moment. Understanding that we are all prone to this judgement by expectation will help identify the thought pattern as it occurs. And recognizing a behavior is the first step to limiting it, as I’m sure many self-help books or articles have informed you of.
So maybe take this article as inspiration to create spontaneous social events that you don’t expect anything from. Need a break from work? Ask your friends to hang out and see where it ends up going. No pressure to make it legendary, just the impulse to have fun without expectations hanging over you. And stop judging yourself or evaluating how you are doing. You’ll be your best self when all that energy spent analysing is redirected into being present.
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