Whose Expectations Are You Still Living By?
September Week 2
Exploring the roles, rules, conditioning and external pressures shaping your choices.
I think there is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from living a life that looks perfectly fine from the outside, while quietly wondering why it doesn't always feel like yours.
You can have the career, the relationship, the home, the responsibilities, and the routines. You can be dependable, capable, and someone others can rely on and still find yourself asking:
Image with thanks to Unsplash - Jordan Madrid @jordanmadrid
Is this actually what I want?
Sometimes the answer is yes, but sometimes, if we're honest, the answer is more complicated. We may discover that some of the choices we've made were influenced by expectations we absorbed long before we were consciously deciding what we wanted from our lives.
Be successful.
Be sensible.
Don't disappoint people.
Put others first.
Work hard.
Be grateful.
Don't make a fuss.
Keep the peace.
Be responsible.
Be a good partner, mother, daughter, friend, colleague.
The rules may never have been formally written down; we simply learned them, and over time, they can become so familiar that they stop feeling like expectations and start feeling like who we are.
The Roles We Learn to Play
Most of us move through life occupying a collection of roles.
We might be a daughter, partner, parent, friend, professional, carer, leader, organiser, supporter or the person everyone turns to when something needs sorting.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing inherently wrong with these roles.
The question I’m posing is whether we've become so identified with them that we've forgotten there is a person underneath them.
Perhaps you've become the responsible one, the one who copes, or the one who doesn't ask for much.
The one who keeps everyone happy and always says yes.
The one who can be trusted to get things done or the one who holds everyone else together.
If those resonate with you, as they do for me, then perhaps you've been rewarded for being that person, and it possibly manifests like this:
People appreciate you.
They depend on you.
They tell you how kind, strong or reliable you are.
So why would you question it?
Because sometimes a role can be both authentic and limiting.
You can genuinely care about people and still need boundaries.
You can be generous and still want more for yourself.
You can be responsible without being responsible for everyone.
You can love someone without organising your entire life around their needs.
You can be successful and still decide that the definition of success you've inherited no longer fits.
The goal isn't to reject every role you have; it's to gently ask whether you're choosing the role or simply continuing to perform it.
When "should" becomes a way of life
One of the simplest ways to uncover inherited expectations is to pay attention to the word should.
I should want this.
I should be grateful.
I should stay.
I should work harder.
I should be further ahead by now.
I should make more effort.
I shouldn't need so much time for myself.
I should be able to cope.
I should put other people first.
We rarely stop to question where these “shoulds” came from, but try asking:
Who taught me this?
A parent.
A teacher.
A culture.
A workplace.
A previous relationship.
A particular generation.
A religious or social environment.
We learn surprisingly early what makes us acceptable to the people around us.
Be quiet.
Be polite.
Don't answer back.
Do well at school.
Get a secure job.
Settle down.
Don't take risks.
Be successful.
Don't be selfish.
Don't let people down.
Some of these messages may have been well-intentioned, and they may even have helped us at one point in our lives.
But something being useful then doesn't necessarily mean it remains right now.
Conditioning Isn't The Same as Choice
Not every expectation we carry is imposed upon us in an obvious way; sometimes it just happens through repetition.
We watch.
We listen.
We notice what receives approval and what doesn't.
We adapt.
Eventually, the behaviour becomes automatic and we never consciously think: I'm doing this because I need other people's approval.
We simply do it - this is one reason changing our lives can feel surprisingly difficult.
It's not always just a matter of knowing what we want (I speak from personal experience here), sometimes we have to disentangle what we want from what we've learned we ought to want, and that takes awareness.
It might begin with something as simple as noticing your reactions.
Where do you feel guilty when you say no?
Where do you feel anxious about disappointing someone?
Where do you find yourself explaining your choices excessively?
Where do you automatically put someone else's needs ahead of your own?
Where does the thought of choosing differently immediately produce a voice saying: "But I can't do that."
Pause there - not because the voice is necessarily wrong, but because it may be carrying an old rule.
The expectation underneath the expectation; sometimes it helps to go one layer deeper.
Here are a few examples that may resonate with you:
"I should stay in this job." Why?
"Because it's secure."
Why does security matter so much?
"Because I was taught that a good life means having a stable career."
Or:
"I should always be available for my family." Why?
"Because that's what a good daughter/partner/mother does."
Or:
"I shouldn't want more." Why?
"Because I already have so much to be grateful for."
Personally, I’m beginning to recognise that gratitude and desire can coexist; so can love and boundaries, responsibility and freedom and caring for others and caring for yourself.
You don't have to become selfish to include yourself in your own life; you simply have to stop assuming that your needs automatically come last.
One of the most revealing questions we can ask ourselves is: What if I disappointed someone or I stopped meeting this expectation?
Would someone be disappointed?
Would they think you'd changed?
Would they call you selfish?
Would you feel guilty?
Would you no longer be the person everyone could rely on?
Would you have to tolerate someone else's discomfort?
This is where creating a life that feels like yours can become uncomfortable, because sometimes the life we want requires us to disappoint an expectation that someone else has for us, and that doesn't necessarily mean we've done something wrong.
Other people's expectations are not automatically obligations, and you are allowed to revise the rules.
Growing older can bring a particular kind of clarity because we begin to realise that some of the rules we have lived by were never really our rules. Yes, they may have helped us become the person we needed to be at the time, but we are allowed to question them.
Start small by questioning one “should” or one automatic “yes” or challenge one assumption. Give yourself permission to want something without immediately explaining why. Ask yourself what you would choose if nobody was disappointed by your answer, and listen for the quieter voice underneath all the noise.
A Practice for This Week
Take a piece of paper and write down five things you currently believe you should do, be or want - for each one, ask:
Where did this expectation come from?
Then ask:
Do I still choose this?
You may find that the answer is yes.
That's valuable too, because there is a difference between consciously choosing something and simply continuing it because you've never questioned it.
For the expectations that no longer fit, try completing this sentence:
"I used to believe I had to ________. Now I am giving myself permission to ________."
Don't worry about what comes next; you don't need to act on everything you discover; awareness comes first, followed by choice.
A Life That Feels Like Yours
Creating a life that feels like yours isn't necessarily about changing your job, leaving your relationship, moving house or reinventing yourself; sometimes it is much quieter than that; it can simply be about noticing where you've disappeared from your own decision-making. It's asking:
What do I actually think?
What do I actually want?
What matters to me now?
And perhaps most importantly: Whose voice am I hearing when I tell myself what I should do?
You may discover that some of those voices still deserve to be heard, and others don't.
If This Resonated
If this resonated with you, you might need somewhere quiet to notice. A couple of books that sit alongside this month's theme really well, if you'd like to explore more, are:
If you're continuing to explore self-trust, boundaries and becoming more comfortable with your own voice, I'd recommend Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab.
In The Expectation Effect, David Robson explores research showing how expectations can influence our experiences, behaviour, and even physical responses.
Remember. Rewrite. Live.
Live by design, not by default.
Next in the September series: What do I genuinely want more of in my life?
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