‘Well, what did you expect?!?’

I’m sure you’ve been asked this question many times, usually when something / someone has pissed you off and/or things haven’t worked out quite how you wanted them to!

Expectations hold a huge amount of power over us, and can be a deciding factor in whether we win or lose, succeed or fail – or even try at all.

We all have expectations – about our relationships, our careers, about how things ‘should be’ – but how conscious are we of them?

Unless we take the time to clearly define our expectations, and – where necessary – to manage them, we can become prisoners to discord, discontent, and even depression.

It took me a long time – and much pain and hard work – to recognise that a core trigger in my own battles with depression was the pressure I felt to meet what I perceived to be others’ expectations of me. The result – I never felt I was good enough.

And I’m not the only one.

Covid isn’t the only pandemic we face today – ‘not-enoughness’ is rife.

So many of us feel that we are falling short; falling short of our expectations of ourselves, of the expectations – real or perceived – of others, and of the social and cultural expectations that we are unconsciously fed each day – how to look, how to be, what to wear, who to see…

How do we break free?

We need to understand the stories that give our expectations their power, and challenge and reframe them whenever they lead us to not-enoughness.

And we need to define and agree our expectations with the toughest judge of them all – ourselves.

The clearer the story we hold about ourselves, our ambitions, our qualities, our dreams – the less power the expectations of others can hold over us.

At that point WE define our enoughness, nobody else.

So I ask you,

‘Well, what do you expect?’

I’d love to hear from you regarding:

✅ what – and whose – expectations are driving you in the choices you are making in your life today? and

✅ where do you rate yourself on the ‘enoughness’ scale of 1-10 (where 1 is low and 10 is high)?