I'll admit it. I have extremely high expectations of myself. I like to do things a certain way and I expect outcomes to fall into a specific range. When things don't happen this way, I get frustrated, upset, and I start beating myself up for not doing a better job. I absolutely hate not meeting expectations that I place on myself and when I don't reach those self imposed expectations, I begin getting thoughts of impostor syndrome. If you aren't familiar with impostor syndrome, it's the "persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills" (Oxford Languages). The funny thing about impostor syndrome is that it usually creeps up on you by your own expectations and not the expectations of others. At one point or another, I feel we probably encounter the feeling that we aren't doing enough or that we aren't worthy, but it's because of the pressure we put on ourselves.
I have made the contention multiple times that we all are our own worst critics and we shouldn't try to take the job from someone else. In most cases, there isn't going to be anyone who is harder on yourself than you, so why would you want to take that job someone else? The reality is that the expectations for yourself may be different than those that have been placed on you by others. While you have control over one set of expectations, the others are not within your control and you have to decide which expectations you are going to try to meet. It's a quandary, because you don't want to let yourself down and you also want to try to please the people around you. In a perfect world, both sets of expectations would be aligned with one another, but we don't live in a perfect world and we sometimes have to make difficult decisions including choosing the expectations we are going to live by.
The struggle is real. As I am writing this, I know that I am falling short with some of the expectations I have of myself. I'm not eating well, I don't exercise enough, and I don't set realistic boundaries and expectations on my time when it comes to work and my personal time. On the other hand, I know that I am knocking it out of the park in other areas, but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about that or my impostor syndrome kicks in and it makes me feel bad about myself because I shouldn't feel good about meeting the high expectations that I have established. It's a no-win situation until a personal decision is made to look at things from a non-binary standpoint.
Too often we fall into the trap that meeting expectations is a binary process where things are met or not met. When we make a choice to really understand that we all are a work in progress and accept that we are going to fall short now and then, we can truly grasp the fact that meeting expectations, whether our own or others, is part of our unique story of growth. While the outcome is simple, the process is messy. You can’t #OwnYourEpic if you aren’t willing to come to grips with the fact that your story will never be perfect and that there really isn’t a destination. You will never truly arrive. Instead, you will continue to learn and grow along the way as you encounter challenges and obstacles that will most definitely try to block your movement forward. Establishing expectations for yourself is part of this process, but not meeting them all the time doesn't mean you are a failure. It just means you are human.
Posts
