Editorial

Expectations…

01 Jun 17

Expectations are an interesting thing, doomed if you have them and doomed if you don’t and they can speak volumes for the status of your relationships – personal, professional, intimate, friendships, family, etc.   If you have no expectations of someone, that is a clear indication that you have no relationship with them fitting any of those categories because the only place one expects something is where they feel like they have a right to and the only thing that can give you a right is a relationship.   Then, there is the opposite scenario – having expectations where you think you have a right i.e. relationship and having the other party fall short.  Well, that speaks volumes as well.  Because here you had a perception of the level of your relationship and the other party’s shortcoming in meeting those spoke volumes about your status in their life.

And then you hear the old-age, well if you had just communicated your expectations, all would have turned out all right.  Now, that is truly an interesting ask – an ask that is necessary in some environments and not in others.  I fully expect to have to communicate my expectations in my professional life – to my employees, my management, my clients, my peers.  Why, you ask?  Well, I do what I do for a living for a price and I get compensated for it and it is in my best interest to ensure that I am doing well in the work that I am being compensated for and as part of that work, communication and expectation setting is necessary. 

However, the rules change in your personal life.  I am not being paid to be your friend, your relative, your child, your parent, your sibling, and so on.  I am doing it because we share a relationship and that relationship has been long enough where you know me well enough to know what will make me happy and what will make me sad.   Now, the rules may be a little different in new relationships like making new friends or just being married into a family but it is just a matter of time until you figure out what makes the person happy or not.  Now, in these personal scenarios, you willingly choose to care about the person and their feelings, not because you have to or because you are being paid for it but because you want to – because that relationship matters to you.   And how much you do or don’t do speaks volumes to how much that relationship matters to you.  There may be a small grace period where your unwillingness to respect the other party’s wishes and desires may be attributed to sheer ignorance and forgiven but rest assured, over time that will fade and all actions or in actions will be attributed to a lack of care.   And in those situations, for the other party to come back to say well if you would have just said you wanted this or did not want this, we would have made it happen will not be good enough.  At the end of the day, life is short and the less complicated you keep it, the better.  If I have been blessed with the presence of those where I don’t need to pour my heart out to be happy, I am going to gravitate towards them.  Work, obligations, and other stresses of life take so much out of you that if I have a little bit of time left to relax, I want to do it around those where I don’t have to constantly explain myself and I am grateful for so many of those relationships that life has blessed me with and thankful for them as well.]

This summer, relax and surround yourself with those where you can just be you – no explanations, no hurt feelings, no let down expectations, no sadness.  Life is too short to surround yourself with anything otherwise.  Wishing our readers a great summer season and vacations!  Thank you for your continued support!