How do you know if you
are "good enough" or if you are "meeting
expectations"?
It is funny how many
schools grade the students' performance (whether it is academic or behavior)
with the scale "approaching expectations|meeting expectations|exceeding
expectations". Whose expectations are these actually based upon? The
principle's? Teachers'? Parents'? Or the students' themselves? And how do you
decide and come up with these so called "expectations"?
I’m sure many of you have
that one friend that says he/she is going to fail and end up being the top
student/getting a really high score. I’m that friend. Before you get all judgmental
and decide to stop reading, let me at least have the chance to defend myself.
I have this habit of
setting very high expectations for myself, sometimes even unattainably so.
Some may say that it is a very bad habit and in doing so I will just bring down
my morale and disappoint myself when I am unable to reach these goals. But as
they say, “Reach for the moon, even if you miss, you’ll fall among the stars”.
Although this is something I practice since young, I will not encourage
everyone to take on this (you can say) “way of life” because at times it can be
really discouraging and may cause one to feel like giving up.
That being said, I've yet to explain why I practice this cruel way of motivating myself. I do this
because I find that it is easier to try and meet my own expectations rather
than someone else’s. If I set my expectation to be higher than anyone will have
of me then I will disappoint myself more than others.
Higher
expectations = Greater disappointment
I really hate
disappointing people around me. You can call me selfish but I cannot stand
other people looking at me with the expression that screams “I’m sorry you
couldn’t do better”. So rather than having to see that on others, I
rather face the mirror and see my own disappointment. (I mean this
way if I want to avoid that look, all I need to do is to avoid the mirror).
This is why I am that
friend, because I feel that if I say that I will do badly then I will lower
other’s expectations of me. This means, people will have a lower disappointment
in the event that I am unable to reach their expectations.
By now some of you might
already be hating me and thinking that I am a horrible person. I do not disagree
with that. I know these people are not the nicest people to be around
especially if you are feeling bad after a paper/work and you know that they
will do fine when the results come. But being one of “these people”, I can tell
you that we do what we do because we are insecure and we don’t really believe
in our abilities. You may hate us but believe me when I say this, because when
we do not meet our own expectations we hate ourselves more than anyone else can
hate us.
So next time before you
tell off that friend for being insensitive and telling him/her that he/she will
do fine, know that you are actually increasing the stress and pressure of an
already insecure person. By telling us that we will do okay, you have shown
that your expectation of us is higher than what we have for ourselves and now
we feel the need to live up to that expectation.
I cannot say I’m
speaking for everyone that is labelled “that friend” because I most certainly
am not, some people might have their own reasons for doing what they did, what I’m
saying is that please don’t look at us in such negative light, we are not
aiming to put you down, we are putting ourselves
down.
Back to the question, so how good is good enough? Well to me, being good enough is when I can meet my own expectations. Your expectations are what you think you should reach and you know yourself the best, so if you are able to reach what you think you should, isn't that enough? I mean of course, you can always strive to do better than enough but if we are talking about being good enough, then I guess that's what it is.
