The tyranny of high expectations

Expectations are counterintuitive. At first glance, you might think you’d want others to have high expectations of you. After all, only people who show signs of promise get the luxury of having high expectations imposed on them. Who wouldn’t want others to think they are smart, capable and formidable?

My dad grew up in a relatively lower-class family, doing extremely well, testing into the best high schools and eventually getting a PhD from one of the world’s best universities. At the age of 10, I remember opening his multi-hundred-page dissertation filled with esoteric symbols and words wondering “How am I ever going to top this?”

This expectation I imposed on myself could have been a blessing or a curse. In my case I think it was a blessing. It made me work hard. It made me aim high. When my friends were distracted playing video games freshman year in college, I was thinking about how to land my first internship.

Thankfully, the expectations I put on myself were higher than those my parents had for me. This gave me latitude to adjust and inspect my expectations as I went along. Others aren’t so lucky.

High expectations imposed on you by family members can be an enormous burden. Unlike self-imposed expectations, these expectations are much harder to escape. Unless you want to sever ties, you’ll perpetually be reminded of what’s expected of you. When things aren’t going well, you’ll be perpetually reminded of how much of a failure you are.

I recently shared a video of my apartment with my grandpa. It’s a modest apartment: two bedrooms in a pretty nice city. He responded with photos of my uncle’s apartment, which was triple the size and had a garage, implicitly and explicitly communicating his expectations of me - to top my uncle’s achievements. Of course he did this out of love and good intentions, but as the famous saying goes - the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

What my grandpa doesn’t know is the myriad setbacks and constraints I’m operating under. Whether it’s my RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury), that prevents me from working for long periods of time, or my various vision issues that similarly limit my ability to top my uncle.

Thankfully I feel very little pressure to abide by my grandpa’s expectations. However, this doesn’t seem to be true of everyone. As I age, I continue to see more and more friends and family crushed by the unwavering expectations of them. What should have been a setback becomes a crisis. What should have been a celebrated accomplishment becomes a retrospective on why it didn’t happen sooner.

Of course I’m conveniently not mentioning the happy path. What if you are Magnus Carlsen? He thrived under the heavy expectations placed on him from a very young age. Perhaps without the pressure he wouldn’t have done as well.

I’ve been thinking about this conundrum quite a bit recently, as I’m expecting my first child in a few months. I hope instead of communicating with my daughter via the expectations I have for her, I can have a more meta conversation about expectations and motivations. Why do we do what we do? Should we do things to satisfy the needs and wants of others?

Perhaps this cuts off the possibility of my daughter becoming the next Magnus. But I think that’s ok, especially if it takes away the risk of the many bad outcomes on the other side of the bell curve.