The Underrated Benefits of Understanding Expectations
Valentines Day was around the corner, and I was only a few months into a new relationship. Being the hopeless romantic I am, trepidation filled my body every time I thought of it. Somehow, I (Mr I hate confrontation) mustered up the courage and said: “hey, I’m pretty useless when it comes to this whole Valentines day thing. I hope you don’t want the big flowers, chocolates and romantic date on the river thing.” To my surprise, she understood and agreed we didn’t need to do anything.
Hold up a second. What just happened? Am I getting out of this scotfree? It was at that moment I learnt two precious lessons:
- The importance of setting expectations
- The value of effective communication
Ever since that experience, I’ve always thought there was something more to expectations worth exploring. Years later, after a lot of reading and thinking, I have found some hidden gems that can help people in more ways than I initially thought possible. This is the first in a series of articles that delves into expectancies and explores how understanding them can help you be happier, more motivated and improve your relationships.
What is an Expectation?
In the most generic sense, an expectancy is a belief about the future. These can range from short-term plans for breakfast to long term plans for your wedding. Expectancies are where our prior experience and knowledge meet the future to help drive current behaviour (Figure 1).
Common to a vast number of animals, expectations developed as a survival mechanism. In a simple example, an animal thinks “safe in a burrow, dangerous outside scavenging for food”. As we know, animals don’t have the cognitive ability of humans, so these form automatically. It is these ‘automatic’ expectancies that help make it easy to drive a car. We expect drivers to follow the road rules, to signal before changing lanes, and the vehicle to slow when pressing on the brake pedal — all without thinking.
What is unique to humans is our imagination and the ability to construct simulations and environments of future events that have not happened. We can play through an entire conversation we might have with our manager at work and have a clear expectation of how we think it will unfold.
Benefits of Understanding Expectations
The hidden power of expectancies lies within the beliefs that formulate them in the first place. For expectations to be practical, they need to be accessed and deployed with ease (without us knowing). Therefore, it’s highly likely you’re unaware of the beliefs driving them and whether they are right/wrong, true/false.
Looking at the earlier example; I was expecting my partner at the time to want the whole song and dance for Valentines Day. Though upon reflection, this belief was misguided from thinking that all girls want or need that (Figure 2). By communicating and aligning expectations, I avoided further stress leading up to the day, and no one was left feeling disappointed.
This quick look at expectancies barely begins to scratch the surface. So throughout this series, I will look at how lifting the hood of your expectations and uncovering hidden beliefs enables you to:
- Re-align your expectancies and those of others
- Improve your relationships
- Be happier in life
- Find more motivation for the things you deeply value
- Acquire a clearer focus on your career
- Improved self-awareness
