Avoiding Disappointment and Resentment

Avoiding resentment and disappointment is something I’m always interested in.  But where do those things come from? Expectations.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that expectations can make or break you. They can be the biggest source of resentment and disappointment, or the greatest asset in your communication toolbox.

When you’re willing to examine, understand, identify and communicate your expectations - for you and others - relationships are strengthened, stress is reduced, and we flourish.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

You're listening to Stan Tall and Own it, the podcast for high performing female leaders who are ready to make an impact by discovering the safety that comes from understanding their own value and exercising their own authority. I'm your host, Andrea Johnson, and I'm here to tell you it is time to just truly be you, my strong friend. It's time to Stan Tall and Own it. Hey, welcome to another episode of Stan Tall and Own it. I am your host, andrea Johnson, and I have what might be considered an unpopular opinion. It's not necessarily something that people are going to throw out there as a conversation starter, but if I say it this way, it might be. I think that unexamined, unrealized and uncommunicated expectations are the source of 90% of your disappointment. I know it's a big number 90%. It's not really backed up by data other than I know what I've been through and I see what happens with my clients, my friends, my family, my community on a daily basis. So what I want to talk about today is expectations. What are they for? Why do we have them? And we'll walk through a couple of things. I'll tell you in a minute, like literally. There's like three main points here that I want you to see because, once we understand this aspect of how we function and how our brains work and how our conditioning is put together and how we've been conditioned for all our lives, we can actually make a difference immediately. It's like something that can really flip a switch. So every day, I get up and I do a Google form that's basically a morning mindset and I have several questions that I answer, and one of them says what could possibly trip me up today and what could I do to either prevent it or how could I talk to myself in a way that would help me get out of it or understand it. So what I'm basically asking myself on a daily basis is what are my expectations for the day? What is my expectation for my relationships today? What are my expectations for the outcomes, the things that I'm going to get done? This is where my to-do list comes in. What are my expectations for how my work is going to go or my life experiences? And I need you to understand that this podcast is not.

Speaker 1: 2:16

This episode is not about managing my expectations. That question is not about managing my expectations. That question is about helping me uncover them and knowing what they are, because managing expectations is extremely important, but what we mean by that is very different than what I think a lot of people present it as. This is also not a podcast about lowering your expectations, and we'll talk about that later as well. It's about recognizing what your expectations are, why you have them and where they show up. So first is recognizing your expectations. Second, I want you to understand how you do or do not communicate them to yourself or to others, right, how I talk to myself about my expectations and how I communicate my expectations to others. And third, we're going to look at how you employ them for benefit and I know that sounds really controversial. This is not manipulation, I promise, and when I get there you'll totally be like, oh, I totally get that, but we're releasing this episode in very real time. As far as the need for examination of expectations is concerned, in the US, here we're releasing this in the week of Thanksgiving, so it's the Monday before Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1: 3:28

And here's what I love about the holiday season is that it's not just a few holidays. If you really wanted to have a good time and celebrate a bunch of holidays, you could, because, depending on what statistic you look at, between mid-November and mid-January there are a minimum of eight to 10 religious slash cultural holidays right, depending on your cultural background, your religious background or affiliation. There's at least eight to 10 that you could or could not participate in. It just depends. Majority of those are with family. A lot of them mean that there's stress in taking time off from work. I have a friend who says I don't like taking time off because when I come back there's always messes to clean up, right, so it gives you less time to finish your work. It means we're also in the time of year where in the Northern Hemisphere the light gets less and less every day, so the weather changes, the time changes. I've had so many conversations with people here in the US about how the time change recently has just really messed with us, and with the colder weather or the darkness in the morning it may be harder to exercise. And then there's all the holiday food stuff.

Speaker 1: 4:37

So this is the first of about three episodes where we're going to talk about the different stresses of the holidays and how to handle them. This is the beginning kind of laying the groundwork of expectations and how we can look at those and make a difference in our holiday season. So what is an expectation? Because I don't want to belabor this too much, but I really want to give you a good understanding. An expectation is a strong belief that something should or will happen and potentially happen in a specific way.

