In this candid conversation, we continue the topic of expectations by visiting the question of what unhealthy beliefs we have of ourselves. We explore the fine line between ambition and unrealistic demands. We also confront the common trap of timing success. Learn why it's essential to understand and accept that success isn't time-bound, but a journey that's unique to each individual.
Dive deep with us into personal reflections on societal pressures, the pitfalls of comparison, and the journey to self-understanding.
Through our dialogue, we aim to shift the narrative around expectations, encouraging listeners to adopt a mentality of gratitude, build confidence, and replace negative self-talk with positive affirmations.
Follow the journey:
Instagram: @noirpoisedpodcast
Youtube: @noirpoisedpodcast
In this candid conversation, we continue the topic of expectations by visiting the question of what unhealthy beliefs we have of ourselves. We explore the fine line between ambition and unrealistic demands. We also confront the common trap of timing success. Learn why it's essential to understand and accept that success isn't time-bound, but a journey that's unique to each individual.
Dive deep with us into personal reflections on societal pressures, the pitfalls of comparison, and the journey to self-understanding.
Through our dialogue, we aim to shift the narrative around expectations, encouraging listeners to adopt a mentality of gratitude, build confidence, and replace negative self-talk with positive affirmations.
Follow the journey:
Instagram: @noirpoisedpodcast
Youtube: @noirpoisedpodcast
Welcome to Noirpoised N Podcast, where wisdom is power is more than just a motto.
Sam:It's our way of life. While we don't claim to have all the answers, we're dedicated to delving deeper into different topics through meaningful conversations. As a duo, we bring different viewpoints to the table, enriching our joint journey towards growth and poise.
Ruth:Join us as we explore and unlearn to relearn, while striving to navigate life with poise. I read a quote that said people rise or fall depending on their expectations and beliefs, and expectations are often driven by negative attitudes towards life or yourself.
Sam:Wow.
Ruth:What are your thoughts on that?
Sam:I would have never thought it was driven by negative attitudes. I would have just put it as neutral, positive everything. So it's interesting to think that our negative experiences are what drives our expectations.
Ruth:Right, we talked about the definition of expectation. The gist of it is that it's the beliefs that we have of ourselves, of others or things that we believe will happen. So when I read this quote, it had me reflecting on myself. While I'm probably not the best person to provide any type of information on this, because I feel like this is something that I personally struggle with I have unrealistic expectations of myself but it was a wake-up call because of the fact that it said well, basically all of it. It was a wake-up call the fact that it will either rise or fail you, and it stems mainly from negative attitudes of life or yourself. I focus more on the life aspect because I think sometimes that can trickle down to how you view yourself if you have a negative outlook on life.
Sam:So a question that I actually have that I struggle to understand is what's considered an unhealthy expectation, because I'm someone who firmly believes that you have to push yourself, that you have to set high goals, but at the same time, I think even those high goals could somehow have a negative effect on your life. In your opinion, what would you define as having an unhealthy expectation?
Ruth:I think anything that leads you towards chronic disappointment would be labeled as unrealistic, because obviously disappointment is part of life, we're going to deal with it and I don't think there's anything wrong with that, as long as you can manage that emotion and learn from the experience and move on. But I think if there's a consistent trend where you're setting goals for yourself and you're constantly falling into a state of chronic disappointment, I think that's when you have to kind of look at things and adjust. Maybe your goals are set too high and not necessarily too high but maybe you're trying to achieve them in a way that's not realistic In my opinion. I don't think there's any goal that's ever too high.
Ruth:I think we can achieve anything we put our minds to, but I do believe in outlining a path that's going to lead you to a goal rather than just saying I'm going to make $2 million in two years. There needs to be some form of realistic outline on how you are going to get there. So if you're doing it piece by piece, I think naturally, yeah, you'll face disappointment if you don't achieve one of the goals, but you can quickly pick yourself back up and keep going rather than setting that expectation which, thinking of it. It sounds unrealistic off the bat, but if you don't have a clear outline on how you plan to achieve that goal, then that's when I think it can lead to that chronic disappointment. Because you don't have the answers, nor do you know where to go or where to start funny.
Sam:You mentioned that because that's actually the top unhealthy or unrealist expectation I have for myself is that success could be timed.
Ruth:I think that's very common, believe it or not again.
Sam:I'm someone that believes whatever you put your mind to, you can do absolutely and humbly saying this.
Sam:Of course I've seen that happen over the course of my life. For a lot of times I Didn't know exactly where I was going or how I was going to get somewhere, but over the course of many years, trial and error, I found myself there. So I know that success could be achieved. But throughout the process, the most disappointing part was when I expected to be somewhere in six months or a year or maybe five years, and I don't see myself there yet.
Sam:Yeah, I get that and I start to beat myself down and it starts some kind of domino effect or cycle where you start to rush the process right and you end up failing even more and become more disappointed. That kind of ties into another unhealthy expectation to have for myself, which was I can go through life being Emotionless. So whenever I would fail I would become emotional, or not necessarily fail, but whenever I wouldn't achieve my objective within a certain time frame, I would start to become emotional, then beat myself down for being emotional and again the cycle just continues there, so with unhealthy expectations of yourself. One way to recognize if you're trapped in that is if you're going around in circles.
