Expectations

Here are some enlightening questions about expectations.

1. How do you feel when someone exceeds one of your high expectations?  Great!
2. How do you feel when someone exactly meets one of your high expectations?  "eh." Nothing special.
3. How do you feel when someone almost meets one of your high expectations?  Sad, disappointed or frustrated.
4. How do you feel when someone goes far below one of your high expectations?  Shocked, angry, or even retaliatory in order for them to take your expectations seriously and realize how much "they hurt you".
5. How much effort can it take them to almost meet one of your high expectations?  It may take a lot of effort.
6. When they put forth a lot of effort to meet the expectation, how do they feel when you are disappointed?  Thay may feel awful or like a failure.  They may feel like it was a total waste.
7. How much effort does it take for you to set an expectation to be high?  Almost none.
8. How does it feel to lower your expectations?  It is painful.  It's a loss.  It is something that may take some grieving.  Grief has multiple stages and is a process.  But afterward, you are much happier, take less for granted, appreciate more, and feel more alive.
9. How would you feel after lowering your expectations to below what they are already doing?  Great!  You would appreciate them exceeding your expectations.
10. A wise elderly woman was asked the secret to her long and happy marriage. Her response: “I lowered my expectations.” (Marjorie Pay Hinckley)
11. Choosing to lower your expectations is choosing happiness.
12. An expectation is a threshold that you set for your happiness.  There are other thresholds (aka rules) that have consequences based on behavior.  Does lowering your expectations mean you must lower all thresholds?  No.  We can still uphold those thresholds even if we lower our expectations.  This allows people to still have the consequences that they need to help them learn while allowing us to still be happy regardless.
13. Does lowering your expectations mean you have to lower your needs, wants and desires?  No.
14. Can sharing your needs, wants and desires still influence and encourage someone even when you have low expectations?  Yes.  In fact, it can encourage them with more of a feeling of love and service and decrease the feelings of fear and manipulation.
15. What happens when you let a sponge out of a mold that you fit it into?  It goes back to its original shape.  It didn't develop or grow; it just temporarily conformed.
16. Are you wanting to help them grow and develop or just conform?
17. Do you want realness (or even intimacy) in your relationship with them or for them to do what you want, building walls between?
18. What will they likely do if you go to them with expectations?  Probably conform or rebel.
19. What will they likely do if you go to them without expectations but with needs, wants, and desires? They may choose to help/serve you.
20. What do you really want to do with your expectations?  Hopefully, you want to lower them.
21. Tools to lower your own expectations:
1. Reset your expectations.
2. Put yourself into their shoes.  Find out what their desires are.  See Be a Peacemaker.
3. Stop arguing with reality and go through the grieving process.
4. Use TheWork.com for a less painful and more enlightening approach than grieving.
5. Interact with the people who have it worse than you (e.g. the poor and needy).  It will help you to see what you've been taking for granted.
6. Focus concerted energy on being grateful (e.g. gratitude journal, saying 5 things you're grateful for each day).  This will combat the tendency to naturally raise your expectations to the new status quo.
22. Tools for helping someone else lower their expectations:
1. Share with them these insights and tools along with your desire for them to be truly happy.
2. (Controversial) Reset their excessive expectations by communicating what you commit or don't commit to doing.  This can be very painful for all involved, but it may be more healthy than "leading them on" with expectations that are above reality.
3. Don't be distracted by their words, tone, or expectations; instead, see their perspective.  This makes their expectations not hold any weight with you.
4. Honor and convey your boundaries.