Speaker 1: 5:08

So when I shared a minute ago my daily question, what will trip me up today? This is an invitation to myself to look at whatever unexamined expectations I might have. So when I look at my day and I look at the things that are on my planner or my calendar and I say, well, I have these things that I have to get done and these are the things that move forward from yesterday's list and all this stuff as if I'm opening a briefcase with all of my to-dos each day to see what's in there, and then I have to look at what my expectations might be for all of those things that are in that briefcase. Now, if it's a briefcase that can't even close, or a suitcase that can't even close because things are just like too high and it's like spewing the vomiting stuff out of it already before I even get to opening it, then I need to really look at that too. There's a clue there about what my expectation might be to get things done. But the other thing I want you to see here is that not only do you have to do it daily for yourself and pay attention to your own expectation, but expectations go hand in hand with understanding your core values, with understanding your disk wiring and with understanding your ABCs, your assumptions, beliefs and conditioning. And as I walk through these points, I'm going to share that with you. So let's first look at how. The first thing to look at is how we recognize what our expectations are, why we have them and where they show up.

Speaker 1: 6:35

Going back to the benign space of my to-do list, which there are days it doesn't feel very benign, to be honest with you, I believe I need to get a lot of things done. I am constantly saying, well, I'm going to get this done and this done and this done, and I've shared before how I had to leave behind certain ways of setting goals because it was just making me too stressed out and believing that I couldn't. I was setting all these goals to get things done and then I couldn't accomplish them and then I was bashing myself about it and et cetera. But I believe that I can get a lot done. Therefore, I put a lot of things on my to-do list and if I ask myself what could trip me up. There are days when I say there are too many things on my to-do list and I need to whittle that down, but I'm also conditioned to always be moving, always be doing something. Some of this is my personality, and so there is a benefit to looking at whether or not it's a personality trait that you're dealing with or an expectation based on a belief or something, but I'm conditioned to always be doing something productive.

Speaker 1: 7:42

I've talked before about Protestant work ethic. Right, a lot of us have this, and it's not okay for me to be lazy and it's not okay for me to be doing nothing. There's no laziness around here, right? But yesterday is a perfect example. See, I've set aside November and December as months that I will do less work in my business. Right, I'm still recording podcasts and doing those kinds of things, but I'm going to do more on my business, more of a CEO. Look, getting some structures in place, getting some certifications in place, making sure that I have my taxes done, and the things that will allow my business to go forward well. Well, because of that, I'm pulling things off my calendar, and yesterday was a Monday and I had nothing on my calendar.

Speaker 1: 8:23

But I knew that I had some specific things that I needed to get done, that I called the wiring or the plumbing or the insulation in the Before I could put drywall right on the house of my business. I had some things that I needed to do that would fall into those categories. But I gotta tell you, not having a structure in my day granted some of that's personality but not having a specific expectation to get things done by a specific time because I had to meet someone on a call really threw me for a loop. It was terrible. It just my friends, if they listened to this podcast episode, would probably get a roll their eyes and say, yeah, we've heard this all before, andrew, but it just really threw me. I just couldn't seem to focus and I had a hard time getting started. I blew like two and a half hours of my day because I could not set my own expectations, or I had this expectation that things would just flow really well and they just didn't.

Speaker 1: 9:18

So that's a really good example of recognizing what our expectations are and how we can actually work around them or look at where they show up. So that's in my to-do list, but let's take it out a little bit to my family, right? Maybe you have Talk about concentric circles as we go out. Maybe you have kids, maybe you have expectations for how they keep the room clean I'm not talking about anybody in my house or the homework that they get done. Or maybe it goes out a little further to the bigger span of your family for the holidays and where you spend it and how you do certain things and what kind of money you spend on your holidays. What about blended families? These are all areas where we have huge expectations and if we don't examine them, they will come back to bite us right? So I have assumptions that my kid's going to do his homework, but if he doesn't, I have to deal with that. So I have to explain to him this is an expectation that you do your work in class, that you do these things. This is a normal kid right that you do your work in class, that you get them done, or you stay for study hall and you get these things done before you come home, before you come home and get screen time right, or you don't get screen time.

