Expectations vs reality: The pros and cons of manifesting the future

We came into this world unmoulded and with every little piece of information we changed to become the person we see in the mirror every morning.

Everything we see, touch and experience makes up the fabric of who we are.

Creates the image we have of who we want to be.

Crafts our expectations of the future.

But are expectations a good or a bad thing?

As most things in life they seem to have two sides.

Just take a look at this story:

A man is seen by a witch and given a prophecy: He will die in a night the full moon is adorning the sky. During the next full moon the man suffers a heart attack and dies instantly.

One could say that witches are real, fate and magic truly exists. Or, that the anxiety he suffered from believing he would die caused the heart attack and the prophecy came true.

In 1948, Robert Merton presented the term “self-fulfilling prophecy” based on the concept that when something is firmly believed, it has a higher probability to come true. [1]

Human beings have the tendency to want their beliefs to be confirmed and the person will consciously and subconsciously make an effort to be right.

Starting the day expecting it to go wrong, for example, will put you in a negative mind-set and set you up for failure. You will be more irritable, more distracted and more likely to get into trouble. In the same way that believing your actions will have a positive outcome could actually give you the necessary courage and motivation to make it happen.

But the power of expectations doesn’t stop here.

In 1968, psychologists Rosenthal and Jacobson, organized an experiment. [2]

They pretended to deliver a test in an elementary school, to discover which students were more likely to be successful academically and gave the fake test results to the teachers.

Labelling several children as smarter randomly, they left the teachers to work with the students. In the end, it was found that the children labelled as smarter actually showed better results academically.

Subconsciously, the teachers were treating the class differently according to the different expectations they had on each of the children.

This difference in treatment dictated the learning outcomes.

As you can see, an expectation can be a fearsome thing.

It seems to have the capacity to change not only the outcome of what you do, but also the behaviour of the ones around you.

At this point you might be wandering: Then if I expect getting a promotion tomorrow, it will surely come true, right?

Well, expecting to get a promotion can give you the confidence you need to work harder, to go up to your boss and actively ask for it or even to subconsciously make your boss believe you have what it takes for the role. But unfortunately, for all science knows, merely expecting something doesn’t automatically make it come true.

Which, of course, can become a problem, when we start to expect too much, too soon.

Nowadays, we are bombarded with information every day, all day. With the click of a button we have access to a windowed display of possibilities. It’s nearly impossible to roam through our quotidian without bumping into comparisons. And if our expectations are created by what we see, it’s easy to make up conclusions about the life of others and feel disappointed with our own.

Often, what is sold to us is an ideal of perfection, an unobtainable, unspoiled happiness. That could never exist in our flawed (but real) life.

We expect our house to be as tidy as the pictures we see in Pinterest. We expect our job to be as well paid as the neighbour's next door. We expect our relationships to be as healthy as the ones on Instagram. And with all this expectations, we end up forgetting what we see is only a fraction of reality. More often than not, the fraction others allowed us to see.

I’m not with this trying to say that having a tidy house, a well-paid job and healthy relationships are impossible goals to achieve. Much to the contrary, all of them are indeed real possibilities. Besides, as we saw before, expecting them to work out and believing in them is a great start. However, it is important to know they do not happen without cost. A cost that tends to be impossible to grasp from an outsider’s perspective.

It’s crucial to have a realistic perspective of what it takes to achieve our goals. The sacrifices that will come along with them and the challenges we will need to face. Deciding for ourselves what we are willing to compromise for them. Understanding always what is in out power to change and what is not.

After all, it’s impossible to have everything. Chances are, if we did, we would be bored out of our minds.

In life it’s vital to prioritize what is truly essential in order to experience fulfilment.

Being able to acknowledge what we have and what we were able to achieve so far.

References:

[1] Merton, R. K. (1948). The self-fulfilling prophecy. The antioch review, 8(2), 193-210.

[2] Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom. The urban review, 3(1), 16-20.