A problem with expectations was made famous by the Charles Dickens novel,"Great Expectations." The main character, Pip, inherits money from a secret benefactor. He views this fortune as a stepping stone to marrying the girl of his dreams.
When he ultimately learned that the money was not necessarily part of that larger plan, he realized that he had taken for granted so many important relationships and gifts in his life. His expectations had robbed him of fully appreciating his reality.
Research backs up this idea that we may not fully appreciate what we have when we are expecting more or comparing what we have to what we could have. One study found that participants who were exposed to a subliminal reminder of wealth spent less time savoring a chocolate bar and exhibited less enjoyment of the experience that other subjects who weren't reminded of wealth.
This is an interesting study that can remind us all to try to savor our chocolate (and lives) more, and perhaps to try not to remind ourselves of what we don't have. This study can also remind us, however, of how easy it is to let our thoughts color our enjoyment of what we actually have.How many times have we focused so much on something we wanted that we didn't truly savor what we had? How often might our expectations for great things make us feel like what we have isn't really that great when there are many people who have less.
Finally, our expectations can get the better of us when we expect more than what is realistic in a given situation. We might expect our partners to live up to what we see in romance films, our jobs to be idealized versions we had as children, or even our lives to match up to what we see on Instagram.
Our expectations can create significant stress when they don't match up to reality. Also consider how social media can greatly contribute to this: we compare our own worst moments (those not deemed to be shareable online) to others' best moments, which very often are filtered to seem perfect. We may not even realize this mismatched comparison.
Our expectations for our lives may be unrealistic and skewed based on what we think others have. Our perspective of what others have is limited; they do not have the lives we perceive.
This may be part of why those who spend more time on social media tend to be happy.