Living up to expectations

My starting point for this blog was the World Cup, which so far has definitely exceeded some pretty lofty expectations. Even the manner of England's defeat was actually relatively encouraging compared to the normal spine-crushing disappointment. But it got me thinking a bit about hype, about expectations and about the human condition which exists around these things.

Things often don't live up to expectations. However frequently this is through no fault of the thing itself but more a function of the fact that expectations often expect too much of things. Hyperbole can often render the result of something irrelevant, no matter how hard you try the outcome seems to fail to meet expectations. We don't do a very good job of recognising this though, for we still feel the disappointment keenly regardless of how impossible we have made it for whatever it is to justify the hype.

I've always found it a curious facet of life that we do this, we heap pressure on something or someone and then look around bewildered when that pressure proves to be a burden too far. We hype something up into a frenzy and then wonder why the outcome didn't mean the heights we unfairly expected.

Developed countries (PARTICULARLY the United Kingdom) are notoriously bad at this when it comes to sporting events and personnel. I've lost count of the amount of events or people we have built up, only to see them come crashing down around our ears. There then tends to be a massive inquest into "what went wrong?" when the real question actually should be "how on earth did we realistically expect X to happen in the first place?" 

The worst occurence of this however is the way we do it to ourselves. There is nothing wrong at all with setting yourself lofty expectations and goals (shoot for the stars etc..) but we lose sight of realism all too often and then needlessly punish ourselves. I have been guilty in the past of this to a stunning degree, pushing my expectations of myself too far and then crucifying myself when I didn't reach them. It has taken me a long time to become comfortable with what I can expect of myself and, by extension, others.

As I said before, there is nothing wrong with ambition, drive and determination. They are what defines the human condition in some respects. But the crucial aspect of these traits is to retain a sense of realism, a sense of what can actually be achieved. 

I don't really subscribe to this theory that you can achieve anything if you set your mind to it. And I'm not saying this in a negative or pessimistic way, I'm not saying that you shouldn't shoot for the stars. Just pick our stars a bit more carefully so we don't burn out of fuel on the way there (how's the space analogy working for you there?).

It is often said that there is no greater pressure than that which we put on ourselves. I would go further and say that the ONLY pressure we need to overcome, the only expectations we really need to meet, are our own. I think it takes a real sense of identity to be able to do this, to know ourselves well enough to set realistic and achievable goals and then to meet them. 

So next time something doesn't quite hit the heights you may have set for it just take a quick second to think whether what was being asked of something was realistic. You may find that with a bit of refining, everything can in fact live up to expectations quite handily indeed.

Till next time,

DT