Expectations

By Gatha Kalpana Vijay

We constantly strive to live up to expectations. Everyone has certain expectations of us, including our parents, neighbours, teachers, friends, even our furry little pets, and of course we, ourselves. Our mom and dad expect us to be a good, active, smart child. Our neighbours expect us to be helpful all the time. If you are a girl, you are expected to be what they call it in India ‘Sanskari’. Girls wearing Kutras, doing prayers, doing as the elders say, speaking her opinions and thoughts is considered as ‘talking over elders’ or ‘disrespectful’, doesn’t have male friends, these are typical expectations that stereotypical people have from girls. Our friends always expect us to treat them well, despite of what we are going through. They want us to help them around whenever they need us. They expect us to understand ‘their’ problems while keeping ours aside. Our teachers expect us to do very well in exams and tests. If you are an excellent student, oh boy! You have a lot of pressure, you are expected to get straight A’s in every exam, compete, do other extracurricular activities, etc. These are all expectations we should worry about in the end, because the expectations we have from ourselves can be the biggest motivator or the most demoralizing thing if you don’t live up to them.

Our expectations from ourselves are the ones that matter over anyone’s expectations from us. We all have a certain blueprint in our mind of what we want to become as a person. It can be from the smallest things to the biggest life decisions and events. We have a plan for everything we do, want to do and be. In other words, we call it ‘dream self’, ‘dream life’ ‘best version of you’ and so many different names. Now this blueprint or our expectation is mainly under pressure, influenced by society’s expectations. Let me give you a simple example, waking up at 5am. There’s this stereotype about waking up early and being successful. You must have read somewhere or at least heard this, if you want to be successful wake up at 5am or 4am. After reading this, we believe that as long as I wake up this early, I can be successful; then I can be the best version of myself. So you decide to wake up at 5am even if you hate waking up early. Here we set an expectation of waking up early, because of society’s pressure and stereotype. We didn’t decide to wake up at 5am for ourselves. If you are not a morning person, you might fail to wake up early; you start to doubt yourself, your abilities because you failed to meet your expectation. We often set these kinds of expectations without really thinking; truly thinking to ourselves. We set them under the pressure and influence of society. And if you fail them, you begin to doubt your worth and ability.

Before you set any expectations, ask yourself, ‘Am I doing this for me? Or to live up to the blueprint society has made?’ ‘Do I want to wake up at 5am because I love the early mornings, the dawn, the feeling of having quiet time, getting things done, or just because people say you should wake up at 5am; society’s blueprint and expectations?’ If the answer is ‘for me.’ congratulations! And if it’s ‘society’ then you should reconsider your expectations of yourself. Because you didn’t do it for yourself!

Once you start doing things for yourself, setting these goals and expectations for yourself, life becomes a lot easier. Other people’s expectations from you don’t really matter if they make you doubt yourself, your abilities, and your worth. You becoming the best version of yourself, that blueprint of it in your mind should be carried out by feeling the happiest that you feel enough. Society’s expectations from you are the last thing you should worry about when deciding anything, taking decisions or setting goals for yourself.

There will be times when you fail to live up to your own expectations. It can happen because you set yourself goals that are too ambitious for a beginner, you get sick, or you just couldn’t do it. And that’s perfectly fine. It can make you doubt yourself; you will have a little self-negative talk, saying stuff like ‘How can this happen?’ ‘You didn’t do your best’ ‘You are not good enough’, etc. But the truth is that sometimes we just fail and that is okay. If you never fail, you never really tried. So if you’ve failed even a simple expectation like getting up early or exercising for 10 minutes, IT’S OKAY!

I know it’s not as simple as it sounds. Let me tell you how I first let down my own expectation and what happened. We had a 20 marks science unit test the next day. We also had ‘Dhol Pathak’ practice for an upcoming event. ‘Dhol’ is a very famous instrument in India. You have to put all your energy into it. So, after I came back home that afternoon from school, I thought to myself, ‘I will study after the practice’. So that afternoon, I didn’t study. I went for the practice, after coming home in the evening, I was very tired. What I didn’t realize was that last night’s sleep would make me tired early, because I slept so little. I fell asleep without being able to study. Guess what? The next day, I couldn’t even write answers worth 5 marks. I went home and cried for about an hour. No, I didn’t cry because I’ll get bad grade, or get scolded by teachers, I was feeling so bad about myself for not meeting my expectation, not managing my time and energy. ‘I didn’t do enough’ ‘I am not good enough’ I was giving myself this talk. I blamed myself a lot, doubted my worth, and felt shame and guilt. When I was analysed why this happened, the answer came up ‘not managing my time and energy properly and feeling super tired as a result’ but me being super tired and not having the energy to study after practice was feeling like an excuse to me. I was feeling like I am just giving excuses even though it was the fact.

Accepting that I can also fail my own expectation was hard as hell. My ego, the mind couldn’t accept it because it never happened before. So far in my 14 years of life, I had always lived up to my expectations. I did anything to live up to them, sleepless nights, working so much that I burned out, everything.

We don’t like to fail and falling short of our own expectations? That is the last thing our mind and ego want to accept. There will be a voice in your head that will make you feel so negative about this. But sometimes not meeting your expectations is okay. But doubting your worth and yourself because of failure is not okay.

‘You’re not good enough’ is the last thing you want to say to yourself after a failure. The hardest thing is to ‘accept’ that you haven’t met your own expectations. Our ego and mind don’t like to accept defeat. Getting up and trying again may seem impossible after failure, but it is not. You just have to give yourself time, accept the situation and you can try again.

A lot of people think and I can see them coming and saying ‘what are you talking about? Accepting that I have failed means I will continue to stay like this, I have to give myself some tough love.’ NO, acceptance leads to growth and improvement. You can change only if you accept. You don’t have to feel hurt, worthless or guilty for failing. You can still live up to your expectations. Not giving up on confidence and believing in yourself is what really matters.

So remember, it’s okay if you couldn’t live up to your expectations, it’s okay to fail. Your expectations from yourself should be the things that keep you going, keep you motivated. Be proud of yourself for trying. Do it for you and ONLY you <3

By Gatha Kalpana Vijay