One Step Beyond
Jun. 13th, 2011 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trickykittyI was chatting with my Combatives instructor before class on Sunday. We started off talking about the number of people that don't show up for class during the summer months. Somehow the conversation changed towards my recent understanding of expectations. I put fourth my general ideas of it that I mentioned in my previous post, but also some of the ideas I'm including here. He said he wished he could show me the black level study guide, because a lot of what I was saying was inherent in that level.
Cool. I feel a bit vindicated in my current brain processing. :P
So, this is a bit of a clarification of what I mentioned before.
There's a subtle difference between Imaginations, Expectations, and Predictions. It's so subtle, I tend to easily interchange them when I shouldn't.
Imaginations have a place when trying to be creative. Imaginations don't have a place when trying to construct a mental representation of reality. For instance, I have to use imaginations when I'm creating and tweaking my company's consultation binder by imagining my interactions with potential clients. I don't have too much experience with consultations, but I still have to put together a binder to work with, so the imagination comes in handy. It's important for me especially to know when I've put on my creativity hat versus when my imaginations have taken over and are coloring my perceptions of reality. This way I'm not entirely starving my creative flow, but just keeping it under a tightly-held rein.
Obviously the more real-world client consultations I have, the more life-like those creative imaginations become. I can still easily re-enact my YMCA spiel for parents signing their children up for childcare. After 7 years of giving it multiple times every day, I became a broken record, and I knew which turns of phrases worked and which didn't at getting the point across to the prospective parents. I could imagine a scenario, but it really wasn't an imaginative scenario as more of a conglomeration of hundreds of memories. At that point, it becomes prediction. I could predict with a certain level of accuracy what the parent was likely to ask next. I could be wrong, but I didn't take a hit to the ego because of it. It didn't upset me that they didn't ask the next question that I had predicted. I had no reason to take it personally.
For me, it's imperative to distinguish between prediction and expectation. One is ego/self driven and the other is reality driven. Now you can get all dictionary-philosophical on me, but I'm just laying out how I personally have to view things in order to get the jumbles in my brain worked out.
Expectations, as I mentioned before, are very ego-centric. They are all about me. They may or may not have a basis in reality. Predictions, on the other hand, are (supposed to be) based on previous real* observations. The main difference is how it affects me.
I predict that N Loop 820 is going to be a parking lot at 5pm every day of the week, including Sundays. This prediction comes from years of experience with this stretch of freeway. I may even tell you that I expect it to be so (note that I intentionally used the term 'expect' in this sentence). However, if I'm being wanton, my TRUE, egotistical expectation is that there's not a single car on the road. When I have such an expectation, and I still manage to get stuck in the same exact traffic that I predicted, I may still get my hackles raised, again because my egotistical expectation wasn't met. It's that romanticized, fantasy expectation that causes a stir, not the real-world prediction.
By reverse example, if I predicted and expected no traffic on a road, and yet I find myself in a traffic jam, the only reason I would get upset would be because my expectation of no traffic was not met. If I only predicted no traffic without any expectations, then I would accept I was wrong in my prediction, deal with the traffic that comes, not get upset, and life would go on.
Even better! I predict there will be traffic, and we take the bridge over the freeway and view from above said traffic. There may be a slight ego boost if I let it for being right, but for the most part it's just more data confirming the prediction.
Prediction is important to living, because without it we wouldn't be able to cope and survive. It's how we make plans from one moment to the next. When I want to go to the grocery store, I'm making predictions that the route I'm going to take will be available, my car will get me there and back, and that the grocery store hasn't been blown up by terrorists. If I thought any of these predictions were off, then I'd probably seek another route or not go to the grocery store all together.
However, when I expect all of these things to occur, then that's when I'm setting myself up for failure. I'm going to be cranky if the road is blocked off and I have to detour. I'm going to be really pissed off if my car breaks down or I get a flat tire. I'm going to be in utter disbelief if the grocery store exploded.
Without expectations of these things, I am prepared for whatever life throws at me. If the drive to and from the grocery store is insignificant, great. If I get a flat tire on the way, that sucks, but I don't have a mental hemorrhage in the middle of it. I deal with it, adjust my day appropriately, and continue on life's little journey.
Predict and act without expectations from one little moment to the next. This is nowhere near as easy as it sounds. At least not for me. Yet.
