Quotes About Expectations

Despite the third word of the title, this is not an instruction manual that will tell you anything useful about how to be happy. Those books are located in the self-help section two aisles over, and once you've bought one, done everything it says to do, and found yourself miserable anyway, you can always come back here to understand why.

We cannot feel good about an imaginary future when we are busy feeling bad about an actual present.

The longer it takes for a boss to respond to their e-mails, the less satisfied people are with their leader.

There's no going back. Pay your son to take out the trash—and you've pretty much guaranteed the kid will never do it again for free.

Only contingent rewards—if you do this, then you'll get that—had the negative effect. Why? "If-then" rewards require people to forfeit some of their autonomy.

In the middle, we relax our standards, perhaps because others relax their assessments

Said a forty-eight-year-old Ohio man: I regret not being more adventurous . . . taking time to travel, explore, and experience more of what the world has to offer. I let the fear of disappointment rule me and allowed others' expectations to be more important than my own. I was always the "good soldier" and worked hard to please those around me. I have a good life—I just wish I had more experiences to share with others. Someday . .

One source of frustration in the workplace is the frequent mismatch between what people must do and what people can do. When what they must do exceeds their capabilities, the result is anxiety. When what they must do falls short of their capabilities, the result is boredom. (Indeed, Csikszentmihalyi titled his first book on autotelic experiences Beyond Boredom and Anxiety.)

As Harvard Business School professor Max Bazerman has explained: Say you take people who are motivated to behave nicely, then give them a fairly weak set of ethical standards to meet. Now, instead of asking them to "do it because it's the right thing to do," you've essentially given them an alternate set of standards—do this so you can check off all these boxes.

Over the past 50 years we got versions of X-ray specs and space vacations, and even death rays. But the X-ray specs don't fit on your face - they're big things that screen your luggage for guns. Space vacations are real, but they cost $20 million. We have death rays, but you have to be a triple Ph.D. to play with them.

The average user doesn't give a damn what happens, as long as (1) it works and (2) it's fast.

Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives -- from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango -- with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to-date scripts for actors on the tourists stage.

Nicotinic receptors are so named because they respond to nicotine, whether smoked or chewed, and they're spread throughout the brain. For all the problems it causes to our overall health, it's well established that nicotine can improve the rate of signal detection when a person has been misdirected—that is, nicotine creates a state of vigilance that allows one to become more detail oriented and less dependent on top-down expectations.

Steel identifies what he calls two faulty beliefs: first, that life should be easy, and second, that our self-worth is dependent on our success.

Steel identifies what he calls two faulty believes: first, that life should be easy, and second, that our self-worth is dependent on our success.

Adolescents who are absorbing negative messages about who they are and what is expected of them may sink to that level instead of realizing their true potential. As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote, "Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of being.

Part of truly loving our kids, and giving them what they need, means offering them clear and consistent boundaries, creating predictable structure in their lives, as well as having high expectations for them.

They need to know what our expectations are, and how we will respond if they break (or even bend) agreed-upon rules.

We want our kids to expect that their needs can be understood and consistently met. But we don't want our kids to expect that their desires and whims will always be met.

CONFUNDIMOS COHERENCIA CON RIGIDEZ «Coherencia» significa trabajar a partir de una filosofía fiable y congruente para que los niños sepan qué esperamos de ellos. Esto no significa mantener una inquebrantable devoción a algún conjunto arbitrario de reglas. Así, a veces puedes hacer excepciones a las reglas, hacer la vista gorda ante alguna infracción menor o ser más permisivo.

Sometimes we assume that our kids won't behave the way we want them to, when in reality, they simply can't, at least not in this particular moment.

at other times we need to adjust our expectations and realize that our children are capable of more than we're asking of them, so we can challenge them to take more responsibility for their choices.

Spoiled children often grow up to be unhappy because people in the real world don't respond to their every whim.

Ultimately, then, kids need us to set boundaries and communicate our expectations. But the key here is that all discipline should begin by nurturing our children and attuning to their internal world, allowing them to know that they are seen, heard, and loved by their parents—even when they've done something wrong.