Managing Expectations Of Others
Hey Gentlemen, we’re already 3 months into the year and it’s time to take a look at where you’re at with how you want to be living your life, and see if you’re on track. If you’re not on track, today’s the day you get start getting on your path to being the Man you want to be.
Todays the day to make your plan and start taking action.
I’m sitting down and filling out my 90 day plan for the next 12 weeks. The ultimate plan is to get myself on track with where I want to be in my relationship, my business, my money, my physical fitness, and my mental fitness. I’m writing out 3 big goals I have to accomplish in the next 90 days, and the small steps I need to take each day to get myself there.
One of those steps is growing this group, and building the influence of The Way of Men, through the website, through the podcast, and through social media. Another project I have on the go is the Mansanity App, which we’re working on to help men plan their lives, get and stay on track, as well as get some insight into how they can make their relationships with their wives and girlfriends better.
We can always optimize our lives – take action to make things better than the month before.
We’re set to launch the Mansanity App for beta testing fairly soon as well.
Now with planning comes expectations of what I can accomplish and what my team can accomplish in the next 90 days. Also expectations around goals we have set, and how you guys will react to the content we create to help you build your life.
And that’s a good segway into how you manage and control your own expectations.
Last week I was asked how can you manage your expectations of other people so you’re not constantly disappointed. The man I was talking to, said he had expectations of people at work, and at home, and that he was constantly disappointed and angered because the people around him weren’t following through on his expectations of them.
An example is that at work when he has downtime he goes over and helps someone else at work finish their job, but finds that when they have down time or they finish early, they don’t come over and help him with what he’s working on. Make sense, you help someone with their job, and you maybe expect them to come and help you when they’re not busy right? But it doesn’t always work that way.
Especially if you don’t tell someone what you expect from them.
If you’re going around helping people at work with their job, and don’t let them know you expect them to help you out, or even ask them to help you out when you need help, then they don’t know, they can’t read your mind.
You’re creating what in the book No More Mr. Nice Guy they call covert contracts. You have a contract of an expectation in your head, but you’re not telling the other person what the agreement is (the agreement you made up in your mind) then you’re getting upset that they’re not following through on the contract that they don’t know about… because you never told them.
People aren’t mind readers. People also have their own shit going on. It’s easy to think, well I would act this way, if someone did something for me, then I would do something for them… Not everyone is like that, and you to top it off, you can’t control what someone else is going to do.
The only thing you can control is how you react to your expectations. How you react to how other people act. If you’re holding someone in a contract that they don’t know about, and you get upset that they’re not following through on your made up expectations of them, then you’re only hurting yourself.
I once new a guy who was what you would call a classic Nice Guy – the type of guy who would go out of his way to help anyone, even if he didn’t want to, and especially if you he didn’t want to. He would spend dozens of his hours offering to help people out, refusing pay, then get violently upset when at some point in the future those people didn’t drop what they were doing to come and help him out.
He was creating covert contracts in his mind with these people, and they didn’t know shit about it. So how were they supposed to know that he expected them to return the favor?
A prime example of this is at home. How many times have you done stuff around the house, expecting that what you’re doing is going to win you points with your woman? Extra dishes, doing chores, fixing stuff on the honey do list? Only to find out that you get zero points for it.
I have talked to many men who are more than frustrated that even though they are doing what they feel is more than their share of stuff around the house, it doesn’t seem like their efforts are being reciprocated. Then they get in a huff, they get frustrated, angry, pouty, that they’re not getting the attention they feel they deserve from their spouse.
Well guess what, you’re creating covert contracts. You have a contract in your mind, that your wife never signed up for, one she knows nothing about. To top it off, the shit you’re doing, laundry, dishes, fixing a door that’s been broken for 3 months, is all shit that needs to be done.
It’s not something new.
It’s stuff that you need to take care anyway. It’s all shit you should be doing as a man anyway. It’s your job. So don’t get all butthurt when you don’t get extra points for doing shit that is your job. You don’t get points for doing stuff that you should be doing anyway.
The most freeing thing you can do as a man, is to do things without expectations or covert contracts. Once you realize you’re making them, and you stop yourself from having those thoughts. You’re not angry about them anymore. You’re not upset that you’re not winning any sexy points because you unloaded the dishwasher for the third time this week.
Remember you can’t control what other people do, or think. The only thing you can control is your reaction. If you’re creating covert contracts, and creating expectations on what you think other people should be doing for you, then you’re only hurting yourself.
You’re creating a platform for anger and disappointment, and you’re coming across as a weak man, when you blow up, get frustrated, our go and pout because what you think should happen, hasn’t happened.
Earlier I mentioned that I was making my 90 day plan for the next quarter of the year. So I want to talk about planning and expectations as well.
Too often we make a plan, try and follow the plan, then the plan goes off course. It always happens. Something new comes along, some unexpected thing goes wrong, and our carefully laid plans go out the window. This can derail our entire motivation for reaching our goal.
Two things can happen. Either It can stop us right in our tracks, and halt everything we have worked hard to achieve so far – OR – We double down on our plan and try to push harder because we expect the plan to work out and we have expectations of ourselves reaching our goal.
The ideal situation is that you don’t hold 100% to your expectations that your plan is going to work out flawlessly, and instead give yourself a direction of how you’re going to reach your goal, rather than a step by step plan that you can’t veer away from. This same idea works for business too.
Think of it this way. Imagine your plan is a ship, and you’re on this plan ship sailing along when you hit an iceberg and the ship starts going down. But you’re committed to your plan. You have expectations that the plan you created is going to work out and so even though the ship is sinking you’re still pushing through with your plan. Even when your ship is sitting at the bottom of the ocean and you’re treading water, you’re still expecting the plan to work out.
You’ve done what most men do, when the ship starts to sink, they double down. It’s human nature. We commit to our plan, and expect that if we just do the same thing, and just do more of it that we are going to reach our expected goal.
What you need to do is get rid of your expectations, live more in the moment. Have a look where you’re at and pivot your plan, or your expectations in a new direction. Be flexible. I don’t mean give up as soon as you hit a rough patch, but give yourself the freedom, to step back and re-evaluate your plan. Change your reaction to your expectations and say hey okay, we tested this, now we found out it’s not working exactly how we expected, let’s pivot and try and new direction.
The same thing goes for work as it does at home. If you’re 100% committed to your belief in your expectations working out, they you leave yourself no opportunity to a course correction, and more than likely, because life is like this, you’ll find that you’re treading water while your ship sits at the bottom of the ocean.
Not let’s be clear, that ship, can be your marriage, your career, your business, or simply might be a family holiday. Allow yourself to only believe in something 50%, give yourself permission to course correct, be more flexible and to react in a positive way when something, or someone doesn’t go in the direction you think they should.
More importantly remove covert contracts from your life. They don’t serve you at all. Be clear about what you want, be confident in what you want. Cover contracts are a sign of a weak man. If you want someone to help you out then ask. If you want sexy time with your wife then tell her. If you expect something to be done at home, or at work, then let people know. A confident and strong man, asks for what he wants, and tells people what he expects.
If you think getting butthurt, or pissy is going to get you what you want from your co-workers, your children, your boss, or your wife then you’re setting yourself shit ton of disappointment and depression. Life is not going to work out how you want.
Strong men lead, they’re not afraid to pivot, and they get off that sinking ship before they’re stuck treading water in the middle of an endless ocean.
