Beliefs & Their Hidden Connection with Our Expectations

Every one of us expects or anticipates something coming in the future when facing certain circumstances in our daily lives. These expectations may cause us to feel fear, stress, anger, and other negative emotions, but sometimes they may make us feel motivated or happy.

The basic issue with our expectations is that if they are not used appropriately or don’t consciously recognize them, they may lead to feelings of disappointment to ourselves and the people around us.

In this article, we will analyze how our expectations are formed, and how to manage them so that we can live a fulfilling life.

How Our Expectations Are Created

From the moment we are born, we are stimulated by our surroundings. Be that our parents and the way they help us grow up, our friends that we surround ourselves with, or the lovers we choose, these all have an impact on forming our sense of self and our general thinking process.

That’s true because every situation in our lives (especially the ones in the younger ages), leads to creating a specific belief system for every one of us.

The term belief system is meant to describe every belief we’ve got for a certain aspect of life that is purely dependent on our unique point of view.

As an example of the aforementioned, let’s say a person has grown up thinking that using violence as a measure to calm down is a bad thing. That opinion may come from their surroundings (family, friends etc), and if they value and trust them they will try to make it their own and abide by it.

That is the point where the belief is formed; that violence equals a thing that they should avoid, in case they want to be accepted by the important people in their lives and generally live a happy life with the rules they form for themselves.

At least in its basic form, this belief system is usually created very early on in our lives. Thus, it is heavily connected with the expectations we have in every scenario in our lives.

So once we have formed a certain belief for an aspect of our lives, we expect us to act upon our established beliefs to get the appropriate outcome we may want or need.

That’s also true for the expectations we have for the people around us. Looking at everything through our own glasses (i.e belief system), we expect others (and especially the ones we deem as important in our lives) to act in certain ways that stay true to our own beliefs.

Using the example above, to be happy with ourselves, we will expect to act calmly at a moment of anger.

For that reason, our mind will try to stop us from using violence against someone (by sending the appropriate messages to our conscious mind) so that if we actually go against our minds' warnings, we will feel unhappy with ourselves.

The same is true for the people we surround ourselves with; if we make someone important in our minds, we will expect them not to use violence to calm themselves, or otherwise, we will feel unpleased with them.

So because of that, our belief system is also working as a filter for the people we want to spend our time with.

Handling Our Expectations

Moving to the major subject in point, when we truly understand the connection between our belief system and our expectations, we can continue to their actual management.

Recognizing our belief system

A very vital step in the process of managing our expectations is that of recognizing our formed belief system by watching closely how we react and what is our thinking process for the different situations we will encounter in our lives.

Also, it will help immensely if we try to connect our beliefs with the people we surround ourselves with and the way we grew up to understand the reasoning behind our current beliefs and see if they might need a change or correction to be truly in line with our minds.

If we truly understand our beliefs, we will also be able to recognize more accurately when our expectations are either too high or low or if they are based on facts.

Opposing our negative beliefs

A negative consequence of not handling our expectations is when we anticipate a negative event to occur in the future without having the proper evidence to support that claim.

An example of that is when a person is expecting to be fired from their job because of a mistake they made. Their current belief system might make them think that when one makes an error it might mean that they are not suitable for the job they are doing.

That’s a dangerous belief to have since that might make the person act in a way that will not help them go past that situation.

So to counter that, as we have said before, the first thing to do is to actually recognize the dangerous beliefs we might have. Secondly, we need to act in the exact opposite way of that belief so that we won’t fall into the trap of acting according to the negative belief.

In our current example, once the person sees that they are starting to feel anxious about their job, instead of letting the anxiety make them feel miserable or disappointed (which in turn will increase their anxiety levels even more), it’s a wiser practice to see the mistake as a learning opportunity and try to figure out how to act differently next time, while looking at this experience as an example.

Also, if it’s a mistake that stems from a lack of understanding or knowledge, it will be better to try to cover that by studying, reading, or practicing more. That way, they will lower their anxiety and their confidence will get a boost.

Reestablishing our beliefs

Another way to manage our expectations is by trying to change a potential limiting belief and establishing one that will help us evolve and make our life easier. However, that’s a very hard process that requires a lot of time and persistence.

Same as before, the first step into doing that is by acknowledging our beliefs and understanding which ones limit us in some situations in our lives.

In case we understand that there’s a belief that holds us back in our lives, we need to constantly correct our thought process that comes from that certain belief and act in the appropriate way that the new belief calls for.

A good practice is to start picturing in our mind specific situations where our limiting belief will surface and the potential outcomes that will happen if we act according to it. Next up, is thinking about the same situations, but with the outcomes that will come up when acting according to our new belief.

Now by writing down every possible outcome from both of them we will give our mind a trigger or a reminder every time a certain scenario makes our limiting belief pop up. That way, we can make it easier to act in the way the new belief is guiding us to, instead of how the old one does.

This will lead to creating expectations that won’t be falsely higher or lower than really necessary for the case in point, since your newly established beliefs will be more in line with your subconscious mind and outlook of life.

Conclusion

Expectations usually harm our lives because we often expect a future event to unfold in the exact and specific way we are thinking it will be.

That’s only true because we all prefer the certainty of knowing something precisely since we will also know how to react and approach it. However, hardly anything ever goes the exact way our minds are making it up to be.

So lowering our expectations and minimizing the limiting beliefs we might have formed in our lives, is an important aspect in leading a peaceful, fulfilling, and happy life.

As Marcus Aurelius accurately pointed:

“It is not the events that disturb people, it is their judgments concerning them”

Guides

1. Self-development and understanding: Marcus Aurelius, Earl Nightingale, Napoleon Hill, Arthur Schopenhauer, Dale Carnegie, and others
2. Learn more about psychology: 2KnowMyself