Speaker 1: 10:27

There are expectations that are laid out, but then I have beliefs about specific holiday traditions, and I'm sure you do too. There are certain things that when you start talking about the holiday meal for Thanksgiving let's just keep it on this particular US holiday in this week when you start talking about specific times for the meal, or I talked to somebody the other day and they said they needed to bring a family member, like maybe their aging mother, to their house because their spouse, their family, doesn't do Thanksgiving meal until seven o'clock at night. And I'm like, oh well, I never. You know, I don't know that my family always did it at noon. So there's all kinds of beliefs and expectations we have for the holidays, but when we start taking this out to the concentric circles of our lives or even up in the things that we believe, we have to look at. What are the expectations we have for our friendships? What are the expectations we have for our work or the organizations that we are in our community? You know, what about expectations in church? Specific types of music, specific ways of doing things, whether it's superstructured or not, what about the civic organizations that you're involved in? Or the political or religious belief systems that you have? These are all areas that we have expectations and if we don't understand that we have them. They go like I said. They go hand in hand with our assumptions, beliefs and conditioning. We expect certain outcomes. This is a playing out of our core values and our ABCs. So the other piece is social and economic belief systems. Right, it's like specific social norms, specific belief systems and economic norms, that kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 12:08

But I want to remind you what I said at the very beginning. It was that unexamined, unrealized and uncommunicated expectations are the source of 90% of your disappointment. All right, so once we examine them and once we understand what they are, then we can communicate them. So the second piece here is understanding how you do or do not communicate them to. Are you ready for this, yourself and to others? Because here's what happens communicating your expectations confronts and combats your ABCs. All right, let's talk about communicating your expectations to yourself.

Speaker 1: 12:50

Again, this goes back to my daily to-do list, my daily question what could trip me up today? Well, I have plenty of things to do and I am conditioned to always be moving. So I have an expectation. And if I say out loud, andrea, you've way too many things on your to-do list. You cannot do them all. You need to move a few things Now. You may not need to say things out loud to yourself, but it's amazing how, when we say things out loud or type them into a form, somehow communicate them to ourselves, we hear them. Maybe I have an expectation of, or you have an expectation of, things you will say today, or the way you will be today, or a specific type of environment that you will create. Maybe you have expectations of how you will look body size, health, aging, etc.

Speaker 1: 13:40

For instance, if you've followed me at all, you may have noticed the change in my hair color. I have been probably not this gray for the last 20 years and in March of 2023, I stopped coloring my hair. I said you know, I'm just done with this. It's exhausting. I do it myself. I was coloring it and putting highlights in and doing all of that. What's interesting is that if you go back to March, or even July or August, you're going to still see a lot of brown and blonde, and now what you see is dark, gray and white, and it's very interesting because they're in the same spots, right.

Speaker 1: 14:17

But I had this specific idea that someone my age was supposed to look a certain way and I just kind of had to confront that and say, no, I don't have to look that way. Just because that's an expectation doesn't mean I have to do it. But how about we communicate to others? If there is an outcome or a behavior that you are looking for that anyone else is involved in, they deserve to know what those expectations are. I cannot well, it probably wouldn't take much, but I was going to say I cannot tell you how many times I was so frustrated over not meeting an expectation in a job in my career because they were never explained. The number of expectations that did not get communicated but were, but those of us who had responsible positions were held responsible for was staggering, and it was one of those things that would just that could just send me off the edge, right. So I had had many a fight with a boss or a faculty member over the fact that you may have had that expectation but you did not communicate it. Therefore, you can't hold these people responsible for it, right? So if there, if others are involved, if there's an outcome or a behavior, others deserve to know what they are.

Speaker 1: 15:37

Now you can do it in a bossy way, or you could actually do it in a way that solicits collaboration and even better communication, because sometimes, when you communicate, it may not be that you communicate well, or other people need to hear it in a different way. So, before you communicate, do these things, ask yourself this is it realistic, is it something that could be accomplished or should be accomplished? Or is it? Is it a realistic thing to ask a 12 year old to act like an 18 year old or you know, or an adult not to act like a child? I mean, there's different things, right? Is it realistic, is it reasonable? Is this a reasonable expectation? That's a phrase that you hear a lot. That's a reasonable expectation, but we don't stop and think about what it means.

Speaker 1: 16:26

Having a reasonable expectation means that it's something that's accomplishable, that is realistic and that actually this is my third one is it helpful that reasonable could actually be helpful, right? So I should have gotten three Rs there, but I didn't want to take the time to look for a synonym for helpful that might start with an R, and you're probably thinking of one right now. But ask yourself before you communicate those expectations, even to yourself Are these expectations realistic, are they reasonable and are they helpful? Will they contribute to human flourishing mine or anyone else's? And then, when you start to communicate them.

