We often talk about the importance of managing other people’s expectations. We know that you need to tell your boss if a project is taking longer than expected, or let your partner know if you won’t be home in time for a planned night out. We therefore appreciate that you need to bridge the gap between expectations and reality to avoid disappointed customers, managers or family members.

However, what about managing your own expectations? That is much less discussed. Managing your own expectations falls into two categories: your expectations of yourself, and your expectations of others. In both cases, it is important to be realistic about the gap between expectations and reality to avoid disappointment. This page explains more about how you can do this.

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What are Expectations?

What do we mean by expectations?

The dictionary definition (see box) is relatively straightforward: an expectation is a belief that something is considered more or less certain to happen.

In psychological terms, we can think of expectations as standards of behaviour.

When you expect people to behave in certain ways, you have expectations of them. For example, when you do something nice for someone, you expect them to be pleased.

When you believe that you are going to do something, you have an expectation of yourself. For example, you might expect yourself to be calm about having medical treatment.

It is possible to have expectations of yourself, other people, organisations and even the weather.

For example:

• If you study hard, you might expect to get good results in exams;
• When you buy something from a shop, you expect it to be usable, and that you will be able to return it if it is faulty;
• If you order something online, you expect it to be delivered within a reasonable time scale, or at least by the time specified on the website;
• You might reasonably expect your employer to behave in good faith towards you, for example, by honouring your contract of employment; and
• If it is sunny, and there are no clouds, you do not expect rain.

All these expectations are reasonable.

They are logical, and based on either your own previous experience or the law. Reasonable or realistic expectations of others are considered to be a way of making sense of the world, and predicting other people’s behaviours. Expectations of ourselves are a way of holding ourselves to standards of behaviour that we would like to see from ourselves.

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Are Expectations a Problem?

Expectations are not in themselves a problem.

The problem comes when expectations are either not reasonable or realistic, or your reasonable expectations are not met.

That can lead to disappointment, frustration and even anger.

Unrealistic expectations are those not based on reality or experience. Instead, they are based on what you want to happen, which is a very different thing.

For example, suppose that you love surprises, and especially surprise parties. You might therefore think that it would be lovely to organise a surprise party for your partner. You expect that your partner will be thrilled by your thoughtfulness. What if your partner, however, does not love surprises, or parties? They might then be upset or angry with you for not respecting their preferences—and that would not meet your expectations.

In this case, your expectation was unrealistic. Your partner does not share your delight in surprises—and you should probably have known that.

What, though, if your partner also loves surprise parties—but today they have been made redundant at work, and they’re just not in the mood? In that case, they might also not be happy with the surprise party.

However, your expectation was not unreasonable or unrealistic. You just picked the wrong moment to deliver.

Is this mismatch between expectation and reality your problem or your partner’s?

That is the whole question about expectations. The answer is that only you can control your own feelings and thoughts, or the expectations that you set.

This is worth unpicking a little in terms of expectations of yourself, and your expectations of others.

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Expectations of and for Yourself

We may have expectations of ourselves in almost any sphere of life—and they may also be realistic or unrealistic.

For example, it might be reasonable to expect to do well in exams if you study hard. However, it is less realistic to expect good results if you are not prepared to spend any time working.

Our expectations of ourselves are likely to be developed through a combination of factors, including:

• Personal experiences, because our minds tend to build expectations based on what we have seen happen in the past. Good past performance in exams might therefore encourage us to expect this to happen in the future;

• Ambitions and hopes, because these set our ideas about what ‘should’ happen, whether realistic or not. If you want to study medicine, therefore, you may have expectations about the grades that you are going to get based on the requirements for university courses. However, these expectations may not be realistic;

• Knowledge and information, because being more knowledgeable helps us to ground our ambitions in reality—and therefore make our expectations more realistic; and

• Social pressures, which might include the expectations of those around us, but may also be influenced by what we see on social media. What we see on social media is usually carefully curated, and this can give us unrealistic expectations of what is actually possible.

It is clear that some of these factors make expectations more likely to be realistic. For example, greater knowledge of the world means that we have something to ground our expectations. However, other factors have the opposite effect. For example, personal ambition may blind us to factors that might prevent us from achieving what we want, such as lack of ability in a particular area. Social media is also a problem because it tends to show unrealistic pictures of what is possible (and our page on Social Media and Mental Health explains more about this issue).

When we set unrealistic expectations for ourselves, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment.

There will be, at best, a gap between expectation and reality—and sooner or later, we will fall right into it. This can have a devastating effect on self-esteem and self-confidence. It can also lead to cognitive dissonance, the feeling of discomfort caused by contradictions in what you believe and what is obviously true. Ultimately, consistently setting unrealistic expectations for yourself can lead to mental health problems such as anxiety.

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Expectations of Others

Our expectations of others are set through a similar combination of factors: experience, hope, social mores and customs, and knowledge.

They may also be more or less realistic—and because they involve others, the chances are that they are often less realistic.

Your experience will not necessarily tell you how someone else will react or behave. Customs and social mores can only take you so far. This means that expectations of others tend to be built with a large dash of hope.

In other words, they are actually nowhere near to being ‘certainties’—but we treat them as if they are.

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Avoiding the Gap Between Expectations and Reality

What can you do to avoid the gap between expectations and reality?

The most important and obvious way is to set realistic expectations.

For yourself, that is relatively straightforward. It does not mean that you should not have ambitions, or set yourself stretch goals in life. Indeed, as our page on Setting SMART Goals explains, challenging goals are much more motivating than goals that will be easy to achieve. Instead, the key is to understand that you have set yourself a challenge. It is NOT an expectation. Your expectation is that you will try hard to achieve it, not that you will necessarily manage to do so.

For others, the key to setting realistic expectations is to communicate.

Instead of making assumptions about what people would like, or how they will respond, ask them. Instead of assuming people know what you want, tell them what you would like to do, or how they can help you.

In both these things, it is important to be aware of your own expectations.

Self-reflection will help you to surface beliefs about yourself and other people, and identify unrealistic expectations before they become a problem.

A trait that also helps in managing expectations is adaptability.

This is the ability to change and flex when circumstances change. This allows you to adjust your expectations to meet new situations, and ensure that your expectations remain realistic.

Similarly, it helps to focus on what you have, not what you want.

Being content with what you have, rather than striving for more, makes for a much more positive life (and our page on Contentment explains more about this). You might, for example, take time to think about good things that have happened to you, rather than the negatives.

Our page on Positive Thinking provides some more ideas on this idea.

Finally, the habit of reflective practice will also help.

In particular, it will allow you to learn from disappointments, especially those caused by a gap between expectations and reality. This is the practice of thinking about your experiences, and consciously considering what you did and felt, why that might have been the case, and what you could do in future to change the outcome.

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A Final Thought

It is not always easy to manage your own expectations—either of yourself or other people.

However, it is worth reminding yourself that the only person who is responsible for those expectations is you. You are in control of this, and that makes everything easier.