Quotes About Expectations

It's pretty disabling sometimes, the terror of not living up. My expectations are the worst.

Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment.

If you don't perform, and you're part of the team, whether you're playing your first Test or 50th Test match, criticism goes hand in hand, so that's something you can't really get away from. If you don't perform, you will be criticised.

Sometimes it can feel like my bad days in Test cricket get amplified or singled out more than other players, while my good ones can fly under the radar. I'm not making excuses but over time this can get to you a little bit.

It was a few days later I came out to Hollywood for a screen test, and so did a lot of other people. So, I really didn't think I would get it. I was definitely the one that was least likely to get it, because everyone else was an already established star.

I will test a guy to within an inch of his sanity because I've been through too much drama. He has to be 100%.

When I brought home a 98 percent on a test, my father would say, 'Ah, ah, where are the other two points? Go and get them, then bring them back.' My father and Nigerian culture has always stood for excellence.

I was one of those kids who looks really good on paper, I tested very well, I went to a fancy college, won some prizes. When I came out of school, I had many horrible jobs, but I didn't know what the path was to a creative life or the life of a writer.

The double standard means men can run around and women cannot. I think I'm up to testing that.

Holding auditions in front of an audience is testing.

The hard thing about 'The Saint' was that my character was supposed to die, but then they reshot the ending based on tests and she lives. I created the character based on her dying - she would never have been as innocent otherwise. So I didn't have high expectations for that film.

Many high school students are under so much competitive pressure. They are sometimes taught that if they don't have a 4.0 GPA, score in the 99th percentile on admissions tests, and demonstrate leadership in sports and participate in clubs, they won't get into college anywhere. Even highly credentialed professionals get caught up in this.

We grow up believing that love is like a fairytale that comes with all things good. What no one points out is how hard it is to live up to love or the tests along the way, small or big.

There just isn't any pleasing some people. The trick is to stop trying.

I hope you grow up to be as good a mother as your father

I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla.

He had never expected or wished to be allowed to enjoy such things; he had always been of opinion that they were never intended for the likes of him. He called himself a Conservative and was very patriotic.

This derisive aspect of the voice contributes to the empty feeling or the sensation of being let down that many people notice after they achieve an unusual success.

Children with harsh fathers accept much of what is thrown their way as normal because they don't have a frame of reference for anything else, and this twisted template unfortunately becomes the basis for their picture of the heavenly Father.

We are designed to feel that the next great goal will bring bliss, and the bliss is designed to evaporate shortly after we get there. Natural selection has a malicious sense of humor; it leads us along with a series of promises and then keeps saying "Just kidding.

Underlying it all is the happiness delusion. As the Buddha emphasized, our ongoing attempts to feel better tend to involve an overestimation of how long "better" is going to last. What's more, when "better" ends, it can be followed by "worse"—an unsettled feeling, a thirst for more. Long before psychologists were describing the hedonic treadmill, the Buddha saw it.

The distinction was nicely drawn by a study in which both men and women were asked about the minimal level of intelligence they would accept in a person they were "dating." The average response, for both male and female, was: average intelligence. They were also asked how smart a person would have to be before they would consent to sexual relations. The women said: Oh, in that case, markedly above average. The men said: Oh, in that case, markedly below average.

In sum: you can best achieve success at meditation by not pursuing success, and achieving this success may mean caring less about success, at least as success is conventionally defined.

On the other hand, we do often pursue such things with, at the very least, an unbalanced view of the future. We spend more time envisioning the perks that a promotion will bring than envisioning the headaches it will bring.