Living without expectations, is refreshing

When someone says something to you, which in your eyes is not approval, how do you feel? In my early professional life, I used to spiral and crash after hearing words such as ‘you’ve let me down, disappointed, you could have done much better, this is ok but we expected much more from you…” and mind you most often this was strategically pinned on me at appraisal time. O those were harsh days...

Of course I would hide my feelings well, with much elan and supreme confidence, never allowed them the pleasure of knowing how they gutted me, my colleagues at work knew life was a ***** of course but never gave the pleasure to my early day ex bosses to ever see those unshed tears or feel my frustration at having tried harder and harder…

I tried to not repeat all those things that had happened with me when I got to positions of leadership. I'd be careful to give feedback to my teams, and simply say "I wish things had gone differently, but oh well!", and leave it at that, the results were amazing. They would do everything in their might to ensure next time, when they interacted with me they got their due appreciation.

I think part of my early working life I have pushed myself into a terrible low whenever I have been told ‘I was disappointing’. In reasonably sane people, you’d probably allow only a few people’s disappointment to let you feel this way (parents, partner, a good friend) but in my case almost any one could send me into that spiral.

Mind you this is antithesis of what I was most commonly perceived to be at work. A person who would pull all stops to deliver. Highly bankable, solidly dependable. Was this the perception I was trying hard to not falter on, I wonder?

I would let anyone have the power to inflict pain and take me down.Whoever wanted to pick up my puppet strings and alter my feelings, I’d surrender that power to them. Not consciously, mind you, but I was always trying my best to please whoever it was who came in contact with me. All the time, I was seeking to avoid that worry of disappointing people.

Lots of people hold themselves to high standards. I am one of them. For me, I hold to my commitments with steely determination and have a nearly impeccable track record for keeping to my word. But in the bargain what I had done was handed my strings to other people so that they could pull me down in many directions,

The only way to bring yourself to productive functionality is to take back your strings. We give our bosses our strings when we worry that our actions will cost us our jobs. If we had our own strings, we’d just do the job the way we wanted to do it, and we’d hope to accomplish the goals our jobs held for us.We’d be open to learning, but we’d move our own puppets around instead of letting other people’s moods and thoughts direct us.

We give our loved ones our strings all the time. “I’d be a better writer,if only he supported me.” “I’m trying to get more healthy, but he keeps bringing home stuff from Pizza Hut.” Really? These other people have all this power over us? We’ve given them the ability to decide our actions and outcomes?Wow!

The two people who were disappointed in me had their reasons to be disappointed. In both cases, I’d chosen to do something that was counter to those relationships. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of disappointing. I don’t mean to hurt anyone; instead, I’m working on taking my strings back, and doing the things that I think will grow me, and grow my capabilities to help others.

To really accept that the term “disappointed” is pretty much synonymous with “you’re not doing what I want you to do” gave me a whole new sense of joy. Because those disappointments aren’t mine. They relate to someone putting their expectations on me. I don’t own that. Those aren’t my strings.

And now that I have my strings back (at least most of them), I’m working hard on writing my own damned puppet show. How about you? Who has your strings?Are you ready to get them back?