00:00 

Hey there. Welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 348, "Entitled Expectation." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:22 

Well, hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today. So glad to have you here and I am glad to be here. Always love being able to create this content for you and for me. A lot of times as I create this content, I just have my own little ahas into my own dysfunctional behaviors and patterns that I introduce into my life and into my relationships. And I'm grateful for this work and for how it pushes me and strengthens me and helps me to step into being a better person as well. So grateful that we get to have this journey together. A couple of things. Next Talk with Tanya is going to be March 11th. You can go to the "group coaching" tab at tanyahale.com to get signed up for that. This is just a free-for-all. Let's just talk about all the things. 

01:09 

Also, beginning in March I'm going to have Sense of Self classes. I'm going to be doing the same class at three different time periods. They're going to have them on Mondays and Tuesdays. I'll have a morning and afternoon and an evening class. So hopefully one of those will fit for you. The more I do this work, the more it just is so solidified in my brain and in my heart that our strong sense of self is the key to all of this work. The stronger my sense of self, the greater my capacity to put my feet on solid ground and to behave the way I want to behave, to respond the way that I want to respond, to implement these tools in ways that are really, really incredible for our relationships. And so a strong sense of self is going to help. I would love to have you join me for those classes. They will be capped at 10 people per class, so when they are available, I will let you know the first place that that will be will be on my weekend win email that you may not get it on the weekend. You may get it on a Monday or Tuesday as soon as I get those up on my website. But if you want to be one of the first to find out about those classes, then you're going to want to make sure that you're signed up for my weekend win. So you can do that at tanyahale.com as well. There's a pop up that comes up right away that allows you to sign up for that. OK, and let's go ahead and jump into today's topic. 

02:38 

OK, we are talking today about entitled expectation. So, expectation is a word that I've struggled with for a long time. When I was younger, though, I used to think that expectations were a good thing. I thought that having expectations of others would help to motivate them. Now, however, I'm not sure so sure. I remember my sweet dad, like almost every other dad of his generation, that when I did something he wasn't happy with, that he would say, "I'm not mad at you, I'm just disappointed." Did that just send a shiver up anybody else's spine? He was disappointed because he had expectations of me behaving in a different way. And that disappointment caused shame in me. Shame that I hadn't met his expectations, that I had fallen short. Shame that I had caused him to feel bad. And I would have rather gotten a spanking when I was younger than to have my dad disappointed in me. Not just because I knew that I had caused him to feel bad, but because the shame for my behaviors was so strong. And expectations and shame often seem to go hand in hand. 

03:54 

And it didn't stop me from using the same shame-based phrases with my kids when they were young, of course, right? This was what was modeled for me. And for my generation in the 70s, 80s, 90s, shame was how we taught things. It's how we got our message across. And I remember clearly telling my children that I was disappointed because I had expected more from them, that they had caused my disappointment. They had caused this difficult feeling for me. I made them responsible for it. 

04:30 

So at this stage in my life, I would approach this very differently. First, because I believe shame is such a destructive emotion, and I don't ever want to be the reason someone may feel shame. I've worked really, really hard to clean that up. I'm almost positive it's not all gone and I'm sure that there are people in my life who would say, "I kind of disagree. You kind  of caused some shame in me," but I'm working really hard to be aware of it and working hard to clean it up. And second, because my feeling of disappointment wasn't caused by their behavior. It was because I had expectations that they would behave differently. So it was my expectations that caused my disappointment. 

05:19 

So here's something interesting. I was thinking about some quotes that I'd heard about expectations, and Google has loads of them, lots of little meme picture things. So I'm just going to read just a few that I saw and there's some that have names attached to them and I'll put those names on, but then the rest just were quotes. So here we go. "Expectation is the root of all heartache." It was from Shakespeare. "Don't blame people for disappointing you. Blame yourself for expecting too much from them." That's from Buddha. Ryan Reynolds said, "when you have expectations, you are setting yourself up for disappointment." Barry Schwartz said, "the secret to happiness is no expectations." And Tony Robbins says, "no expectations, no disappointment." 

