Navigating Expectations and Our Map of Reality
“Dreamy clouds,” a gouache painting by me.
Welcome to part 2 of The Calm Path, a series on doing hard things with less stress. In the first part, I discussed how, since we don't have direct control over most things in life, trying to make other people or situations do or be what we want can create unnecessary stress and conflict. So what can we do if we still want what we want? Is it too much to ask to desire a comfortable living, peace in our relationships, enjoyment in our work, etc.? No, of course not. But we have to understand what is reasonable to expect.
Much of our need for control hinges on our relationship to expectations. Expectations are what we believe would or should happen based on our upbringing and past experiences. If we are inflexible with our beliefs of how things should work, how people should behave, and how life should turn out for us, we constantly create friction with reality because real life often deviates from those expectations. While it is impossible not to have expectations, we can reduce the friction they create by changing our relationship with them.
Expectations as a map of reality
Expectations are not intrinsically good or bad. They are one of the brain's essential functions that help us ensure survival and fulfillment of needs. In The Body Keeps the Score, a comprehensive work on the causes and healing of trauma, Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk writes about the functions of the brain:
Generate internal signals that register our bodies' needs, such as food, rest, protection, sex, and shelter.
Create a map of the world to point us to where to satisfy those needs.
Generate the necessary energy and actions to get us there.
Warn us of dangers and opportunities along the way.
Adjust our actions based on the needs of the moment.
Unlike many animals, much of our brain development occurs after birth due to the narrowing of the hips that enables us to walk upright. The parts of the brain that manage our emotions and intellect begin development after birth. They create a perceptual map of the world as we grow and interact with our environment and the people around us. This map helps us know that bananas are good to eat, that hot things can hurt, or that we could get punished if we picked on our brother. Babies and toddlers constantly sort through stimuli to understand the world around them. This process is how we create our map of expectations. While we can update this map with later experiences that are either positive or negative, those early experiences deeply inform how we relate to and expect from ourselves, others, and the world.
Consistent and inconsistent expectations
While expectations help us navigate the world around us, some are more consistent and reliable, while others are more intangible and malleable. Expectations that involve the physical world are dependable and repeatable-- think of scientific subjects, such as physics, math, biology, etc. We can expect fire to be hot and ice to be cold. The sun will always rise and set (at least for another 5 billion years). If we cut ourselves, we bleed. We can test these expectations and find consistency over time and among different observers. They compose a map of our physical reality.
Things are less consistent in the emotional and intellectual realms. Emotional expectations include what we desire in our relationships with others, what gives our lives meaning and fulfillment, or what it means when a date wants us to meet her parents. Intellectual expectations include our reasons for why things happen, what life is about, and what we believe about ourselves. These expectations tell us what to anticipate from our efforts, relationships with others, and life itself.
Here are some examples of intellectual and emotional expectations:
What kind of work we do, and what that means about us.
How much money we should/want to make.
What kind of lifestyle we should/want to have.
What it means when a spouse remembers our anniversary or doesn't.
How we should dress in various social situations.
What gives our life meaning and value.
What responsibilities we have in the household.
How a man or a woman should dress and behave.
Where we think we find happiness.
Whether we can trust other people (and who).
Our upbringing, education, culture, and belief systems shape these expectations. But some of them are also innate to us; otherwise, we'd all be carbon copies of our parents. Some come from conclusions drawn as children in response to our experiences. However, because our minds and behaviors are more malleable than physical phenomena, consistency tends to be found in narrower contexts like families, communities, and cultures. Some of these expectations can be highly individualized, such as what gives our life meaning and value. So, when it comes to intellectual and emotional expectations, the broader the context, the less reliable they become.
Changing our relationship to expectations
Like a physical map, our intellectual and emotional map contains what we know about the world based on past experience. But human interactions are complex, and our maps are based on limited information that isn't always accurate or up-to-date. We also educate people about our physical world more than emotions and relationships. If we didn't have mandatory education, our understanding of the physical world would also be full of misconceptions and inaccurate assumptions.
In our study of the physical world, we use the scientific method to test our assumptions and update them when we find contradictory evidence (at least, ideally). When we reject evidence in favor of assumptions, expectations become beliefs. A case in point is some Christians' belief that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old.
We have a more haphazard approach toward our emotional understanding of the world. Because emotions and social interactions are less tangible and highly susceptible to projection, it's easier to see what we expect or want to see--we call that confirmation bias. In addition, talking about emotions is avoided in many cultures and families, and assumptions are often seen as "tradition."
So it's no wonder we rarely acknowledge our expectations, let alone treat them as fluid things. When our emotional reality differs from our expectations, we often resent it, deny it, complain about it, or try to control it. We make others or ourselves wrong. Then, we try to force them or ourselves to meet those expectations, and drama ensues. After much pain, we (sometimes) learn to let people be themselves. Is this the way things have to be?
Ultimately, we don't have control over other people or the world. We only have control over ourselves--and our expectations. The more fixed our expectations are, the more friction and conflict we'll have with others and the world around us.
Instead, what if we treated our expectations as hypotheses, as scientists do with theories they can't prove yet? What if we could hold our expectations more lightly? Then, when life contradicts them, it becomes an invitation to learn more, rather than life punishing us for doing something wrong or rewarding us for doing something right (which is itself a religious conditioning).
Imagine if you were trying to go to the ocean, and someone told you a certain road would take you there. Then you walk the road, and it's full of brambles that block your way. Do you blame the person who told you to go this way? Do you resent the brambles? Do you get mad that someone else hasn't cleared it already? Do you turn around and forget about the ocean? Do you look for a tool to remove the bramble? Or do you try to find a way around it?
These are all responses we could have to obstacles depending on our expectations. What do you tend to choose? Are there other responses that could be more helpful?
Next time, let's look at how we could respond with more flow and ease when reality conflicts with our expectations.
An aside: challenges to softening expectations
Of course, softening our expectations is sometimes easier said than done. If we have experienced trauma or challenges to our survival, either directly or through our parents and grandparents, maintaining control could be an important way to feel safe. We also often have our self-worth attached to having certain things, like money, beauty, physical strength, mental abilities, youth, a respectable profession, home ownership, etc. Challenges to these expectations can feel like a loss of self, like we have no place in this world.
Many of us deal with these challenges, so don't expect to change overnight. This is where therapy and other trauma healing modalities can come in handy.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what thoughts you might have. Let me know down below!
