Life is about managing expectations!

Now isnt that a truism, if there was one! You read rave reviews about a book and you calibrate yourself mentally as you begin to read. If it has some sections that are not enthralling, you come away saying it is over-rated. If you'd picked up the book yourself, I am sure you would have been delighted. It is all about what are the expectations and whether life matches them.

I have seen several movies where this has happened. I went to watch Finding Nemo as I had nothing to do that Saturday night and I felt this was a kids' movie. How pleasantly surprised I was- I have watched it a couple of times more and have even used it in seminars to depict several points about teamwork, about parenting, about growing up in general. When I went to watch Madagascar the other day, I was expecting a classic and was disappointed. Now, the movie on its own is pretty good but my expectations had been skewed by my earlier experience. We bought a used car last year and expected it would give us some trouble along the way. Touchwood, there have been very few repairs and we've been very, very happy with our purchase.

I guess the same could be said of relationships. Friends disappoint us because of some expectations we have of them- if we had none or very low expectations, we'd come away feeling good on most occasions. I guess we could extend the argument to parent-child relationships as well. Parents who have very high expectations of their kids and communicate that to the kid create an unnecessary burden of expectation that the kid is constantly trying to live up to. However, if their standards weren't overtly high, kids would feel more independent, be more creative to follow their own pursuits and achive excellent results by creating their own standards of superior performance.

Is it good then to constantly have low expectations? I don't think so- I think the important thing to manage them well, if you on the service side, always under-promise and over deliver- the guy will be forever grateful for your service and will become your biggest champion.

On my visit to India recently, this is one aspect that was very bothersome to me. Everyone, right from the banker to the person selling me a car over-promised and under-delivered; it is almost as if every interaction is one-transaction based only. The seller is least bothered whether I am actually satisfied or not. This is something that will need to change sooner rather than later.