my relationship with expectations

welcome to introspection ft. harsehaj! ⭐️ i’m harsehaj, a 19 y/o always up to something in social good x tech.

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onto today’s topic: my relationship with expectations 📦

s/o to randy for inspiring this post.

expectations are a tricky line to tread. they can serve as a guideline and/or roadmap for achieving goals, but also become a fatal force restricting your true desires and setting you up for a lot of disappointment.

when i think of how expectations manifest in my life, a few buckets come to mind. 🪣

setting expectations for myself

i tend to expect a lot from myself, and don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. upholding a level of excellence and quality in all that i do is an expectation i’ve set for myself and ensures that i maintain a good work ethic. writing a blog post every day is another expectation i’ve set for myself, and fulfilling it has helped me stay consistent and reach my goals. expectations can be pressuring, but a little bit of pressure is never a bad thing. when it gets overwhelming, it’s probably time to reevaluate why exactly you’re setting up these expectations for yourself. 

setting expectations in relationships 🫂

it’s perfectly normal to have expectations in relationships, with family, with friendships and romantically. however, i’ve realized that holding these expectations without communicating and coming to a consensus with the other party just leads to a whole lot of disappointment. your expectations of others aren’t always calibrated across the board. a lot of our expectations are built off of our own experiences with past relationships, and obviously those aren’t shared. of course, expectations of just being a decent human being or having common manners isn’t something that needs to be addressed beforehand — those are a given. 

adhering to expectations with social media 📲

i used to care a lot about catering the content i post on social media to fit what i believed to be social expectations and that of my audiences. by micromanaging myself trying to adhere to social media expectations, i lost a lot of interest in content. it’s only recently where i stopped caring so much about these expectations where i’m now enjoying the creative process of putting together pictures and planning out new tiktok ideas. 

whatever it is, expectations don’t guarantee anything. it’s more fulfilling to live in the present and wallow over things that are actually in your control. rather than my life revolving around and being rooted in expectations, they now serve mostly as a guideline in some aspects of my life.

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