*I put a lot of emphasis on REAL and REALITY because that's my own particular issue that I have - blurring the real with the fantasy. My internal brain is a poster child for Sucker Punch, and I'd rather it cut it out before ... [carrier lost].
Cool. I feel a bit vindicated in my current brain processing. :P
So, this is a bit of a clarification of what I mentioned before.
There's a subtle difference between Imaginations, Expectations, and Predictions. It's so subtle, I tend to easily interchange them when I shouldn't.
Imaginations have a place when trying to be creative. Imaginations don't have a place when trying to construct a mental representation of reality. For instance, I have to use imaginations when I'm creating and tweaking my company's consultation binder by imagining my interactions with potential clients. I don't have too much experience with consultations, but I still have to put together a binder to work with, so the imagination comes in handy. It's important for me especially to know when I've put on my creativity hat versus when my imaginations have taken over and are coloring my perceptions of reality. This way I'm not entirely starving my creative flow, but just keeping it under a tightly-held rein.
Obviously the more real-world client consultations I have, the more life-like those creative imaginations become. I can still easily re-enact my YMCA spiel for parents signing their children up for childcare. After 7 years of giving it multiple times every day, I became a broken record, and I knew which turns of phrases worked and which didn't at getting the point across to the prospective parents. I could imagine a scenario, but it really wasn't an imaginative scenario as more of a conglomeration of hundreds of memories. At that point, it becomes prediction. I could predict with a certain level of accuracy what the parent was likely to ask next. I could be wrong, but I didn't take a hit to the ego because of it. It didn't upset me that they didn't ask the next question that I had predicted. I had no reason to take it personally.
For me, it's imperative to distinguish between prediction and expectation. One is ego/self driven and the other is reality driven. Now you can get all dictionary-philosophical on me, but I'm just laying out how I personally have to view things in order to get the jumbles in my brain worked out.
Expectations, as I mentioned before, are very ego-centric. They are all about me. They may or may not have a basis in reality. Predictions, on the other hand, are (supposed to be) based on previous real* observations. The main difference is how it affects me.
I predict that N Loop 820 is going to be a parking lot at 5pm every day of the week, including Sundays. This prediction comes from years of experience with this stretch of freeway. I may even tell you that I expect it to be so (note that I intentionally used the term 'expect' in this sentence). However, if I'm being wanton, my TRUE, egotistical expectation is that there's not a single car on the road. When I have such an expectation, and I still manage to get stuck in the same exact traffic that I predicted, I may still get my hackles raised, again because my egotistical expectation wasn't met. It's that romanticized, fantasy expectation that causes a stir, not the real-world prediction.
By reverse example, if I predicted and expected no traffic on a road, and yet I find myself in a traffic jam, the only reason I would get upset would be because my expectation of no traffic was not met. If I only predicted no traffic without any expectations, then I would accept I was wrong in my prediction, deal with the traffic that comes, not get upset, and life would go on.
Even better! I predict there will be traffic, and we take the bridge over the freeway and view from above said traffic. There may be a slight ego boost if I let it for being right, but for the most part it's just more data confirming the prediction.
Prediction is important to living, because without it we wouldn't be able to cope and survive. It's how we make plans from one moment to the next. When I want to go to the grocery store, I'm making predictions that the route I'm going to take will be available, my car will get me there and back, and that the grocery store hasn't been blown up by terrorists. If I thought any of these predictions were off, then I'd probably seek another route or not go to the grocery store all together.
However, when I expect all of these things to occur, then that's when I'm setting myself up for failure. I'm going to be cranky if the road is blocked off and I have to detour. I'm going to be really pissed off if my car breaks down or I get a flat tire. I'm going to be in utter disbelief if the grocery store exploded.
Without expectations of these things, I am prepared for whatever life throws at me. If the drive to and from the grocery store is insignificant, great. If I get a flat tire on the way, that sucks, but I don't have a mental hemorrhage in the middle of it. I deal with it, adjust my day appropriately, and continue on life's little journey.
Predict and act without expectations from one little moment to the next. This is nowhere near as easy as it sounds. At least not for me. Yet.
*I put a lot of emphasis on REAL and REALITY because that's my own particular issue that I have - blurring the real with the fantasy. My internal brain is a poster child for Sucker Punch, and I'd rather it cut it out before ... [carrier lost].