06:07 

Okay, the rest of these don't have names attached to them, but interesting nonetheless. Here we go. "Keep expectations to a minimum. You'll be less disappointed that way." "Expectations are illusions we create. Disappointment is reality." "Keep your expectation high on achievement and low on people." "Too many disappointments is a sign of too many expectations." "Expectation is the root of all heartache." "The key to happiness is low expectations. Lower, nope, even lower. There you go." Okay, so are you getting the idea? I think it's fascinating that so many people talk about how if we really want to be happy, we need to not have expectations of anyone, including ourselves, and then we will never feel disappointed. 

06:59 

And though that resonates at some level, my brain wants to scream that expectations are important to help people, myself included, to push ourselves, to excel. They are also important to build trust in a relationship. But if my happiness is determined by not having expectations, how does this all fit together? And this can feel a bit sticky for me because I can see times when expectations were helpful and also times when expectations were not helpful. 

07:29 

So when I taught eighth graders, the first few years I had expectations that were not helpful. I expected my students to behave in certain ways in the classroom and when they didn't, I used those expectations to shame them, to try to make them feel bad for their behavior, all with the hope that they would rise to the occasion and behave in what I deemed as more acceptable for a classroom setting. I'll just say creating shame was not a super effective way to create strong relationships with my students. They might have gotten in line, but they didn't do it with any good feelings toward me. And as I matured in teaching students, I still had expectations of them. In fact, probably the same expectations I had before, but I consciously figured out how to not shame them in doing it. I would have more helpful conversations where I expressed concern and compassion for their unacceptable behavior, trying to give them a safe space to be having a rough day or a tough breakup with their boyfriend or girlfriend or parents who were, of course, being unreasonable, because every 13 and 14 year old's parents are unreasonable, right? So this was a much better space. Because, as a teacher of a class of 30 13 and 14 year olds, I needed to be able to maintain an atmosphere that was conducive to learning, meaning I had to have expectations of behavior. 

08:53 

So were expectations bad in this situation? I think that sometimes expectations are important, such as in my 8th grade classroom. If I didn't have expectations surrounding my students' behavior, there would have been no clarity around what was appropriate and what wasn't, and mayhem would have ensued on the regular. But I didn't have expectations that were unknown. So this is where we start getting into some of the differences, right? The first week of school, we had discussions where I laid out my expectations, I let them know what was okay and not okay, and the consequences if they chose not to work within the system. And I was consistent with my expectations and the consequences. That sounds a lot like a boundary, wouldn't you say? What makes these types of expectations much more manageable was the clarity around them. The students knew what the expectations were, they were clear on the consequences, and I was compassionate in working with the students when the expectations were not met. 

09:58 

So let's use that concept in discussing expectations in our closer relationships. In a marriage, for example, there are certain expectations, and many of these are expressly agreed upon expectations, and here's where the shift really starts to take place. For example, it is inherent in many marriages that both people will be sexually active only with their spouse. So  interesting, though, that in many situations they are inherent expectations rather than explicit, meaning most of us didn't sit down before we got married and have the conversation that said, "I expect that you will never have sexual relations with anyone outside of our marriage." In many cultures, it's just a societal expectation that that is something that we would both agree on. 

10:51 

Now, an affair is generally considered a big deal, but there are a lot of marital expectations we have that aren't necessarily a deal breaker, but that create a lot of problems in the relationship. For example, one spouse may expect the other to do all the cooking or cleaning, or another may expect their spouse to make all of the money. There may be expectations from either or both on how often you have sex and how adventurous that sex is. Sometimes these are explicit expectations, and sometimes they're not. I know for sure my previous husband and I didn't have clear conversations about almost all of these types of roles and responsibilities before we got married. We just jumped into more traditional roles and held each other to those unspoken expectations. And from that place, a lot of resentments started to grow, because even though we both had a lot of similar traditional expectations, we did have some very different ones that remained unspoken, but they were expectations nonetheless. But neither of us had the skill set to have a healthy and open communication about our unmet expectations. 