Speaker 1: 17:58

I always start with a very simple I have an expectation. I need to know if this is reasonable. Right, I think it's reasonable. Tell me if you think this is reasonable and I do this a lot with my son. The older he gets, the more back and forth we have in our conversations about these things and sometimes he'll say, yeah, that's fair, or that's reasonable, okay, great, let's move forward. Or no, mom, that's terrible. Okay, let's talk about it and figure out what a reasonable or good facsimile of a reasonable exploitation might be. And we will figure them out.

Speaker 1: 18:31

But if you say them out loud to yourself, if you think saying them out loud to yourself helps, imagine saying it out loud to others and how that helps you hear it and them hear it, because you're either going to find that it is a reasonable and helpful and what is my realistic expectation? Or you're going to say it out loud and go, oh, hang on, that isn't past muster, right, that doesn't actually work. Let me rephrase that. Or help me come up with a good expectation for the group, right, if it's your family and you need to communicate that, it is my expectation. For instance, we're having Thanksgiving dinner. Or we're going to my sister's house and my brother-in-law has very specific keen once, really traditional stuff. I don't want anything traditional. So my sister was going to try and put 50 things on the table and like, eh, it doesn't matter to me that much. It matters to him. It's a reasonable expectation for him to have the traditional meal. Let's just do that and we'll move on right. It's not a big deal. I don't feel that strongly about it.

Speaker 1: 19:31

The whole point here is it's all about transparency, honesty and good communication. This is why it also goes hand in hand with your disc wiring. When you understand how you communicate and I'll talk about this in just a second and how other people communicate or need to be communicated with, you can actually meet them where they are and you can communicate better. So the very first thing is to remember that you've got to recognize what your expectations are, why you have them where they show up, and second, you need to understand how you do or do not communicate them to yourself and others. And then the third piece is to understand how we employ them for the benefit of ourselves and others, or what I would call human flourishing. This is not manipulation.

Speaker 1: 20:19

When we know what is expected of us, we can respond to it positively or negatively. Sometimes we do need to lower expectations. Sometimes we do need to say, oh, I don't know that it's reasonable for my kid to be able to get these things done or for myself to get all this many, 30 things done in a day. It is not realistic and it's certainly not helpful, because it hurts my self-esteem when I can't get all the things done that I thought I was supposed to get done. But what if we need to raise our expectations? When we know what's expected of us, we can respond to that positively. These athletes will recognize the phrase or the term we play to the level of our competition.

Speaker 1: 21:03

When I had a mentor who used to, as soon as I would meet an expectation or reach a level of whatever she was mentoring me on, she would say, all right, let's, she would just raise it another level or whatever. And in bless her heart, half the time she would say I'm going to pray that I'm like, no, don't do that. Because it's like, no, I have to do it. But that was my own conditioning, but still, it was just that. She was just that sweet about all of it and I wanted to meet her expectations and I wanted to grow. So sometimes we need to perform at a different level, and so sometimes we need to, or others might need to, perform at a different level, so we might need to require them to do so by telling them our expectation.

Speaker 1: 21:45

It may be that your child or a relationship needs to come up to a different level in order to have a really good relationship with you, and let's talk about that right. What can it do? What? How can this help us with human flourishing and what are the benefits of actually employing and communicating and sharing your expectations? You can build others up right, just like my mentor was building me up. She was helping me grow.

Speaker 1: 22:13

And I have another mentor that's a colleague and we went to a conference a couple of weeks ago and we got in the car first thing in the morning and I have been conditioned to express my gratitude and in the disc uh table or a disc wiring, she is a very high D and I'm a very high I and the D or the driver dominant person is very bottom line, like let's just go very action-oriented. The I is inspirational and influencing and effusive. I was conditioned to express my gratitude all the time, but I was also finding that, um, I was kind of using that as a little bit of a way to beat myself up because I hadn't been doing certain things that I should have been doing or that I could have been doing to make my business grow faster, etc. But we got in the car and I said I just wanted to express one more time my gratitude and she said stop, don't go squishy on me, I don't need to hear this and she very clearly laid out her expectations for how the day was going to go. There was going to be no groveling. There was going to be. It was all like we're on the level playing field. We are doing this together. This is going to be a collaborative effort, and I needed to hear that. She not only built me up, but she raised my level of expectation for myself. This is a way to do it and now, granted, that's not the way you do it for everybody, but she and I have known each other since we were 15 and 16, and so there's a level of trust that has been built there.

