Are you living by fictional expectations?

You know the feeling when nothing follows “the plan”. The month starts and finishes with a heavy sigh. Your metaphorical inbox is full of things that should have been done, but that you never quite got around to.

Trying to live up to the expectations you think others have of you can feel like a race without a finish line.

Drafting a two-year, five-year or ten-year life plan can help set your focus and give you something to work towards. These plans often feel genuine to the person writing them at the time, but, as the months and years go by, so often they are not achieved.

So, why not?

None of us lives in isolation. Our lives are a continuous interaction with others, and we may have endless fictional expectations about what others think we want and need. We may also have endless expectations of ourselves.

Examining these expectations can offer insight into who we are and provide us with valuable information. This can help increase our emotional intelligence and give us more clarity about what we would really like our plans to look like.

A simple exercise

Write your two-year, five-year or 10-year plan as if you were “the others” looking in on your life. Try this from the point of view of more than one of your good friends. It does not need to be detailed at all. Be honest. And, if you are really daring, you may even ask them to confirm.

What is amazing is that the expectations of others so often vary from what we perceive them to be. Others are usually far more sympathetic to our holistic needs than we are of our own. They may provide us with glimpses of accurate insight into who we really are and what we really want; insights we instinctively know to be true, but have either suppressed or got used to ignoring.

So, when it all goes off the path, and the month starts and finishes with a heavy sigh, ask yourself: is your expectation in line with your true self, your needs and desires? Or are you trying to live up to the fictional expectations you imagine others have of you?

Often, the visualisation of how a good friend sees us is the mirror we need. Coaching can provide a real opportunity to prioritise what is important to you and what can go into the spam file, but a lot of coaching work can also begin with a few simple exercises on your own.