Unpopular Opinion: Great Expectations

Many of us want to please others, we believe this is the 'right' way to live believing if we follow society's unwritten rules we will be accepted. Here I offer some tips on how to check in on whether you are making authentic decisions or whether you are 'guilt-ily' following the expectations of others, particularly as a parent of young children.

Transcript

Well,

Hello,

And welcome back to another episode of Unpopular Opinion.

My name is Virginia Warren.

I'm a shaman and lawyer.

And I wanted to talk a little bit today about expectations,

The expectations of other people.

How do we get them?

What do they do to our lives and how we can work with them?

So expectations for me really started,

The idea about an expectation really happened the moment I became a mother.

This is when I became acutely aware of life's expectations,

The great ones,

The milestones.

It appears that these milestones were neatly laid out from the moment my son was born.

Is he sleeping through the night?

Is he walking yet,

They would ask.

Will he become a lawyer like you?

The answer to those three questions at each of the relevant times was from me a guilt-induced no.

The sleepless nights I had dictated that he slept in my bed for a couple of years.

I was working full time and I was studying law,

So I needed sleep as a priority.

And so I did what worked for me.

Of course,

Then I placed him in daycare at four months of age to more looks that guaranteed my last place in the Mother of the Year awards.

But as my mothering choices were routinely questioned,

Hesitation began clouding my own choices.

I then sought the advice of my healthcare nurse,

Who matter-of-factly assured me that mother knows best.

Satisfied with this course of action,

I got on with life by assuring my well-meaning tribe that my son would certainly not be sleeping in my bed by the time he was 18 years old.

Despite the barrage of conflicting opinions,

So many new mothers sincerely attempt to bay the directions of the collective motherhood.

I,

On the other hand,

Lived by this newfound idea that apparently I knew best as a parent.

And that was apparent to me,

Until my son had developed his own mature mind and got on his own two feet.

A few years ago,

I spoke at a wellbeing seminar at a working mothers event.

In turn,

Each of these mothers expressed their guilt for choosing a career over stay-at-home mothering.

They shared guilt as they confided,

Ignoring some of the text messages from childcare when other pressing issues were happening in the workplace.

This knowingness of collective guilt brought some relief that they were not alone.

I think we've all felt,

As mothers or parents generally,

That sometimes we have been put in that guilty place of,

Oh,

I should be going to attend to my child's needs over my own,

No matter what they are really in the workplace or outside of the workplace.

Because it seems that the idea of being a parent must come above self-care sometimes.

But then at this seminar,

When it was my turn to speak,

I shared my mother knows best experiences and I proposed that the guilt we felt arose from the expectations that motherhood should look a certain way.

I asked the audience to ponder the question,

Well,

Who created these expectations?

The room went silent when the audience realized that these expectations was probably created ancestrally from our own parents and from their parents' parents.

These were nonetheless being perpetuated by each of us as individuals.

We were each responsible for the predicament we were in.

We were the ones keeping these expectations alive by saying what we were saying and believing in them.

After the talk that evening,

A mother in the group then came up to me and she said she'd been feeling a nagging resentment at constantly being criticized for her life choices.

She was absolutely relieved to know that feeling guilt and resentment was a choice too.

And that once she was able to release that,

She was allowed the freedom to be her own version of motherhood.

That she was allowed to do it the way she wanted to.

Because it certainly worked for me.

And you know,

We then bury this idea of resentment as well.

We're not allowed to even show resentment.

I mean,

That's a whole other topic.

But we do that and then we become unwell.

It's not good for us not to follow who we are authentically.

So expectations have been created for us in so many areas of our lives.

But rarely do we pause to consider whether we're living authentically or whether we're merely following the expectations of others.

We don't stop and question ourselves.

We just keep doing things because we think this is the way it's always been done.

So just some tips.

If you are,

You're living authentically when decisions you make feel peaceful to you.

So whenever you're making a decision and it feels good,

It doesn't rattle you,

It feels peaceful and satisfying,

That is an authentic decision.

This is about how you're feeling.

Then another tip is if the words should,

Must or ought to are present in any decision you're making,

That is an expectation present.

Burn all the ideas,

Write them down on a piece of paper.

I said it before.

Write down should,

Must and ought to on a piece of paper and set fire to it safely.

The last tip I've got today is if you feel any level of negativity,

Check to whether you're experiencing guilt.

Now,

Not always a negative feeling is guilt,

But check in on yourself.

Am I feeling guilty?

Guilt is a valueless emotion.

It means there's an expectation present.

That's all.

Guilt has no value unless you place the value on it.

So guilt is a key indicator that you are following others' expectations.

We adopt the expectations of others at a very early age.

And if we can pinpoint the irrationality of why they were created,

We can then easily move through them.

It's when these beliefs are unconscious though,

And this is where I work,

This is the space I work in,

Unconscious beliefs,

That you might seek out from somebody a little extra guidance in finding that belief,

Because it's limiting you,

So that you can then start to individualize your own life's journey.

The unconscious belief is a belief that you don't really know exists.

You just sort of keep going through life and thinking,

Why is this happening?

Why do I feel bad?

And I'm not really exploring myself.

So for the record,

My recently 24 year old son is successfully carving out his own milestones as a self-created entrepreneur who earns more money than I do.

Not that that's a direct measure of success,

But it is just to say that no,

He didn't become the lawyer.

Yes,

He began to sleep in his own bed.

And he can walk as far as I'm aware.

So he did turn out just fine.

And he actually did turn around and thank me one day.

He said,

He said,

Mom,

Thank you for being a great parent.

And I asked why that,

Why he thought that was.

He said,

Because when I'd come up across a problem,

You would ask me what I thought about it.

Because I think that is then,

It's great to give advice to our children.

Of course,

They look to us as like guide,

As their guides.

But when we impose our ideas upon them,

We're then pushing our expectations onto them too.

So I would generally ask my son when he was facing a problem that I thought he could reasonably resolve was,

What do you think?

I'd give him that choice first.

And it seemed he remembered that.

So that's really just something that I wanted to share with you all today.

So thank you so much for listening and tune in for the next unpopular opinion shortly.

Take care of you.