Unmet Expectations & Upsets

The universe has a way of putting an idea or concept in front of me over and over until I finally get it.

This week, it was about unmet expectations and upsets.

The discussion started for me as I was driving to an appointment in rush-hour traffic, and the driver to my right would not allow me to merge in front of him and I missed my exit.  I stayed mad at a total stranger for over an hour and a half.  As I was complaining to my friend Susie, I had an aha moment; I was upset because I expected someone to behave a certain way and they did not.

When I participated in Landmark Education, the discussion expanded and clarified the issue of upsets. This was the Landmark definition of an upset; undelivered communications, thwarted intentions, or unmet expectations.

Think of all the times you had said to yourself in the past. “If only I had said…” And, the communication, whatever it was, died in your mind.  It was upsetting, wasn’t it?

Thwarted intentions can be just as infuriating.  I want to connect, or correct, or in some way create with another person and through some screwy twist of fate, the whole thing goes south.  It’s like setting up a firework display thrilled with anticipation, only to have the fuse get wet and nothing lights up.

The final element; unmet expectations is a doozy.

During the years I worked as a corporate trainer, I led discussions in management seminars concerning expectations; what they were, how to set them clearly, how to enforce them, and what to do when they were not met.  It was all pretty theoretical.

In Alcoholics Anonymous there is a saying; “Acceptance is the answer to all of my problems today”.  Some people twist this inside out and make it mean, no one should expect anything from anyone else.  This shenanigan is usually a tactic employed by someone who wants to get away with using another person without being responsible for it.

When I do pastoral counseling with couples, I have my own issues about expectations.  I am not fond of the style of therapy where each member of the relationship is told to make a list of five expectations and the therapist uses the two lists as bargaining chips.  If it’s a husband-wife combination, the counselor tells the husband to give the wife the five things she wants, tells the wife to give the husband the five things he wants, considers the problem solved and sends them a bill.  I’ve seen couples who invested in this type of problem solving living off the list and the bargain they struck through years of a miserable marriage.

I could see pieces of the equation, but it didn’t really come into focus until I stood back and looked at my anger toward the anonymous driver.

I realized how ridiculous it was for me to be angry with an anonymous stranger.  I had not communicated with him, shared my intentions with him, or created an agreement with him.

Once I had unlocked the door to my bias, I had access to other areas of ineffective partnership.

For years, I was guilty of making “squishy agreements”.  These were agreements in areas of my life as simple as when to meet for lunch or as complicated as roommates sharing food, rent and other expenses.

It wasn’t pleasant to take accountability for my participation in squishy agreements.  I had to admit that my payoff for those kinds of agreements was selfish; if the parameters were vague enough, I could shift them to my advantage, when I wanted to and then justify it – – even if it was just myself.

It was a blind spot, you could drive an 18 wheeler through.  My thinking error made it look like I was creating freedom and flexibility.  But, the reality was confusion and conflict.

The secret to success is the ability to inspire partnership.  It goes back to the principle of the win-win.  There were three basic configurations to problem solving; win-lose, lose-lose, and, win-win.

When I was generating squishy agreements, consciously or unconsciously, I was attempting to manipulate the situation so that I could come out on top, no matter what.  It was an exercise in futility.  Because it was one-sided, my side, at some point in time the inequity became untenable and the relationship blew up.

Scott Peck described it this way in his book The Road Less Traveled: “Any relationship where one person does all the taking and the other person does all the giving will eventually self-destruct because it’s out of balance.”

The therapy model, transactional analysis, labels the patterns: parent to child, child to parent, adult to adult.

Real freedom and partnership became available when I started telling the truth about my selfishness – – the truth really did set me free.

Healthy partnering relationships seemed hard at first.  I had to overcome the inertia of my past selfish behavior, which was comfortable and familiar.  I had to require myself to be mindful of my motives.  I had to restructure the equations with which I measured my problem-solving to include consideration for the needs of others.

It was also necessary, to develop the ability to set boundaries with others.  One of my favorite phrases became, “I can see how this is a big win for you, but I don’t see how this is a big win for me.”

I used it with the supervisor who wanted me to take on 10 additional patients without any additional compensation.  I used it with the friend who asked me to become a pen pal to her brother-in-law who was in prison.  It is a phrase that continues to serve me well even today.

I was surprised how many people were living their lives in a win-win world.  I was delighted to find that once I was no longer acting like a three-year-old determined to get my own way, I was invited to join the champions playing win-win games.