12:04 

Part of our problem in our relationships is that we have these expectations that are not agreed upon, and that causes so many issues. Now, in my classroom as the teacher, all of us, students included, anticipated that I would have expectations. This is inherent in the teacher-student relationship. It is also inherent in a parent-child relationship, child meaning not an adult, right? And it's also inherent in a boss-employee relationship. These are places where expectations are expected, and appropriate even. Where it all starts getting sticky is when we have not agreed upon expectations with other adults, people with whom it's important that we see as equals, such as spouses, adult children, neighbors, or friends. If I have an expectation that my friends will text me at least once a week, and they have the expectation that we text once a month or so, I'm going to be sorely disappointed. I will move into drama, right? I will question their commitment to our friendship. I will go into my own drama response. I will start building up resentment and creating stories about them and our friendship and the kind of person that they are. And these stories can come from either a one-up or a one-down position, but either one is going to leave me disappointed in our friendship. I will not be showing up as an equal. This, then, has the potential to make me unhappy. 

13:35 

When I was dating and doing the 90-Day experiences, one of the things we did at the beginning was sit down and talk about a lot of our expectations so that they were agreed upon rather than just a creation of each of our own minds. We would get clear on who was going to pay for what. How often would we be in contact with each other and how would we do that? Phone calls, texting, in person, right? Was he a door opener or was he not a door opener? Things like that, okay? And having so many of our expectations out in the open and finding a place of agreement on those issues brought so much clarity and even ease into our dating. Expectations were no longer a figment of somebody's imagination, okay? 

14:22 

So take just a bit and think about all of the unspoken expectations you have in your relationships. What do you expect your spouse to do that you haven't discussed? Do you expect them to be romantic in a very specific way on your anniversary? Do you expect them to take on certain responsibilities in the home? Do you expect them to maintain a certain degree of religiosity? What about your adult kids? What kinds of expectations do you have in how they should be showing up? Should they call us? Are they supposed to be coming for dinner once a week or once a month? What kind of expectations do we have? Are those expectations helpful or are they just creating resentment? When we have expectations and they're not talked about, they have the potential to create big disagreements and a lot of miscommunication. When that happens, we get disappointed. And when we're disappointed, we often do not behave in ways that exemplify the kind of person we really want to be. 

15:37 

But notice, and here's where I want to bring in the title of this podcast. We might have an expectation that we feel entitled to. We feel entitled to have our expectations met. And when they're not, that can show up in many different ways, from one up behaviors like anger, shaming them, the silent treatment, criticizing, accusing, attacking, demanding. Notice that most of those are stemming from a place of contempt, which is a one-up motivator. Or they can also show up in one-down behaviors, such as passive aggressive comments, little pokes, avoiding, shutting down. Most of those stemming from the place of resentment, which is an indicator of a one-down position. 

16:23 

So most generally, I see this entitlement coming from a one-up place of thinking, we deserve our expectations to be fulfilled. We have ideas of how things should be, what should happen, and everybody else should be getting in line to make sure that that's how it plays out. So entitlement definition is the belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment. So first of all, see the one-upness in this definition. The thinking that I deserve my expectations to be met just because I'm me. Everyone should see this and adhere to this because my wants and needs matter more than anyone else's. And I think we all fall prey to this thinking, but it's very subtle and I'm going to show you some ways. So take for example, the last time you were in line at the grocery store and the person at the register had a problem with one of their items and they had to call somebody to run and go get them the same item that didn't have the hole in the bag or something, right? At least I notice in me, and I don't think I'm a unicorn here, notice the tendency to get annoyed while I'm standing in line to get, to roll my eyes at the person behind me and say something to them like, "can you believe this?" You know, like just, just the overall annoyance that we feel, right? 

