What Did You Expect?

 

 

I spent a good portion of my younger adulthood inundated with the message that it’s important to walk into every conversation, negotiation, or event with high expectations. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “You get what you expect.” Sounds great in a motivational speech… doesn’t play well in real life.

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I remember once when I was younger working my first big boy job and I was laid off. My brain could not process what was going on. I remember walking in the door to see my wife unpacking boxes as we just moved into new home.

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I remember thinking to myself… "that didn’t go how I expected". The emotions were so endless I was having a hard time trying to choose which one I wanted to express...It left a pretty good mark on my memory. 

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I had an in-depth personality test done years later and found out that when I work really hard at something and don’t receive the results I felt were justifiable for the effort, I mentally shut down for a bit. Through introspection I found that I don’t necessarily stop working, I just go through the motions… which pretty much is the same thing as stopping.

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Receiving this type of feedback is not meant to help you play victim. It’s meant to learn how to work through your own self-limitations. I’ve started to create space between a result and a response. I’m currently working through a season where the results actually met my expectations, and my only thought is… don’t take your foot off the gas. It’s a strange tension. The win feels good. The fear of slipping feels stronger.

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The gap I’m still filling is learning how to separate my identity from the outcome. When I was younger I tied everything to the result. If I won, it meant something about me. If I lost, it meant something about me. I didn’t have any margin between effort, outcome, and how I viewed myself. 

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When you live that tightly wound, even small failures feel catastrophic. One missed expectation and suddenly you’re questioning your ability, your talent, your direction, your worth. The more I grew up, the more I realized that expectations, left unchecked, are silent puppeteers. They pull strings you don’t see until you’re tangled in them.

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So what about you? How do you respond when something doesn’t meet your expectations? If we run around with high expectations in everything we do we get a pretty big spoonful of reality. Pending on how you respond, it can be pretty detrimental. Some people lash out. Some people shut down. Some people blame others. Some people pretend it didn’t matter. Each response has a cost. Sometimes the cost is quiet and internal… the kind that shows up months later when motivation is gone and you don’t know why.

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There’s an aspect here that most people overlook. The separation is found in who we’re setting our expectations with.

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High expectations should rest in relationship with yourself. You are the one person you can control. You are the one person who sees the full picture of your effort. In life there are dozens of people who will expect the best from you. Sifting through those and knowing which ones you should seek to appease is another conversation. The primary person you should expect excellence out of is yourself. Ninety five percent of the rest of the people out there can go fly a kite.

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Low expectations should be tethered to everyone else. If your daily experience is tied to high expectations of other peoples performance you will inevitably be handed a garbage bag of disappointment. Think about all the times you had a bad day. You were frustrated with a colleague, teammate, spouse. Almost every time it was rooted in expectations that didn’t align with their actions. They didn’t respond how you wanted. They didn’t understand like you thought they would. They didn’t read your mind. They didn’t deliver the way you pictured. Most of our frustration is mismatched expectations disguised as personal offense.

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Now this is where mutual exclusivity comes in. It would be nice if it was this simple: expect nothing from anyone else and expect everything from yourself. I would thrive on that. Life doesn’t work that way. There are people who require and need your expectations. Kids. Partners. Employees. Clients. There are roles where expectations are a form of structure, not pressure.

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There are also times when you have to loosen your expectations of yourself so you can stay human, stay grounded, and not grind yourself into dust. High expectations without rest turns into self-punishment. Low expectations without accountability turns into self-sabotage. Balancing both is the art.

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Here’s the biggest kicker. Things hit pretty hard when people miss your expectations. Do you know what hits the hardest? When you don’t follow through on your own expectations. That’s when people derail. That’s when life starts to hurt. That’s when you can slide into depression. It’s not failing others that guts you. It’s failing yourself. The weight of your own disappointment is heavier than anything someone else can place on you.

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This is why it’s crucial to be honest with yourself, hold yourself accountable, and not let yourself off the hook. You don’t need to punish yourself. You need to anchor yourself. 

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You need expectations that stretch you but don’t strangle you. 
​You need boundaries that protect your effort, not bury you under it. 

You need the courage to ask why something mattered so much, and whether it should. 
​You need the humility to admit when your own expectations are unrealistic and need adjusting. 
​You need the discipline to not lower your standards just because something got hard. 
​You need the wisdom to know the difference between persistence and delusion.

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Here’s what I’ve noticed. When your expectations of yourself are grounded, your expectations of other people become lighter. You stop taking everything personally. You stop assuming everyone thinks the way you do. You stop needing others to validate the work you’re doing. You stop keeping score. You stop trading effort for emotional ROI. 

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If you can consistently manage that balance, you don’t just hit goals. You stay sane while doing it.

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Today’s Forced Challenge: I want you to FORCE yourself to attack at least one of these challenges:

1. Expectation Gap: Write what you assumed someone would do. Then write exactly what you communicated. Compare the two. Whatever wasn’t spoken is the part you actually own.
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2. Impact Over Intent: Pick one interaction where things didn’t land right. Write your intent in one sentence, then write the impact you actually created. The difference reveals where your communication fell short.
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3. Responsibility Split: Take a recent frustration and assign percentages of responsibility to everyone involved. Only keep a percentage if you can back it up with specific actions or evidence. Adjust anything you can’t defend.
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4. Neutral Version: Rewrite the situation as if a camera recorded the entire thing. Only facts. No tone. No internal motives assigned. This exposes where your version may have been skewed.
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5. The First Move: Think of a conflict you’re still carrying. Trace it back to the earliest point where your actions or inaction contributed to the tension. Own that specific piece in writing without adding excuses.

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When you find this balance, things get quieter in your head. You start focusing on what you can control. You don't get frustrated with others near as much. You stop gripping outcomes so tightly that you choke the joy out of the process. You start realizing that expectations aren’t bad. They just need a hierarchy. Self first. Others second. Outcome third. Identity last.

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“Take responsibility for your own happiness, never put it in other people’s hands.” – Roy T. Bennett

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