While we reach the fifth day of our self-discovery challenge, by now you must have realized that we need to do a lot of inner work before we begin to change the world around us. This journey holds a lot of expectations from you to know yourself first.
Did I just say expectations? Oh yes! The circus of expectations starts right from the day we are born, right from laughing, eating, speaking, behaving well, studying well, working, getting married, we meet a certain set of expectations tied up at every stage and every phase of our daily lives.
Self-discovery exercise for Day 5- Expectations
As we move ahead with our life, we experience a lot of things. Our life goes through a lot of ups and downs and our dreams of what we expected our lives to be, fade into the blistering reality of the real world. Our lives often are fuelled by expectations, many of which are not even our own.
From our beliefs, We construct ideas of who we should be, how we should be, how we must act and react, things we should and should not do, based on our beliefs backed by our social conditioning.
Did a few expectations hit you up?
Why do expectations hurt so much? To us and to others. Have you ever thought about what will happen when we will fail to meet the expectations set by everybody? In the worst-case scenario, we will lose relationships, we will lose respect and goodwill we will lose love.
This fear of losing sometimes dwells us into setting unrealistic expectations as well. Without knowing our capacity we jump into the river and try to swim. We feel powerless and lose all the strength to carry on after a while and no one comes to rescue us, what will happen? We might sink!
Now, imagine you are aware of your inner strengths, you exactly know when and where to stop, will this little shift in thinking approach help you? So, before that, list a few expectations that feel unrealistic to you.
Day 5: Any unrealistic expectations you have set for yourself? It could be anything related to your work, your personal life, your health, relationship, studies, financial decisions. Try to note down all of them and then reflect upon them. Understand how much you can improvise here.
This exercise will help you to put away the pressure and take away the struggle, you face while you try to fit in every bodies shoes. You cannot make everyone happy. You cannot be a hero in every one’s life.
Putting up and setting boundaries is not being selfish or rude. Understanding when to stop and when to say no, will not only save you some sanity but help you work on better things because you cannot pour from an empty cup. This will help you to manage your expectations from yourselves and others as well.
See you tomorrow.
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Priyanka Nair is the author of 26 Days 26 Ways for a Happier you and Ardhaviram. An NLP practitioner and Founder of Sanity Daily, helping you prioritize your mental health. Let’s build a happy community.
