Expectations

Hi, Ben here. What follows is just a glimpse of some of my thoughts about life lately. It might be a bit rambly, but stick with me.

I work in sales by day, produce a podcast as a side hustle, host the Threads Podcast as a passion project, drive for Uber & Lyft as a hobby, and I am also a board member for a nonprofit my friend runs. And thats in addition to being a husband and father! In short, I have a lot going on.

I expect a lot of myself as far as involvement goes. I want to be on the frontlines, and I like making thing happen. But sometimes my involvement turns into over-involvement and starts to impact my effectiveness in some areas.

Recently, I’ve been grappling with the expectations I have for myself. I feel like they’ve been very general – I expect myself to be involved in things that matter, for example. But I don’t necessarily have clearly marked expectations for myself within those broad themes.

At work, I have expectations from my boss (Tyler) that he expects me to hit each week. On Fridays, we meet to check in on how I did. He’s a great guy, by the way, with a very bright future in front of him. Yes, he is younger than me. Yes, I’ve been at the company longer than he has. No, I don’t deserve his position. And it truly boils down to expectations. Sidenote: Tyler joined us on an episode of Threads — check it out here.

I don’t always expect from myself what I am capable of.

Sometimes my anxiety / depression tell me that I shouldn’t expect anything of myself, in order to avoid letting myself down. (I found this article interesting, it talks about the interplay of depression and expectations.)

Sometimes I don’t set expectations for myself because I’m lazy. It takes too much work to identify what my expectations are for myself, so I just don’t bother. I instead strive to reach the status quo needed to keep everyone happy. Oh, by the way, I’m a chronic people pleaser.

In this season of life, I’m realizing that it is time for me to up the ante with the expectations I have for myself. And that may require me to shift and give some pursuits up, in order to be more effective and set realistic expectations for myself. If my life were characterized by a wheel, it would be a bit out of balance at this point.

Sometimes, as I set higher expectations for myself, I get frustrated early in the game with the lack of immediate gratification. I lose sight of the fact that growth and progress take time. I expect oak trees to sprout out of the ground immediately, instead of expecting myself to be disciplined in nurturing the sapling so that it one day turns into an oak tree.

Much of these thoughts have been spurred by conversations with my boss, but also by a preacher dude I recently stumbled upon when surfing through a friend’s facebook page. Check out the message, entitled The Detour is for Your Destiny, for yourself here.

Thanks for reading along. I know this is an abrupt ending, but I’m a work in progress. I guess you’ll have to keep listening to Threads Podcast: Life Unfiltered to hear the rest of the story!