Expectations

You are not in this world to live up to expectations of others, only your own.

I cannot be the only one whose heard different variations of this phase.. " Don't get your hopes up" Or " Don't expect much", I don't know why it took someone saying that to me recently (they meant well, they always do) for me to realize that they were pushing their personal experience and negativity unto me. The popular notion is for you not to expect much so that if much does happen, your hopes are not shattered and if it doesn't well you were prepared for that too. That's the safe option if you ask me. You're going in with a passion, urge and desire less than 100% so why should this work out for you? 

I'm totally spinning the popular notion and you should to. If you went to a job interview and they asked you if you wanted the job, your answer is not " oh I don't want to get my hopes up" and if it is then you really don't want the job. The recruiters want to see enthusiasm and energy radiating from you and you can only show that if you're a 100% telling yourself you can get the job. People disappoint that's a fact, but if you walk around expecting everyone to disappoint you, I'm sorry but that's a sad life! I'm not saying dive in, but as with everything else, Analyze and Assess the situation then Determine if you can do the job, if you should trust this person etc. It's like a man being cheated on and decides to be a douche to every girl  because he was played by ONE girl. Does that one really make sense? What if America woke up and waged war on the entire world because a group bombed them on 9/11?

You might think I'm taking this way too seriously and I am. We walk around already down playing ourselves AND we have a back up to our laziness. Old friend of mine recently posted "You can't use prayer to replace laziness" and if that ain't the truth! Stop using low/no expectations to replace your inabilities to get whatever it is that is in front of you. Keeping your expectations low will never teach you failure because you do not see it as failing, and if you do not know you are failing, how do you learn from your mistakes and apply yourself? You're pretty much in a cycle! Some will say they're keeping themselves from heartbreak which is sad because a heartbreak signifies that you indeed know how to love/apply yourself. So if you're keeping yourself from that, have you really lived? This is not just relevant to relationships but everything!!! You never know till you try and you can't half-try. You gotta go all the way or just don't bother. You cannot be praying you find a job but don't believe you qualify. I'm so confused, how do you even think that will work? If you're praying then you should have peace that HIS will be done, your hard work will be crowned. Unless you're really special, no one works hard on something they don't think they'll get or something they don't believe in.

You're not in this world to live up to anyone's expectations and they're not here to live up to yours either. Just because you're a pastor does not guarantee your kids have to be. Those were your expectations of yourself and you made it, now let your kids have expectations of their own. African parents, just because your kid is not a doctor does not mean we have failed in life! LOL. Those were your expectations of us but we had other plans and we are living up to who we know we can be. I must admit along the road we do get derailed by other people telling us we can't be that because no one else has done it before, or we can't be that because of the color of our skin but we will realize that the limitations of others are not ours.

In boarding school, we had this annual competition called the Miss Coke competition. The expectation of the girls who signed up was they had to have the coke shape, the number 8 and it had always been that way. . I decided to go in for this competition where you're judged based on different outfits you model, just like any other competition. Mind you I was far from curvy but I felt I could still work a stage, change the narrative and I wanted to win. I had a close friend who thought I wouldn't win and she told me that. She supported me but she didn't think I had a shot. Long story short, I won the competition and she later on told me she was sorry she had tried to stop me from going in. If I had listened to her expectations of me, till this day I would always wonder if I could have won. Again, people mean well just like my friend did, you just have to want it and have your own expectations of what you can do.  We're still great friends by the way. Love her! My dad was right when he said you will make some of your best friends in boarding school! I count 4 off the top of my head but I digress....

Let's change the narrative! Keep your expectations high. Keep going for the job- if you believe in yourself you will get it, keep studying for the exam- you will get the score you need. Just keep doing whatever it is that you want to do and ignore the naysayers who tell you, you have high expectations of life. That's fine, high expectations never really hurt anyone while low expectations on the other hand always leads to people settling for less.

Who do you want to be?