17:56 

Now, this is not egregious that we do this, but look at the entitled expectation here. We expect the line to run smoothly. We expect others to not slow up the process so that I can get out of the store quicker, except that when I get up to the line and they notice a hole in my bag of sugar and they have to run and get me a new one, I expect them to do that for me and expect everybody else to understand and wait patiently. Entitled expectation. 

18:29 

Okay, how about when I'm driving down the highway and I expect all the other drivers to drive like me? Maybe I'm a very cautious driver and I bad mouth all those who are going faster than me and who are changing lanes a lot and I complain that they're all reckless or I'm a faster driver and I'm annoyed by the slower people who don't get out of the left lane so I can go faster than them. I expect that no one will ever pull in front of me while driving, but when I accidentally pull in front of others, I expect they will be patient and understand that it wasn't intentional. I expect the people chatting in the store aisle to move to the side so I can pass. I expect the store clerk to get off their phone and give me the assistance I need. I expect the people sitting next to me at the play to be on time so I don't have to be interrupted 15 minutes into the performance to stand up and make room for them to get to their seats. I expect the community meeting to respect me time by starting when it's supposed to start and ending when it's supposed to end. 

19:38 

Now, none of these are psychotically unreasonable. People are hired to do a job. It's socially considerate to make room for others to move around us. It's socially considerate to be on time to something like a play. There are start and end times to things we plan, to things that we go to when we plan around them. And it's not the slow driver's job to monitor traffic speed by driving the speed limit in the left lane. I guess the struggle can tend to be the entitled expectation from me that others should be like me. That they should choose like I choose. That they should see the world the same way I do. That they should behave in the right way. Notice all the shoulds there. Gosh, the shoulds are going to kill us in this life, right? They make life so difficult and shoulds are an indicator that there is an expectation. 

20:37 

What I see happening to myself in these types of situations is that I forget to offer grace to others for being humans who see and experience the world differently than me. I start building a dramatic narrative in my mind that the person is irresponsible, that they are inconsiderate, that they are selfish and maybe even narcissistic. I forget that humans are just humans. I forget about the time something happened last minute to me and I was 15 minutes late for a performance. That's not my usual, but it happens to all of us and I expect other people to offer me grace. When I stand back in my entitled expectation and get all judgy of others, I move into one-up thinking. I move into contempt. I get annoyed. I get irritated. I might even start to get emotionally deregulated. I might say something loud enough for everybody around me to hear about how if people can't show up on time, maybe they shouldn't have come at all. And of course, I'll get some validating confirmation nods from the other people also having their view blocked while the people move to their seats. 

21:51 

But in seeking validation for my viewpoint, I will also be shaming the people who were late. I am not offering grace for their humanity. Instead, I'm using my one-up position to put them in their obvious one-down place and let them know that they're not doing it well enough, that they are not enough. When I move into this space of entitled expectation, I struggle to be a builder of people and instead I become a wrecker of people. I let my expectations, which are my thoughts, by the way, move me into annoyance, which are my feelings. And I let that annoyance fester and boil over into my actions of saying something with the intent to shame them, to call them out in a passive aggressive way for their bad behavior. Or maybe it's just in my car and I'm super annoyed by the slow driver who can't seem to get out of the left lane. 

22:52 

And I'm in a hurry. My thoughts that they should be a better driver and move over, create feelings of irritation, which then cause actions of following too close, of flashing my lights and then finally passing them with an annoyed burst of speed accompanied by a dirty look or a middle finger wave, all in an attempt to make them behave how I want them to behave, to shame them into changing their behavior, to show them the error of their ways, to show them that they are not behaving as my entitlement expects them to. 

