2 Strategies to Combat Expectation Frustration
You may have seen my recent post on Facebook about expectations. If not, you can find it here. In this post I discuss how our own expectations of others or ourselves are what can ultimately hurt or frustrate us.
Yes, someone may not have come through for you, shown up on time, or done something they shouldn’t have. Or they may have done essentially what they were supposed to but not quite how you wanted or didn’t work hard enough or in some other way didn’t do you what expected them to do.
Now I pose the question – were we frustrated by their actions or by our expectations of them? I suggest that it could be both but maybe weighed more toward our expectations.
If I give an employee, coworker, child, or partner a task, and they don’t do it at all, that’s on them. If they do the task but not how we want it done or not to the results, that could be on us.
2 Strategies to Combat Expectation Frustration
- Make Expectations Clear – taking the task example above, we need to make sure we are clearly explaining how we want something done and when we need it done.
- Set Expectations Low…But Don’t Keep Them There – When we set our expectations low we guard against frustration and hurt. How can someone frustrate us if we don’t expect much of them? However, when we do this, we can also encourage them to more. This way it doesn’t become one person vs another. It becomes both people pursuing a goal together
Psychology Today describes this phenomenon here. They describe a study that had subject play a game while being told beforehand how good the game was on a scale from 1-10. Those who saw a positive ratings but considered it less fun, gave it 25% worse reviews than the control group. But those who saw negative reviews but considered it more fun, gave it 43% better reviews than the control group.
All this to say that not only can our expectations frustrate and hurt but if they are low, they can also improve our overall outlook.
Have you experience this Expectation Frustration? With others or with yourself? Remember the strategies above and give grace to those around and yourself.