More About Expectations
The reader comments on the post Subliminal Subjective Expectations from Friday have given me a few things to think about.
First, I’m noticing that people expect me to be honest. Vitor of The Fractal Forest was the first person who used the word honest, but our resident Urban Monk Albert started the ball rolling when he said that I should be myself, living the ultimate form of honesty. Kara-Leah (who is no longer blogging, so unfortunately I can’t link to her site) didn’t write the expectations that she wants me to live up to… rather, she proposed a new idea: to live without the filter of expectations. Using her advice could most certainly lead to living the truth, since without expectations, only the truth remains. Finally, Jonathan of Advanced Life Skills points out that people expect an uncommon amount of honesty from me.
For those who haven’t done so yet, I highly recommend reading each comment on the last post.
What is my opinion of all of this? Well, I’m flattered, and a part of me feels undeserving of such high expectations.
Which came first, the expectation or the behavior?
Vitor said that an expectation that other people have for him is that he will be responsible. Expectations like these are both created within and reinforced from outside. People expect Vitor to be responsible because he is responsible… and he continues to be responsible because people expect him to be. It creates a nice little paradox, and a question of which came first, his responsibility or the expectation of his responsibility.
I haven’t always been expected to be honest. Indeed, the opposite was expected out of me for a very long time. Just as in the movie The Matrix, nobody knows who started the war between AI and humans, the fact remained that there was a war. It seems more likely to me that it was a mutual distrust, slowly building up until each group, from their own point of view, could honestly say that the other group started it all.
One of the strengths of the much-hyped Subjective Reality model is that it concentrates on what is happening right now, without blaming the past or the future. After all, if neither are set in stone (since we can always change who we are right now), then the past and future have less relevance to our lives. It turns out that it doesn’t matter how Vitor started being responsible, except if you want to duplicate his first steps. It matters that he is responsible right now, and if the feedback loop were to fail at some point, it would be more difficult for him to remain responsible.
I grew up thinking of myself as a liar. It was easy to think of myself that way, because that is what I saw other people expecting out of me. Perhaps I pushed my boundaries a few too many times as a young child… Perhaps my father was too quick to judge my behavior… How I became a liar doesn’t matter, and both my father and I could rightfully argue about why I became a liar… but that doesn’t matter today. I changed my expectations about myself, and I changed my behavior. When other people noticed my behavior change, they changed their expectations about me. This change in their expectations made it easier for me to continue the behaviors I wanted, because I didn’t have to worry about living up to those ideals… I could now enjoy living up to those ideals.
Scott H Young of the eponymous site ScottHYoung.com seems to be working on people’s expectations about him partying. Now, personally, I think that partying is a great thing. It allows us to find pleasure which, if used responsibly, greatly relieves our stress and allows us to open our minds to new experiences. From what I can tell of his latest post, Partying and Personal Development, Scott (probably rightly) believes that people have certain expectations about people who party, and vastly different expectations of people working on personal development. After all, the poster-boy of Personal Development is Steve Pavlina, a color-blind vegetarian who listens to new-age music and uses his desk water fountain as a type of clock. The typical party-goer gets D’s and C’s in college, rarely studies, and is often found on the street at night combating alcohol poisoning by regurgitating their stomach’s contents. (To be honest, I’ve fought off alcohol poisoning more times than I care to admit. For nearly two years, I would be violently ill from drunkenness about once a week.)
Scott is trying to change the expectations of his readers by describing his motivation for partying. Instead of going to clubs in order to get drunk (as I’ve done many, many times), he goes to meet people and improve his social skills. I went to bars in order to escape from an unimaginative life, where he goes to challenge his shyness and gain inspiration. The methods are the same… We go out, find a bar or club, and order drinks… but the results are different because our expectations are different.
Jump Starting an Expectation
Probably the most empowering part of this whole process that I’ve been going through has been sharing it with others. By admitting that I have lied (or at least not been completely honest) before, and publicly stating that I am working towards changing my motivations, I created both the chicken and the egg at the same time. When I started being completely honest on this blog, I had my own doubts about how successful I would be. I just knew that if I couldn’t be honest, then it wasn’t worth the trouble of writing here. It was becoming an exhausting chore to keep up the false image, especially when so much of my life was pushing me in different directions. Once I put it down in words and saw that people were reading it, I gained motivation to keep up the ‘new me.’ After I noticed people’s expectations about me change, it became much easier to be honest, and the ‘new me’ simply became ‘me.’
Of course, it isn’t all roses and kittens. Lying is addictive, though fortunately there aren’t withdrawal symptoms like with physical addictions. Lying gives me adrenaline, which gives me pleasure. I still have to recognize when I’m starting to lie, and interject a short pause while I take stock in myself. Fortunately, my wife has become very observant, and recognizes that the short pause means I’m considering a lie, so at that point, there is absolutely no way for me to lie and get away with it. Just as she expects me to continue to get better at telling the truth, I expect her to continue to be wary and hold me accountable, so that I don’t lie again.
Another expectation that I’m working on is to get housework done. Unfortunately, there is no way for people online to double check on me and hold me accountable to myself, so I can’t ask you to change your expectations here. Besides, if I ever did master the act of cleaning the litter box daily, then what example of irresponsibility would I have to write about? It would turn into an example of responsibility, and I would probably sound like I’m preaching when I explain how I was finally able to get past this hurdle.
