How To Respond To Expectations!

Have you ever noticed that people have a tendency to make requests, and have expectations about things we should do?

The well-meaning individual making the request might be a friend, family member, or maybe even your spouse.

Many times we cave in to such requests for fear of hurt feelings.

We don’t say no, because we are worried what people will think of us!

I spoke to someone about this situation and she suggested this gracious response:

“I Love You, And No”.

No need to explain yourself, just say 5 simple words.

So easy, right?

Just because people have expectations of us, doesn’t mean we need to honor their requests.

They can still love you even if you don’t meet their expectations, or maybe not.

It’s their choice!

No matter what they think, you get to honor yourself and do what makes you happy!

It Works Both Ways!

We have expectations and are allowed to make requests, but others may not honor our requests.

“Not expecting things from others is the first step to preventing people from dictating how you live. Life is a two-way street—when you realize that no one owes you anything, you stop expecting people to owe you anything either” explains Psychology Today.

For example, I can ask my husband to take out the trash, and he may do it or he may not.

If he does take out the trash, I’ll love him.

If he doesn’t take out the trash, I’ll still love him.

When my expectations are not met, I can choose to make it mean something negative like he doesn’t love me, respect me, or maybe he’s mad at me!

Or I can choose to make it mean nothing…because maybe, just maybe, he simply forgot or he doesn’t want to!

I can love him anyway!

If he doesn’t take out the trash, there’s always another option…I can do it myself!

Expectations Lead to Self-Inflicted Pain!

Here’s what the book “The More Method” says about expectations, “For the people who you are unable to remove from your life for whatever reason, you must change your expectations of them in order to be free of disappointments and disruption to your evolutions. The biggest lesson here is that our expectations of others is the number one thing to cause self-inflicted pain in our lives”.

The book goes on to say “People cannot think like us, act like us, or be how we expect them to be; they are how they are. How someone behaves based on their life experiences can vastly differ from how you expect them to behave, so adjusting expectations is key to our own happiness. Let go of the expectations of others to think like us, act like us, respond like us, or worse…live to please us and make us happy”.

How do you respond to expectations and what expectations do you have of others?