How Expectations Ruin Your Life
For most people, having expectations has somehow become something normal in their lives. Do you also think that it is not possible to live without Expectations. “Yes, of course, I do have Expectations”, you might say. “How would my life be, if I do not expect anything?”
“Probably much freer from (self-)manipulation”, is my answer.
Do you think that what you expect in life should become reality? Are you easily disappointed, if life turns out differently? Do you have Expectations towards others about how they should act? And if they do not follow them, then do you tell yourself you are justified to be angry at them? Is it the same with the Expectations you have towards yourself? If you do not live up to your own standards, does the personal suffering start? For example, self-hatred, sleepless nights, apologies, nervous justifications, drowning yourself in the toxic swamp of Shame to the point of self-sacrifice?
An Expectation is an Assumption about what others or you yourself “should do / be”. Such Expectations can ruin your life. They are not at all healthy. Indeed, they toxify your emotional balance as well as the connection you want to create. Expectations also force you into a downward spiral of Guilt & Shame. Having Expectations about how you should be, will create disappointment and self-hatred.
Expectations — How To Create Revenge
(Against Others Or Yourself)
In Possibility Management, there is a great Distinction about how Expectations towards others create Revenge. But the king of your unconscious underworld, your Gremlin, can also create Revenge on yourself in the form of self-hatred or -aggression.
Self-Hatred In Four Steps:
Step 1 — Assumption:
Make an Assumption about someone, something or, in this case, about yourself. You can make an Assumption about anything for no reason.
An Assumption here could be: “I am not good enough.”
Step 2 — Expectation:
Next, believe your Assumption is true. Assuming that your Assumption is true, which is to make a double Assumption, turns your Assumption into an Expectation. Then, hold your Expectation against yourself.
If you believe that you are not good enough, you will expect yourself to be better. For example: To be a better person, to be better than someone else, to be better than last year, to be better than anything. Your Expectations will grow into an endless loop of Expectations towards yourself.
Step 3 — Resentment:
Wait until you break or simply do not meet your own Expectation. It will happen, there are so many of these Expectations. Just wait long enough and then this energy sucking Resentment will bubble up. You feel angry about yourself for not being good enough. You tried hard, but you failed; you are an embarrassment. It seems like you betrayed yourself — all your work did not pay off.
The perfidious side is that you will not only build up self-hatred when you do not live up to your own Expectations, but also when, in rather rare cases, you meet your own Expectations. This is because a suspicion will arise in you that you are not living your own life, but that these are Expectations of others. All these Expectations are draining you, you’re rushing after all the “have to do’s” and you’re just being adaptive.
Step 4 — Revenge:
Your Gremlin is smart. He will prove with a lot of Stories that you are a failure for not fulfilling your Expectations, which are indeed parts of your Box, your Identity, and are therefore Survival Strategies. You became a Victim of your own Expectations.
Every good Victim, which can prove that they have been victimized, will take Revenge on their own Persecutor. How unfortunate that in this case, all of these roles reside within yourself. So you start to tear yourself apart. This is called Gremlin Self Cannibalism.
Any Assumption you make has only one Shadow Purpose: to take Revenge. And this is pure Gremlin Food. Self-hatred is a Gremlin Food your Gremlin can easily use against yourself. Once you land in the Expectation loop, it is hard to stop him.
How To Heal Expectations Towards Yourself
Self-hatred comes in many forms: There is this little voice inside of you, that you should do better. You are constantly beating yourself up by telling yourself that you are a total loser. Maybe you even have the fear that someone might detect that you are a “bad person” or a “monster” and therefore you try almost everything in your powers to look good, in order to prove your “goodness” at whatever costs. You may self-manipulate yourself into tasks or projects that you actually do not want to do. The Shame of being ashamed goes hand in hand with your Expectations of yourself increasing immeasurably. This is the perfect Expectation loop you have created for yourself.
In working with Guilt & Shame it is necessary that you become a neutral observer or a Neutral Experimenter to do real Transformation. Otherwise you will end up in a downward spiral of these Emotions of Guilt & Shame which you are actually trying to heal.
