What’s the difference between standards and expectations? And why does it matter?
Yes, Bill, I’m in a philosophical mood today. Sorry, but my brain hurts and I’m choosing to spread it around. You’ll live. I think...
I would argue that standards are things that we have that come from ourselves. We have standards because there is something in us that holds us to a certain level of behaviour towards ourselves, towards others, and how the behaviour of others meets what we are looking to accept and encourage for ourselves.
But how is that different from expectations?
Is it just a different word for the same shit?
Well, maybe.
The energy you come at both sides of this conversation count for a lot too. It kind of depends of how you’ve used those words in the past…
My experience of the word expectation in based on living up to a desired set of behaviours to prove your worthiness to someone else. Your boss expects this of you, else you get fired. Your coach expects this of you, else you get benched. Your partner expects this of you, or you sleep on the couch. And it seems like it carries with it a very negative energy about how and why those expectations are there, about failure and the set-in stone consequences of failure.
I mean, really. How much fun do expectations sound, if that’s how you think about them let alone see them applied? I have a theory (yes, another one Adam…) of expectations being a method of projection, how the expectations someone has for others is based on their own failures to live up to expectation. But let’s save that for a bit later.
That third example, of sleeping on the couch, is obviously not universal. But for those who’ve had to do it, you know EXACTLY how it feels to try to live up to something that has nothing to do with you and failing miserably. And there’s only so much asking about what those expectations are before there’s more failing for not already knowing what those expected things are.
My experience with the word standards has a very different feel. Line in the sand drawn with the intention of successfully living above it, rather than avoiding living below it. Success and achievement, or avoidance and failure. Which would you rather live with as your intention for your life? For yourself and your interactions with others.
Once again, I’m about to trot out one of my catchphrases.
Pay attention!!!
What does it feel like to try and meet someone else’s expectation? Regardless of whether you meet it or not?
My experience has been fairly hollow, like most forms of externalised validation…
What does it feel like to not compromise your own standards? Knowing that they are there for a good and positive reason behind them for me?
Exceeding your line and pushing beyond it with positivity, rather than meeting it as a bare minimum passing grade in order to avoid negativity.
I once promised myself, as a younger man, if I ever got the line “if you don’t know, I’m CERTAINLY not going to tell you” from my partner, I would call it even there and walk (Bold words, I know. How very “mature” of me…). Mainly because, firstly, there is expectations that have clearly been set, that I know literally nothing about, and the inability to ask what those expectations are and make a feeble attempt to meet them is now further evidence of my ineptitude.
“You suck, and if you need me to tell you how you suck, then you suck even more” feels pretty accurate.
However, the second side to this promise, was based on standards. I wasn’t prepared to accept that sort of behaviour based on someone else’s unspoken rules ie. Expectations. Again, we all like to think we are our own bosses and act all tough in our own heads, I am no different. BUT it also made it very clear to myself where my line in the sand was. It was about me, not necessarily about them. I was clear about what I would and wouldn’t accept for myself. And I was clear in vocalising this to whatever partner I was with at the time. To, admittedly and not entirely unreasonably, mixed reviews…
How many of you out there have seen a genuine Fuck You Face™ aimed directly at you? Yeeeah, got one dropping that particular line once… Good times.
That said, it gave me something that demonstrates the difference between standards and expectations to me in my own life. Expectations of negatively reinforced things that are projected and externalised on to (or from) other people. Not always but often. Whereas, standards are more positively enforced levels based on how you want to feel about yourself and how you manifest that in an internal and external way.
That externalised validation though, I think is where expectation comes from. And why I mentioned projection before.
If your life has been based on externalised outcomes, the behaviours it demands become pretty normalised. Think carefully about what the old stuff about being a man (stiff upper lip, push down the feelings, be tough, don’t show weakness, fight that prick who spilled your beer/looked at the missus/said something about Johnno while he’s on the bench after being sent off with the blood rule). Or the old stuff about being a woman (seen and not heard, crossing your legs in public, dinner on the table at 6, balancing books on your head as you comport yourself in a refined and ladylike fashion whilst laughing demurely at your husbands terrible joke concerning the lower classes. You know the bollocks I mean…).
Yes, I am aware (as I mostly am) those are pretty stereotypical examples. BUT, where did those ideas come from? Well, maybe it doesn’t matter that much. The more important question is, why are they there? Expectation. You’re EXPECTED to be those things, because everyone else who came before you, is around you, is too. And if you are compelled to meet those expectations, you want to make damned sure everyone else is too, because otherwise that shit just isn’t fair. So, we project expected behaviours on to each other. And if you don’t meet them… Well, social isolation is in your future. (Because of no one wanting to have some lunatic who can’t even through a decent punch/sew a decent dress around, rather than ‘Rona iso…)
I mentioned the no fun, right? Social conditioning, evolutionary biology and the need to fit in all matter in this conversation, but you do get to ask some questions of yourself to see if you can figure out where externalised expectation begins and internalised standards start. And sometimes those two things line up, and life’s pretty smooth at that point.
But if they don’t…
What’s more important? Your standards? Or their expectations?
You?
Or them?
I appreciate that this is my interpretation of those words. And I know that’s a pretty melodramatic way of describing the difference. But without awareness and balance of these concepts and what they mean to you, navigating your way through life and relationships and your own damned head is so much tougher. And can very quickly and easily lead to unfulfillment.
Who really wants that?....
Be kind, be smart, be your best you. No bar fights.
“I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead.” Kurt Vonnegut
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