Speaker 1: 23:37

And that's the second thing that you can do when you do this is, you can build your relationships when you express your expectations and meet expectations and and collaborate within expectations, you can build trust in your relationships. I have another friend that I've known for a really long time and she and I are continuing to say hang on, we need to say these things out loud, because a lot of times we don't. So when we say them out loud it's like, oh well, then we're going to agree that this is never going to be something that we have to worry about again, right? So it helps you build your trust. It builds depth in your relationships with your children, with your family, with your co-workers. But the other thing it builds is flexibility, because as soon as you learn how to express your expectations number one you you learn that not all of them have to be met. Number two you learn how to change them and manage them and sometimes adjust yours up or down, and they learn how to do that, and we learn how to meet each other where we are, but then we always know where the other person stands. So that's where you get that trust and that depth and flexibility in your relationships.

Speaker 1: 24:43

But the other thing it does, the third thing that employing them or being very clear about your expectation does for you is it reduces stress. Right, we are in the US. This is the releasing the Monday of Thanksgiving and we're looking at the rest of the holiday season all the way through the middle of January. When we understand our own expectations and how we communicate them, it reduces our stress level. Now it might cause a confrontation, but sometimes that's needed right in order for things to get out in the open. It's like getting a splinter out of your skin. It takes a little while, but once you do, it feels really good. It hurts in the meantime, but it feels really good.

Speaker 1: 25:23

Um, I'm not saying to express your expectations at the Thanksgiving table or at any other holiday meal necessarily. Maybe beforehand, or maybe look at them this year and figure out how you want to communicate them throughout the next year so that the the following holiday meal or holiday gathering is less stressful, based on your own expectations. Now I have homework for you. You need. You need to do this before you do other stuff. So if it's, if you start with just yourself daily, because this is literally looking at your expectations. This confronts your abc's. This confronts it helps you see your core values. It helps you understand your disc wiring. All of these things are connected. So the homework that I have for you is daily.

Speaker 1: 26:10

Look, ask yourself the question what might trip me up today and why, and what can I do to help myself get past that? That's your first one. The second one is what are the different types of expectations that you have and where do they come from? Right, are they conditioning? Are they belief system, are they assumptions? Are they your disquiring? Are they your core values or principle that you live by? You need to know what your different types of expectations are and where they come from, and this is on a bigger scale. And then, third is how will you employ them, communicate them and employ them today and throughout the next month or so, or throughout, let's say, the holiday season, because we're looking at like two or three here that are based on helping us reduce stress for the holidays. How will you use and employ your expectations for yourself and for others to actually help reduce stress? Because adjusting just adjusting them right, not communicating them and only adjusting your expectations, will lead to frustration and resentment and bitterness. Please don't do that. Let's don't do that. You need to be willing to examine, understand and identify your expectations, both for yourself and for others, and then communicate them in ways that will lead to human flourishing. You need to understand you and your core values. It's so important. You need to understand your own disquiring and your assumptions, beliefs and conditioning, because as you do this work, it's all connected, every single bit of it.

Speaker 1: 27:50

I hope this was helpful for you. I'd love to hear from you. First, you want to scroll down if you're listening to this, especially in Apple Podcasts? Scroll down or scroll to the top and hit that follow button, because the next couple of episodes are going to also be in relation to stress for the holidays, different family systems and different traditions, food and exercise, et cetera. But I'd also I would love to hear from you Give us a review, give us a five star review, if you're willing, and tell us what you think, or DM me on social media.

Speaker 1: 28:19

I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and Instagram. Email me at Andrea at theintentionaloptimistcom. Hit reply on the newsletter if when you get that and ask me questions, or you can hit the link in the show notes and go straight to the links page and sign up for the newsletter. And, of course, if you're not watching this on YouTube and you'd rather see all my silly faces and all of my big gestures, feel free to click the link in the show notes and go over there and subscribe to that channel as well. But here's to you understanding your own expectations of yourself and others and communicating them well for human flourishing. Until next time, my friend, here's to standing tall and owning it. Come later today.