Setting yourself up for disappointment

Confession time - I’ve experienced some disappointment. 

The details are not important. But suffice it to say that I was severely put-out. Left waiting, all dressed up with nowhere to go – and rather hungry into the bargain!  

Somebody (who shall remain nameless because they are in fact completely innocent) failed to do what I expected of them.

Had I shared my expectations around the occasion with this person beforehand? NO.

Had I made assumptions about what they would do? YES.

Had I made a clear request for the behaviour that I wanted from them? NO.

Did I expect them to do it anyway? YES!! 

Seems logical to expect people to read my mind and do exactly what I want, right? 

So I felt let down and disappointed and hurt and unseen…and I blamed the other person for it. 

And that, my friends is called being in victim-mentality. Yep – it still happens to me after years of coach training and working on my mindset. Brains are sneaky like that.

Of course, in reality I had disappointed MYself.

Luckily, because of all that training, it took me about 5 minutes to realise that MY feeling of disappointment was in fact generated by MY thought that I had been “let down.” And I was able to deal with it without dragging the other person through my little mind-tantrum and heaping blame where it wasn’t deserved. 

So here’s today’s lesson my friends: 

Be CRYSTAL CLEAR in communicating what you want from the people around you.

YES, even the people who have known you for decades.

YES, even your closest family. (And especially your spouse!)

Thinking that “they should know by now” is setting yourself up for massive disappointment.

We change. Our expectations, our preferences, our habits, norms, likes and dislikes all change over time. And the people in our lives don’t always manage to keep up. 

Show them a little grace. Remind them about what’s important to you and make clear requests in relation to those things. 

As for the small stuff? 

(this is the stuff you’d gladly put up with a thousand times over, if you lost that person and wished you could get them back)  – Let that stuff go, because NOBODY is perfect. Not even you😉