Are you expecting ?

Well the world of blogging beckons again and try as i may, i cannot stay away from it for too long. By now i guess all of you must be thinking what on earth am i doing talking of expecting. I’m sure the pic on the left must have made matters even more mysterious :):) No need to worry, i am not gonna dwell on topics related to birth and children but i was actually referring to something else. I was once again reminded of one of the lectures of Father George who taught us Business Ethics @ XL. I admit his classes did get boring & sleep inducing sometimes, but some of his lectures had my undivided attention throughout. One of those lectures was about- expectations. The mere mention of this word brings back memories of our childhood when our parents would keep scolding us to get good scores in our exams. Hey, why childhood, this thing continues till date for many of my friends(for me it has reduced very slightly 🙂 ) Yes those innumerable times we have cried and have been given a good thrashing by our parents for our poor performance. Those were routine stuff for kids like us.

Now just extend this idea a bit and you realize that the concept of expectation can be applied to almost anything. We can have expectations as a son, student, teacher, father, brother, sister, daughter, lover, principal, employee, employer and the list goes on. Any relation which has an impact on you, which is close to your heart or which is related to you financially will always have expectations attached to it.

All of us remember the recent bollywood hit 3 IDIOTS. There are numerous examples of expectations not being met and the students taking extreme measures to cope up with the pressure. Raju rastogi jumpiong off the 3rd floor office or Joy Lobo committing suicide due to pressures of the principal. These are some of the disastrous consequences of expecting too much out of people.

The problem arises when the emotions attached to these expectations start to get the better of us. We expect and hence we become sad, gloomy, frustrated, angry, anxious. These are the negative emotions but there are positive emotions also attached to expectations. So you see we are happy or sad depending on our personal fulfillment of our expectations. Just imagine if only we could remove all expectations, how simple and carefree our lives would be. I’m so thankful to Fr George for giving me this lesson which i shall always carry with me throughout my life.

So on a concluding note i would just like to quote Marilu Henner – “Being in control of your life and having realistic expectations about your day-to-day challenges are the keys to stress management, which is perhaps the most important ingredient to living a happy, healthy and rewarding life.”