23:31 

Now, I know that this is subtle stuff, but it's real. I notice that when I feel entitled expectation, that I rarely show up, if ever, show up the kind of person I really want to be in my life. I don't feel the way that I want to feel, and I don't act the ways that I like to act, and then it starts to create shame in me. And it all starts with a thought that they're doing it wrong, that they're not doing it the way I expect them to, or the way that society expects them to. 

24:08 

So what if, rather than having these types of thoughts, I chose to just let people be them? If they want to be late to a play and cause me a slight inconvenience, okay, people get to do that, and I don't have to freak out about it. If they want to drive faster or slower than me, okay, it really isn't going to change my arrival time by more than a minute or two. If they need to have a bag of flour replaced, I know that I would want the same consideration by the cashier, and rather than rolling my eyes and expressing my entitled annoyance to the person behind me, I can instead make a comment about how lucky the person is that the cashier caught the problem. I can set aside my entitled expectations to offer grace for humanity and kindness for others who may be struggling. 

25:04 

Will this change the world? Well, probably not the whole world, but it will change my world. It will create feelings in me of grace, of kindness, of compassion, and then I will behave in ways that are aligned with that, ways that are aligned with my values. I will treat others as equals, rather than going into a one-up place. And this feels amazing to me and this will feel accepting to the other people and it will possibly change their world because rather than feeling shame for showing up late to the performance and ducking their heads and hiding during intermission we might end up having a great conversation with them while we sit there during intermission. 

25:52 

Maybe they actually have what I would deem an acceptable reason for being late and maybe they don't but either way I have treated them as a person worthy of being treated like a person. I've taken my expectations of how I think they should respond and behave and I have put those expectations instead onto myself. I'm more aware of my own behaviors and being the kind of person that I am. I feel good about. When I get annoyed and act from a place of entitled expectation, I almost always feel guilt or shame about it later on. So I seek to cause guilt or shame in the other person, and I end up creating it in myself. And that's not a very appetizing outcome, because then everybody's feeling shame. For me, this is awareness that is super important to my growing up process. Seeing where I'm not acting in alignment with my values and adjusting accordingly. I know that I can do better with my expectations, both with people I know and hold dear and with people I don't know and may never see again. I can offer more grace and kindness. I can offer better communication about what I would love to have happen and give people the space and the agency to adjust to my wants and needs or not. But I can be more kind. I can offer more grace. 

27:30 

How about you? I love growing up, don't you? If you would like some personal help in your life, getting these types of things where you want them to be. I love coaching and I do a great job at it. I work with both individuals and I work with couples. Relationships are kind of my forte, and even if your relationship is on the divorce end of things, I am really great at helping you show up the way that you want to show up and helping you heal and move forward and identify the parts of your relationship that you contributed that made your relationship struggle so much because we all do that and I'm really good at helping this and I would love to help you and you can go to my website tanyahale.com to sign up for a free consult where we can talk about your situation and we can talk about coaching and see if it's a good fit for you. 

28:31 

Okay, if this podcast is speaking to you, if you are finding things here that are blessing your life and moving you, helping you nudge your life in a better direction, I would love to have you share this. There are a couple ways you can do that. One, you can go to the Apple or the Spotify app that you listen to this on and you can leave a review there and that helps other people that you will never know make decisions about whether to listen or it will move it up in the algorithm so that it pops up in people's "you might be interested in this podcast" kind of thing. 

29:06 

Also, share this with people. Talk to your friends about it. Share the ideas with your friends. and talk with your friends about it. Discuss these concepts and come to your own ahas and deeper understandings of what's going on here. That will always be helpful. And just as a side note, I have started in the notes part of the podcast that you're listening to, you can scroll down and I have started putting a bunch of related podcasts in there. So you can go down and find anywhere from five to 10 additional podcasts that will add on to your understanding of what we talked about in this podcast. And it's super good stuff, I think. So take a minute to check that out and listen to some more podcasts that will help you to expand your understanding of this concept. Okay, my friends, have an awesome, awesome week. And I will see you next time. Bye. 

30:04 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever.  See ya.