“Expectation is the Root of All Heartache” — William Shakespeare
I have it together, I know what I want and I know in return what I need to do to get it. I am the most "type A" person you will ever meet. But one downfall of being so together is that you can’t relate to others that aren’t. I push myself harder than most people—if I don’t know something I learn it, if I have a goal I achieve it and if I need to be something I become it. I am malleable, to a certain extent.
I have people in my life that challenge me. Not in the sense of getting a goal per-say, but challenge my patience, my guidance. I have learned to great extremes how different I am from most people, how driven I am. Some people need more of a push, and that’s okay. Some people need step-by-step guidance, and that’s okay too. But the worst thing I have done when trying to help someone is having higher expectations than necessary, ones I would put on myself, outlandish, if you want.
Now, I’m not saying you should ever lower your expectations for anyone, no never. But, there is a sense of…realism that you need to keep. You need to take the person into account, their history, their journey. You can’t fit everyone into the same criteria, and I know that, and I also know it can be hard. I have had the feeling of “fixing a broken record,” but I realized it was because I wasn’t handling the situation right, I wasn’t being proactive in how I chose to approach the problem. I was thinking, “one thing, fix all,” and that was not the case, it really, never is. So, I started over, I started on a blank slate and personalized the situation, I decided on a plan, and an approach. When I say approach, I mean how I was going to guide this person. I can be a bit of a hard ball, almost unemotional to other people’s struggles that I can see as an easy fix. So, I changed how I came about. I started to look deeper. It’s like when you deal with children, you can’t yell at them every time they poke someone else with a stick, you should take them away from the situation, talk to them one-on-one and let them know that by no means is it okay, and if they do it again there will be consequences. You don’t want to embarrass them in front of their friends, it’s almost more of an embarrassment being taken away from everyone else and talked to, they remember that more. But say you are arguing with your teenage daughter, now you go all out, you embarrass her in front of her friends because I can assure your she will stop whatever she is doing immedietly, I was there.
So, back to the main event, you can’t have expectations for something you really can’t control, you should be open minded and consider what the situation is. You will become more hurt over what happens if you set yourself up in the wrong outcome.