In one of the Guilt & Shame Transformational Journeys a Woman shared at the start of the second session the following: “I realized that I came to this meeting actually feeling ashamed because I did not experiment the way I expected myself to experiment. I expected myself to be aware all the time when I feel Shame and […] write it down. I had a certain self-image of how it is to be a “good experimenter” (Identity) […]. I can feel how much my Gremlin is fighting against me (Self-Cannibalism). I am just not good enough. I am wrong. I judge myself basically for my Box survival strategies and how I should be.” She then shared all the strategies of how she withdraws and punishes herself.
The crazy thing is, that there is rarely a chance to ever meet your own Expectations. If it is your Survival Strategy to be a Good Girl / Boy, whatever you do, there will be this voice that says “you can do better than that!”. Under no circumstances, will your Gremlin allow you to relax. Being trapped in this Low Drama you will feel Shame about your own Shame and this will make you shut down and isolate.
In order to transform and dissolve Shame it is necessary to become vulnerable and share the inner structure of Shame and Guilt. It is about experiencing that you are not alone. Talking in a safe space for you, like the Guilt & Shame Training, about your Fears, your Expectations, how you should be and therefore your own ideal image, will connect you again with yourself and will create Intimacy with your counterpart.
This Healing Journey is not about just taking back Expectations, but starts on a much deeper level. To explore this level, I invite you to do the following Experiments as a Neutral Researcher that allows you to explore your inner structure of survival and to bring humor into the whole “Guilt & Shame” prison you created for yourself and you grew up with.
Stay tuned, the next article about “Guilt & Shame” comes out next month.
Love,
Lisa
P. S. For more information about Guilt & Shame Trainings & Coachings, please contact info@lisaommert.com.
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EXPERIMENTS
Experiment 1: Aggressions Against Yourself
How often are you angry about yourself and how is your Gremlin attacking you, and why? What is underneath that? Do the following Experiment, which was “stolen” and then modified from SPARK 164. The SPARK is about aggression, which is a mixed Emotion of Anger and Fear.
The next time you catch yourself being aggressive towards yourself, take your Beep!Book and write down and say out loud at the same time: “I feel angry because I feel afraid of/that …” Then look at what you have written down and work out what is the underlying Expectation you have towards yourself and what is the Emotion of Shame you are avoiding to feel by covering it up by being angry towards yourself? For example: “I feel angry that I did not finish the project in time, because I am afraid that people think I am not reliable. I am expecting myself to have more skills in this area, because I feel ashamed of being a bad team member.”
Keep continuing the Experiment until you stop being aggressive towards yourself. This could become the task for a whole month, year or life.
When you have done this experiment, enter Matrix Code GUILTxxx.13 in your free account of the StartOver.xyz game.
Experiment 2: Expectations For Yourself — The Ideal Self-Image
For one week research the following questions with the help of your Beep!Book:
- How do I want to be perceived? What are my favorite Identities / Box patterns? What does it mean for me to be perceived this way? What do these labels mean to me?
- How do I not want to be perceived? Which Identities / Box patterns are totally undesirable to me? Why are they so undesirable?
- What are my Expectations of how I should be?
- Where and how in my different bodies (mental, physical, emotional, energetic) do I feel guilty or ashamed about my own “shoulds”?
When you have done this experiment for a week, enter Matrix Code GUILTxxx.14 in your free account of the StartOver.xyz game.
Experiment 3: I Am Not Good Nor Bad — I Am …
Detect your own insecurity. Detect when you feel ashamed. What is that insecurity or being ashamed of? If you feel Shame it is about being a bad person, or not OK. Most people cover that up by trying to be on the other side, which is being a good person, pretending to be OK.
Good or bad are two sides of the same coin called Low Drama. You might have developed a Good Girl or Boy Box to cover up that you could be a bad person. At the same time you know that you are bad, and therefore you can try as hard as possible to be perfect or good, it will never work out.
The next time you feel this insecurity of being exposed, of being a bad person after all, then please say to yourself or to the person you are with: “You are right, I am not good. I am also not a bad person.” And then say: “I am …” and name everything that you are in a perspective of High Drama, and life itself. “I am a wild, non-linear sorcerer, creating a door for Connection.” Or say: “I am an alive being, enjoying the moment.” Say anything you can feel right in the moment, which is not based on beating yourself up. Feel the difference and then keep doing what you just did.
When you have done this experiment for two weeks, enter Matrix Code GUILTxxx.15 in your free account of the StartOver.xyz game.
