Expectations

I guess we all been at times being in a place where certains things have been expected out of us, also subconsciously we all do expect things out of us and out of others, no matter how much we lie that I am not expecting anything. Well just like everything expectations too has its pros and cons, and to a large extent affects our mental health.

Well when we expect things from ourselves performance wise, we do just put an added pressure on us. At times the added pressure does motivates us to go the extra mile but also at times it just becomes a huge psychological burden and we fail to strive under that added pressure. When we expect a certain result and we fail to achieve that, it just creates self doubt, low self esteem, anxiety, depression and in severe cases personality disorders.

Where do expectations stems from? In simple terms our past performances. Well if we have done well in a certain subject test in the past, we are bound to expect from ourselves to do well in it in the future too. Thus two things can happen, our expectation and goal will motivate us to study longer, train longer to meet certain level of expectations or we will crumble under its humongous pressure. Time and again we all have expected things out of us and failed to reach that. There can be several factors affecting the result, like our state of mind at that time, our surrounding, parental pressure and also our performance. But everything we fail to meet that expected level of performance we blame ourselves not considering that others factors with have led to the downfall in which we have no control. We need to analyse every result on the basis of factors which we can control like our dedication and hardwork and factors which we cant control.

How bad can expectations be? Well apart from mental health issues it can lead to formation of toxic psychology. Seldom I have seen in teenagers when they crush on someone, they are ready to do anything for them. But at the same time they invariably expect the other person to reciprocate it. And if the other person doesnt it leads to anger, jealousy, frustation, self doubt and thus creating a toxic environment. My suggestions to would be if you do something for someone dont expect anything back. If you are the type of person who will be expecting things back its better you dont help the other person. Help only to feel good from doing that chore nothing else.

Parental expectaions-

All of our parents expect things out of us. Sometimes its way too high, that we cant fulfill it and thus we feel like a big disappointment to them. Be it career wise or social behaviour, our parents do expect us to be at our best everytime, which is simply not possible. Its for our own good to cut some slacks for us and remind us that as humans we all mess up time and again.

How to control our mind to lessen the burden of our expectations-

In Shri Bhagwat Gita Sri Krishna said, attachment to a goal leads to frustation on not achieving it, and greed when completely achieveing it. We need to stop ourselves from getting attracted to the result and start enjoying the journey of doing it. Start enjoying and loving what we are doing and extracting maximum joy out of it, rather than thinking I will get this If I do this. Well if we fail to get that, then its really tough for us to cope mentally. Enjoying what we do keeps us happy and also increases productivity. Start everday from zero just because you did well yesterday doesnt mean you will today, stop expecting results out of you on past performance. It also stops us from preventing complacent.

My personal story-

While preparing for my pre- meds I expected a certain rank for almost two years. It did add a lot of pressure on me. Finally when I failed to get that rank, I faced self doubt, low self esteem, depression, personality disorder. Even though I got into one of the prominent colleges I wasnt happy and it did affect my performance in college both academically and non academically, thus being a victim of severe depression for a long time. Though I moved on a lot from that mental state by abiding to the above techniques to control expectations, I still have a long way to go to achieve complete mental fitness.

I thus concluded by saying expectations are not bad always but it depends on us how we deal with it all and doing the way which best suits us.