Falling off the pedestal

I’ve always believed life is what it is and people are going to do…well, whatever they’re going to do. With that in mind I can pretty well predict the ways in which any individual could disappoint me. Getting those thoughts out of the way at the beginning makes it a lot easier to accept them as human and worth enjoying for as long as I can.

Did that make any sense?

Reminds me of a line from last week’s Grey’s Anatomy that stuck with me and has left me pondering. Izzie says to a patient, “You can’t blame yourself. Some people are just broken. I guess you just try not to care too much, then you can’t be disappointed.”

Sometimes it’s hard to keep expectations low, but it definitely does keep disappointment at bay. On the other hand, it takes a lot of the wonder out of it doesn’t it? Obviously, I still have some pondering to do.

I have such high expectations of myself that it is hard NOT to impose those same standards on others. So I find I am often feeling disappointed in others, and in myself even more so. I know what I need to do: lower the bar a little. But it’s really hard to do when you’ve been brought up with superhuman expectations. I am starting to accept that people are only human, my parents in particular. And from this realization, I am starting to feel like it’s ok to mess up (every now and then LOL).

As well as having high expectations I also give every single person I meet the credit for being a flawless character until proven otherwise. This has been my downfall really in a lot of ways. I assume everyone is nice and honest and good. A delightful theory but in reality I have had a few experiences that have brought me down to earth with a traumatic bump.

Like Lisa said, there’s so much to pondering to do when it comes to we humans. Such a strange species we are

There was a time in my life where I had continual stars in my eyes, thinking everything was a hum away from perfect.

Then there was a time in my life where I agreed with the misplaced quote, “Those that expect nothing are never disappointed.”

I’d like to think I have found a way to crawl away from either extreme and have gained some acceptance that what I can change about this life is, well - me.

I no longer expect the world from anyone and everyone. I give credit where credit is due. I’m learning to avoid compensating for, or enabling anyone else’s poor behavior.

Those bumps in the road simply remind me to appreciate when it is a smooth straightaway. With each one I get closer to focusing on the horizon, not whats around every corner.

Most people,in my experience, expect good from others. I don’t see that as egocentric, more an assumtion/refelction. That is, good people expect others to be good, learning junkies expect everyone else to be learning junkies, etc.

Expect the new, expect the good, but get this: others are very different from me, therefore their definitions are different, their actions will be different from what mine would be.

The Big Learning Here: expect that I will be educated as to the vast variety of human nature. No harm, no foul.

Anyone who has ever been in a long-term realtionship has a story about how the other party “wasn’t doing it right” (often holiday-oriented), and the eventual realization that differing expectations had caused the problem.

Enjoy. No need to be cynical. But, a la Don Miguel, ask yourself constantly. “Is this a Rule of Physics, like gravity? Or MY expectation?” You’ll be waaaay happier.

Sorry, I couldn’t get past the typo in the headline. It’s my job to be a spelling and grammar Nazi. I can’t help myself. You know, Firefox has spell check built in!

Great use of the word “nebulous”. It isn’t used enough.

I read through the comments, so interesting the perceptions.

Personally, I hate being put up on a damn pedestal, because the higher up, when you take a fall, sure hurts like hell.

Just try to live the golden rule, treat others how I want to be treated. Do I make mistakes? Yes, called being human. Only thing you can do is, pick yourself up, acknowledge/rectify to the best of your ability, learn from it, move on.

We are own harshest critics, I expect a lot of myself. On the other hand one person referred at how they expect a lot of others. I expect others to follow that golden rule, but not all do. That and get so frustrated and disappointed when I can see the good/potential in others but they don’t in themselves.

Not something I can change about me, I rather look for the good regardless, since the alternative is a little to bleak for my taste. Altruistic? Maybe, but it is me.

It depends on how much sleep I’ve had. If I had a dollar for every time I was called, “arrogant” or “asshole”, well let’s just say I could probably buy you a castle somewhere.

I can be difficult and highly critical, but I always say if you think I’m hard on you, you should see how hard I am on my myself. I can magnify the importance of a petty detail and then become resentful if others fail to see it’s importance.

In that though there is more compassion than can fit. I had a friend say once, “I love your heart. I’m jealous of your heart.” I like the freeing statement, “Letting go.” or “Let it roll off”.

I’m aware of both sides, the ego and the spiritual, and my constant struggle with not letting it fall off balance or allowing negative energy around me to be absorbed. It’s daily work, but with practice it can be honed.

I have the 7 laws of spiritual attraction in my mind, ya know, the law of detachment, and cause and effect, giving etc.

I am one of those jackasses that still believes in people, but, like most faiths, it’s a struggle everyday.

“Blame is much easier than self-exploration.”
True dat. (sorry, I couldn’t resist :p)

I think it’s pretty obvious that blaming OTHERS is easier than self-exploration, but the trick to this one for some people (who are their own worst critics) is that blaming OURSELVES is a trap as well. If we are all caught up in blaming ourselves, we are not engaging in self-exploration (or self improvement, btw). Reminds me of a quote: “Have compassion for yourself, just as you would try to have with someone else”.

As for never taking anything personally, well, I just can’t agree with that one. There are some things that we SHOULD take personally, as they were intended to be. If someone compliments me or gives me recognition, I want to take that personally.

And honestly, there are times when someone means something very personally that is negative as well. I feel as if I have a responsibility to evaluate that negative thing as it applies to me and then decide if it was meant personally. And sometimes I need that wake up call/reality check in order to view my own behavior as others see it, and make changes as necessary.

I set my expectations too high for my son. I realize it sometimes when he makes mistakes and I am just flabbergasted at how he could have been such a little shit in the moment.

so before I address it, I think about the severity of the fuck up. I ask him the “W’s”.. and assess to myself if there is or is not a deeper problem in the big picture.

Ugh. Of all days to post this reminder! Yes,I have high expectations. More on myself than anyone else these days. I have learned that if I am Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired….I must HALT and realize something else could be driving my expectations.

Yes, I can get disappointed. But, I have to agree with Anne up there that when my intuition is spot on, it prevents me from setting myself up the wrong way.

LOVE,LOVE LOVE The Four Agreements.

Since I am a nerd, I trust statistics and my mental model of other people’s behaviour is pseudo-statistical. I assume that time-weighted past performance is the best predictor of future performance. Where I “set the bar” of my expectations for someone depends on my past experience with them: their average performance in the particular behaviour of concern, the variability of their past performance, and the recent trend of performance.

Assuming performance is a normally distributed random variable, 95% of the time the person’s performance will be within the range you have observed from them in the past, 2.5% of the time the person will absolutely wow you with how well they did, and 2.5% of the time they will screw up worse than you could have imagined based on your experiences with them. If they’ve been doing especially well recently, I expect a little more of them and vice versa. If I’m dealing with someone who I have little or no past experience with, I assume their average performance is the same as most people, but I assume a wide range of variability in that performance until I know them well enough to know how reliable they are.

I am rarely disappointed in people because I expect a certain element of chance to affect what they do. Better living through science, I say.