Expectation Vs Reality
Disappointment,
Frustration, Anger and all such related feelings, stem out of the same root
cause. The root cause being, that many a time the reality does not match
expectation or in other words the reality falls short of our expectations. Let us examine the truth of the above statement in light of a few illustrations.
Your child is very
intelligent, but somehow he does not score good marks when it comes to his
academics. Every time, you hope he would score better next time, but the marks
never seem to improve. In spite of your constant advice stressing the
importance of marks, you do not see any visible result. You are disappointed.
You start a business venture,
trusting one of your good old school day friends, who you have known for years.
You have been very close pals, all through your life. At some point of time
during the course of business dealings, there is a misunderstanding between you
and your friend. He behaves very
differently. You are shocked. His careless behavior leads you to a big
financial loss. You feel cheated. You feel betrayed. You experience
disappointment.
One of your newly
appointed managers is able to show tremendous improvement in your sales volume.
Your business starts to boom. You feel like a lucky star and start building so
much faith on him, that you delegate most of your work to him and move into
your comfort zone. All of a sudden, he hands over a resignation letter, because
he is got a better package somewhere in a foreign country. You feel helpless.
You sense a fear of your business future. You never thought, he would quit all
of a sudden. You are disappointed.
Does any of this, sound
similar to your experience? Well many of us would have had some unpleasant
experience of this sort.
The expectation was we
wanted our child to score good marks, our friend to be trustworthy, our staffs
to be faithful, but in reality things did not happen the way we wanted it to
happen. Repeated disappointments leads to frustration and this frustration
leads to anger. Is it not? At the end of the day, we are either angry with
others or angry with ourselves.
All external anger, when
given a deep reflection will boil down to internal anger. We will realize that
it was our mistake to trust someone or expect someone to behave in a way that
according to our perception is right. But they were their own selves and as
always they will have their own side of the story for the purpose of
justification.
The truth is, it is
difficult for anyone to match our expectations. Expectations often lead to
disappointment at work place, at family and amidst friends. We expect our close friend to remember our
birthday, but he may not call up. We expect our staff to be self motivated, but
very often find ourselves pushing them to do the work. We expect our home to be
always clean and tidy, but our kids throw up their things, all over the place.
As an end result we end up with so many day to day disappointments, that life
gets really frustrating at times.
I am not advocating that
we should not have trust, faith or expectations on anyone. But what we need to
look at is the limitations of the people, from who we expect and manage our expectations
accordingly. Your trust in people should be based on the tried and tested
method. We need to assess their ability, their interest and their integrity
before we could set our expectations on them.
Expectations are like a
seed planted on soil. Before we plant the seed we should know whether that
particular soil has the potential for the seed to grow into a tree. Once we are
convinced and sow the seed of expectation, we need to water it with words of
motivation and appreciation, and provide the sunlight of affirmation and
confidence. Eventually, we will realize that more and more of our expectations start
to turn into reality.
In
short, people management is nothing but expectation management.
Managing Trustee, PALMS, Tuticorin.
Author of "Transformational Thoughts" - A Journey of learning
Email: senthilkannand@gmail.com
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