Introduction

I always see someone saying “Expectation kills”, or “I have stopped expecting anything from anyone”. If someone gave me a rupee if someone said this to me then trust me I would live in Antilia 😂

Let’s start with what you mean by expectation. Doing a Google Search on the meaning of expectation will result in you this answer:

expectation: a strong belief that something will happen or be the case.

Coming back to the point, every time someone said this to me I always used to think “How does expectation kill?”, “Can you ever stop expecting?”.

Why this blog?

I have discussed this thing with almost all my friends over the years and it has helped me to had formed a really strong opinion about this.

But the idea of writing this as a blog came when Dheeraj said the comment mentioned below.

Nothing wrong here but “Expectations hurt anyways.”, this line almost triggered me. Nothing against Tushar he might have a different experience than mine and if anyone of you readers wants to discuss this topic with me I’m always up for such discussion you can contact me on any of the mediums from links.darshanrander.com

Root cause

The phrase “Expectation kills” is not something that I have heard from one or two people, it’s from almost all of them with whom I have talked about this topic.

Again a quick Google Search on “Expectation kills” will give a lot of articles, discussions and quotes. I read a few of them:

Whatever in it is not wrong, so what’s all the fuss about?

Expectation is the root of all heartache ~ William Shakespeare

And if you have guessed it. It’s not from Shakespeare.

In these times when the Internet is so cheap and our minds are so empty that we just take anything and everything that someone says and just believe it’s true without thinking about it for a second time.

Over-expectation is a problem

In the sea of all the “Expectation kills” I found this quote floating on top.

Over expectation kills your happiness

This is what I feel. You can never stop EXPECTING.

Let’s take one of my favorite examples - You are not over-expecting when you think I should treat you in a good way. But you are over-expecting when you think that I should give you all my life’s savings (I don’t have any savings but you get the idea)

Now while writing this blog I was talking to another friend about it and she said “I have experience with very low expectations disappointing me”.

So, is expecting really a problem?

Expectation vs Over-expectation

“Atleast we can expect this from them?”, I’m sure everyone of us had said this in some or the other way. But can we decide what we can expect and cannot? Often we think that we are already expecting less from the other person. This is one of the main reasons why we get hurt.

The answer is not black or white here but I will try. So surely we can decide if we can expect something from someone but keeping in mind how strong your bond is from both ends and how the other person is.

For example - I can expect my bestfriend to listen to all my sad breakup stories (They enjoy the trauma in my life 😂). But at the same time, I cannot expect a stranger to do that for me.

Here I know that my bestfriends care about me and they pretty much enjoy the trauma so I’m sure that they will listen. But a stranger might not want to hear all that negativity.

So calculate what you can expect and what you cannot. It’s always better to talk and understand the other side before assuming anything from their end.

Managing expectations

One of the most difficult tasks is managing your expectation. We already saw how difficult is to find a line between expectations and over-expectations as it varies from person to person and the bond you have with them. In short, there are too many variables to handle.

I will not lie I don’t have the answer to how to manage expectations. The reason why it is difficult to manage your expectations you have to understand the other person and we all know that you can never truly understand someone. Whenever I thought that I truly understand this person. They managed to make me realize that I don’t.

We have to keep in mind that people change with time and situations, and they are not obligated to meet all our expectations.

Talk about your expectations

A lot of times the other person doesn’t have any idea if we are expecting anything from them. So we need to communicate it to them. We can’t just sit and expect them to understand what we want. We are over-expecting here.

So always convey your expectations to other people. But keep in mind that it’s not 100% guaranteed what they say is what they mean. They might just say things that you want to hear but would themselves never accept. They might do it because of multiple reasons but I feel it’s mostly because they don’t want to hurt your feelings, but that’s a topic for another blog.

So it’s better to let others have a margin of error where they fail to meet your expectations.

Acceptance is the key

Not expecting is not an option. In fact, You expect more from people who are close to you.

I think that we are built in this way. Whatever lies we tell ourselves that we don’t expect anything from anyone but in the end subconsciously we expect a lot from others.

For example - Think about the last time when you felt sad because someone broke your expectations. Did you make those expectations consciously, no right?

So making those expectations is not in our hands, but what we can do is accept them and move on. People in our lives will always break our expectations, but we cannot lose a good bond just because we over-expected. The best solution is to accept it and forgive the other person.

You are not always over-expecting

In the whole blog, we were talking about others and how we should manage our expectations with others. But often we forget about ourselves. The most important part of our lives is us.

Not everytime you need to forgive others, sometimes it’s better to move on from that person and find someone who better understands you.

But when you will know that you are not over-expecting? In my opinion, it’s when you feel hard to forgive someone.

Having said that I should also mention that not everyone will have the same basic expectations. So try to help them understand what your basic expectations are and if see a cannot see a change after that then I feel it’s time to let them go.

Conclusion

It has been a topic in my mind for a long time and I would never feel that I completely understand this topic but I have tried to share what I have learned and felt over the years.

I’m sure that there might be some places where you will feel that I’m wrong about something. I would love to talk about you on this. Just ping me any of my social links.

In the end, I would say that managing expectations are very difficult but all you can do is try to understand others and if something goes wrong accept it and move on. But at the same time, you should know when it is enough.

Keep learning, and always keep smiling :)