Expectations.
In this post I’ll be discussing what drives expectations, how to manage expectations, and ways to overcome and defy expectations.
The modern world is built up on old systems that are failing us, and it’s driving rates of mental illness through the roof. It all starts with our education.
We are expected to go to school at a very young age. There are many great aspects to school and I genuinely believe they serve more positive than negative. Yet, we’ve built up systems in schools that are incredibly outdated. For example, starting around eight or nine, kids are graded based on performance. By setting up this foundation early into a kid's life, you subsequently put expectations on them for the rest of their life. When your grade is dependent on your performance, you do everything in your power to fulfill the task at hand. In doing so, you limit the potential for kids to take risks, or for them to think outside of the box. When a kid tries something, utterly fails, and then a grade reflects his failure, you are basically tying their self-worth to an inanimate consequence. For some this system works incredibly well, for others it can lead into a feedback loop of undesired consequences. (i.e. Kids principle they aren’t great at writing because of the letter grades they receive).
Another way schools are setting expectations is by standardizing everything we learn. Meaning teachers have to follow a certain list of criteria, and students have to learn outdated systems. Our standardized system was implemented so everyone could get a baseline education in a wide variety of subjects. Yet, that’s not how people operate, we are all unique and have different skills, styles of learning, and interests. Kids that are very creative think on an entirely different wavelength than kids that are analytical. You can’t expect Pablo Picasso to be as inclined to physics as Julius Oppenhemier. When Pablo realizes he’s not that great at physics, he turns to something he is better at (art) and doesn’t get the opportunity to realize there is an incredible crossover. This is the danger of setting expectations, everyone is capable of learning physics, we just lead people to believe they aren’t.
We just entered the information age; we were in the industrial age. Our jobs are tailored for industrial work, our schools are tailored for industrial education, and our monetary system is tailored around those two facets combined. With the advent of the internet, social media, and pocket sized supercomputers. The information age has brought upon video gamers, streamers, and e-commerce experts that are contradictory to the industrial age.
Which brings me to my next point, managing expectations. In my opinion the way we can teach kids early on to manage expectations is by setting up systems that are tailored to the modern economy (information age). Meaning, we should be setting up foundations that give kids informative criticism, instead of a harsh letter grade. Ways we can perform informative criticism is having kids run basic tests, figuring out their learning styles, and then using technology to implement a learning style that would help make other subjects more interesting. For example, I wanted to get to know more about quantum physics, so using ChatGPT I entered in the prompt “Explain quantum physics to me like I was in kindergarten.” In return ChatGPT gave me a prompt in which I could easily digest the basic concept of quantum physics. If we implemented programs like this into our education we could create an entirely new lesson plan for students that are tailored to their learning styles. I genuinely believe all kids are extremely talented, and if we were able to maximize their interest in a subject by making it more engaging, we would not only diminish expectations, we would see real growth in our society.
In a much more realistic example of how to manage expectations today, we have to understand that expectations are only opinions. If you are told your entire life that you have to be a doctor, but you genuinely are more interested in art. You’re probably not meant to be a doctor, and you definitely don’t have to be one either. (There are still people that are going to want to be doctors, I’m just stating that you don’t have to do everything you’re expected to do). You as an individual can pursue any passion you want, and there are frameworks that will enable you to do so. In this day and age, we have access to seemingly infinite information, meaning a lot of our problems have already been solved by someone else. Making learning new skills much cheaper and more efficient than they used to be. Expectations are set upon us by old systems, but these old systems don’t account for instant access to information. You can quite literally be a high school kid developing fusion reactors in your house and land yourself a better paying job than someone with a masters degree in physics. The larger point being, don’t let other people's expectations dictate your life.
The way to defy expectations and grow beyond them is to create self-belief. The easiest way to do this is by reinforcing confidence through small wins. For example, say you wanted to start a YouTube channel where you showcase your incredible DJ skills. A small win in this scenario would be to set realistic milestones, (i.e. I will post two videos of me DJing by the end of the week). By creating and achieving milestones you are telling yourself that you are capable. The more you win, the more self-esteem and affirmation propel you into different projects.
At some point you will fail, but, if there’s one thing that the Founders Podcast has taught me, is that failure is essential for growth. Building up affirmations and self-esteem enable you to look past failure and learn from it. Jensen Huang, founder of Nvidia, has been in business for over thirty years. His parents moved to the United States with absolutely nothing. He built up his reputation and started Nvidia, which almost went bankrupt multiple times. Jensen made an incredible play in Nvidia’s trajectory to a trillion dollars. He saw potential in a new market, one in which no one “expected” to work because Nvidia was losing money pursuing it. Jensen did everything that was unexpected of him, resulting in his company becoming the leading chip manufacturer in the space of AI (Information from Founders Podcast episode #376).
To anyone out there that feels the burden of expectations, you are not alone. Don’t let them define you.
With love, Kai
Weekly Poem:
Game after game
Goal after goal
One day one got away
And everyone went home to moan
