Growing Expectations

Challenge of Growing Expectations

Kishore (July 2003)

Have you ever noticed how we tend to change our expectations over a period of time. Growing expectations is a good thing but it can also lead to dissastifcation easily. When some thing we expect does not happen, we feel sad or disappointed.

Remember the first birthday presents you received. Assume that you got a gift that is worth 10 bucks from your father year. Next birthday also if your father gives a prize worth the same amount, it is likely that you will be disappointed. We start expecting more things over a period of time. We expect things we receive to increase in value and worth over a period of time.

If you have liked reading articles written by me, it is natural that you expect better or at least of articles of same quality. We expect some things to get better over time.

Think over some of the things you have been experiencing:

- Relationships: We expect relationships with our friends and relatives to get better over a period of time

- Salary and Benefits: Anyone who is working will only expect their salary and benefits they receive to increase over years.

- As an Individual customer: Think of a store regularly. You expect your shopping experience to become more enjoyable as you continue to shop there. You will even feel more happy if the familiar store person start recognizing you are a regular visitor.

- As Organizational Customer: If you or your company is interacting with another organization, you expect the relationship to grow and get better quality of work and everything else.

It is natural for us to have higher expectations. We expect changes that happen around us to get better around us.

But do we do such things consciously? Are you surprised when people complain about something you do?

We expect things around us, people around us to change as we want to see them. But we are not working consciously on the change others expect of us.

Mahatma Gandhi said "Be the change you want to see in others".

If you want others to be courteous to you, first learn to be courteous.

If you want others to look cheerful, be cheerful.

If you want others to be genuinely interested in you, you should also be genuinely interested in others.

If you want others to listen you, you must learn to listen to others.

If you want others to appreciate you sincerely, you should also be sincere in your appreciation of others.

Lot of times our hopes, expectations control our emotions. By keeping our expectations realistic we can gain control on our emotions also.

Don't have too many expectations. Keep an open mind. Be ready to accept anything and then your emotions will be genuine.

On my part I also felt I need to make changes to my website look and feel to meet the growing expectations. It took me sometime to redesign the site and make it happen. Hope my continued to efforts to write good articles that convey my views will meet your growing expectations. It is for the same reason, I spend enough time to ensure that I am doing a good job on my website.

Summary

Growing expectations creates lot of emotional dynamics. I have noticed in this daily life and I felt I should share this.

Though it is ok to increase our expectations, we should keep those expectations realistic so that we don't get disappointed. And don't let occasional disappointments (performance below our expectation) make you get prejudiced. Accept occasional failures as part of life and keep an open mind.