Perhaps that is part of the problem, though. I am concentrating on overcoming my problems so much that I don’t actually act.
Yes, I do suffer from the common Personal Development Newbie problem of thinking instead of acting. I am improving, though, at a drastic rate. Each time I rate my progress though, I keep seeing the horizon get further and further away, instead of noticing that the place I started at has dipped below the horizon behind me.
Quote from KL: In this gap, joy and love explode effortlessly. Or they don’t.
There is one more thing that I’d like to add before wrapping this up. KL left a comment that seemed to be a little cryptic. Here’s my understanding of what she said, and if I get it wrong, KL, please correct me. 
(I’m also adding in a few of my own thoughts that I’ve had since after reading her comment as well… I definitely threw my own tangent into this)
Talking about changing your expectations is all great and wonderful… Actually changing your expectations is also great, if that is what your goal is. What about not having expectations, though?
Well, the truth is that our expectations are tools of the ego. Our expectations about ourselves are the very foundations of the ego, and our expectations of others are the tools that the ego uses to gain control of our environment. If we live without expectations, then we are outside of the control of the ego. Trust me when I say this: I am nowhere near the ability to suppress and overcome the ego. I am, however, taking the first steps.
It is said that the state of mind that comes with overcoming the ego is one of bliss, joy, and peace… as pleasurable as any drug without the nasty side-effects. That’s quite an ideal to live up to… yet it takes a discipline that I’m barely becoming aware of in myself.
I’d like to throw in an analogy, simply because I like analogies so much. Think of your own muscles. Chances are, you’re able to sit still for long periods of time… your arms and legs don’t go flailing about randomly. If you tossed a wadded up paper at a trash can, you can usually make it in, or at least get very close. The wadded up ball of trash doesn’t go flying behind you, at the very least.
What about children, though? Infants don’t stop moving except when they’re asleep… They’re always doing something. If you have ever seen a toddler learning how to throw a ball, you know that the ball has just as much chance of landing on the kid’s head as it does of landing anywhere else. The reason why you can sit still is because you have learned how to move your muscles. The reason why you can toss paper in a garbage can is because you have practiced and fine-tuned your movements so that, rather than clumsily dropping the paper behind you, it is second nature to move your arm in just the right way… you don’t even think about how you’re moving your arm anymore, or even notice when you lean slightly forward as you make your toss.
The same could be said about our expectations and the ego that these expectations create. I feel like the toddler learning how to toss a ball so that it at least lands in front of me… I have just recently learned that I actually have control over my expectations, just as infants have to learn that they have control of their arms and legs. With practice, perhaps in time, I’ll be able to wield my expectations like a professional. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to hold my expectations still long enough that I can feel that bliss, joy, and peace. Until then, it is a matter of testing and trying… of changing my paradigms to see which ones produce the best results, and changing my expectations until I find a mold that I fit in perfectly.
Of course, if I do decide to live without expectations, then I wouldn’t expect the peace and joy… It would come, or it wouldn’t, depending on what was really there.
Link Love:
I already included Scott H Young’s site in this post… and I think that this would be a perfect time to introduce him to everybody. I found Scott’s site after looking at some of the features of Google Reader, and seeing his site as one recommended for me to read. Scott is a pantheist, as I am (though he prefers the label atheist, because it is easier to explain). Scott is a vegetarian, as I am not. And, Scott has some pretty good articles, such as the one about partying and exploring personal development.
And now, the reader question: If people had to sum up their expectations of you in one word, what would it be? Do you feel that you deserve that expectation? And, what did you do to earn that expectation?
You might want to ask your friends and family about this one… I certainly didn’t expect my main expectation to be honesty.
I asked my husband for his one word to describe his expectations of me. I wanted to throw out the words Responsible and Honest and a few others but I didn’t. I could almost hear his mind working in deciding if Sexual was going to be his word. He said he did consider it but what he came out with was Nice. Then he said that Nice could cover Sexual. Sweet was another word that he stated. I would have picked Responsible or Honest for myself.
I haven’t read all of the comments on the original article. I will go do that now.
Adam,
Kudos. Wonderful follow-up. You gave me a jolt of pleasure to see my words kick-start some of your words… and so we all inter-twine.
You captured it beautifully too - when all expectations are dropped… the state is as you describe. Yet can also not be described.
Expectations are a tool of the ego. And it’s not that we suppress of overcome the ego, merely that we let it go. We notice it, we may smile at it’s antics, but we don’t react to it, nor give it energy. Eventually it gets bored and ceases to be so troublesome.
Loving your new style.
Adam,
The situation is exactly as you describe, when I read your writings it sounds like you really know me. I basically started the cycle of expectation at some undefined, vague point in the past, and now it continues to move on its own, sustained by itself, perpetuum mobile. I could break that cycle deliberately, but with time it’s grown into a comfortable, familiar habit, almost a part of who I am.
I am questioning a lot of aspects in my life right now, so I’ll just be taking K-L’s advice, letting go of everything and see where it naturally leads. Should be interesting at least.