At The Intersection of Expectations & Standards — Part 3: The Black Box

In my previous articles, I was explaining about how standards and expectations were different. I attempted this through the examples of how the way they manifested in actions. I also told you about my journey in music and how I shifted my expectations to grow more as a musician. In this article, I would like to look at how to make standards & expectations work for you and your goals.

The Black Box

When something is below one’s expectations, it functions like a black box. Anything below the expectations is equivalent to useless, meaningless things. As with my previous story, when I did not confront the black box for a long while, I could not analyse what happened objectively. And I hence could not review it properly. When we have expectations, anything below it — whether just barely missing the mark or completely and utterly failing, was the same failure.

When I depended on my expectations to view the world, I managed it by developing coping mechanisms. Coping mechanisms are great because you would seem to be getting by well without the need to actually solve the problem, but it will always bite you back later.

In the scenario in the previous article, I used to cope with my expectation of praise from people by asking people I thought who…