Ruth:Yes, that's what I meant when I said recognizing if there's a constant trend, because if you notice that it keeps occurring again, like you just said, something has to change, whether that's your mindset, the way you're approaching the situation, but something needs to be adjusted, in my opinion. What do you think the pros and or the cons of your perspective is?
Sam:Oddly enough, I would say, the pros are. It keeps me driven. So, because I set a high goal, I'm working towards something. I don't remember the exact phrase or how this goes, but something like Shoot for the stars and land on the moon, or something like that.
Ruth:I've heard that quote.
Sam:That's how I really base my.
Sam:My life is just aim high and even if you Fall short you're fine yourselves Somewhere farther than you were before, right, so I, I think a pro for that would be definitely, you know, being driven and always working towards something. But the con, I would say, is you kind of kill yourself getting there and I found myself in this situation many times and I'm sure many people out there could relate where the thing you dreamed of, that you wanted to. By the time you get it, you're so beat down and tired that you can't even celebrate.
Sam:Yeah, you can't even enjoy it because it took so long to get there and you're so tired or so frustrated that You're there and you can't even celebrate which is unfortunate, yeah, and I think that's proof that the expectation of yourself may be too high.
Ruth:Not necessarily that the goal, but the goal is to be able to get there. The goal, but maybe the way you're approaching yeah, that goal may just be a little bit unrealistic, because if you're beating yourself up that much, to the point where you finally achieve something that you you've always wanted and you worked hard for and you're not able to enjoy it, that clearly shows that something isn't right.
Sam:Yeah, and it's crazy to think about how that translates so much into everyday life, because I've heard even people who are single or Dating but they're unmarried by a certain age. They put that time pressure on themselves where I need to be married by 30 and have kids by Whatever age and I need to, you know, have my career established by this age and when they don't meet that, the pressure that they end up putting on themselves, just calls them to spiral.
Ruth:Yeah, and settle, and settle yeah settle make silly mistakes.
Sam:We've. We all know someone who, for example, wasn't married by a certain age and they decided that the next person they come across they're like this is it.
Sam:This is it yeah forcing in and five night and five years like two years into the marriage Everything's crumbled right because they rushed the process due to the pressure of time or the Realistic, unhealthy expectation that they placed on themselves. Same thing with careers. I've heard so many people go into a career that they're not happy with just because they had the unhealthy mindset of I need to have my career established by this certain age and now you're five years into it and miserable so it's crazy to really think about how that translates to so many different areas of our lives.
Ruth:Mm-hmm, and hearing things like that makes me wonder when does that stem from? Because what I've started to tell myself is the way that I think I didn't create that, I've only just continued it. So and I say this all the time that self reflection, we have to constantly be doing it because society and our environment, our leaders growing up, implants their expectations onto us without us recognizing, and we just kind of take that and carry it on throughout our lives. So for me, what I had to ask myself is why do I have these insane expectations for myself and you? Bringing up the time factor when it comes to success? That's a lot of women nowadays where they're getting to a certain age and they're like my biological clock is ticking, I gotta do something. Or they're in school, they don't know what they wanna do, but society has told us that you gotta finish with your bachelor's in four years. If you're there longer, you must get a master's, so on and so forth, like there's this constant pressure put on us to achieve certain things by a specific timeframe. So that's big. I feel like that's something that majority of the population deals with, even if it's not in the two examples that we just named, but in some shape or form, we put expectations on ourselves that was originally put on us before it and we just don't recognize the connection. That's how I see it.
Ruth:Like the whole success topic is big for me because I feel like that's what most people who tend to feel down and out or feel unaccomplished about themselves. It's because they're chasing that and unfortunately, success is labeled a specific type of way. It's labeled as six figures or more. It's labeled as in a successful relationship, being married with children by a certain age, having the house, having this type of vehicle, being able to travel, looking this way on social media, becoming an entrepreneur, like. There's so many different pressures that I feel like are put on us and one of the things I had to recognize was well, whose definition of success is that Cause?
Ruth:For a long time, to be honest with you, that was my definition of success and you can remember like we got married I believe it was 29. And I didn't want to have children right away. We had that discussion when we were dating. We were just like whatever age we get, end up getting married, we're gonna enjoy ourselves for at least two years. We want to be able to travel, do whatever we want to do enjoy the married life, build that foundation within our marriage before we put a child into it. But there was that part of me where I was like, dad, I'm gonna be 30 next year. Like, I know my body. They say that my body shifts by the time I'm 30. And at 35, you're considered a geriatric pregnancy. Like, naturally, even if you're not the type of person to put that pressure on yourself.
Ruth:Everything that is said in the media or by people, environmentally, we naturally just hear these things and they cross our mind, they're put into us subconsciously, you know. So I had to catch myself in the moment. I was just like no, and what would that do if we got pregnant, you know, a couple months or a year into our marriage when we're not ready for it? We didn't want to do this yet. We wanted to take our time and I had to kind of self-reflect and understand where does that stem from? That's the conclusion I came to.
Ruth:Some of the expectations we have of ourself often doesn't even come from ourselves.
Ruth:It stems from a foundational expectation that was put on us, whether it was from parents, whether it's from watching the media and celebrities, whether it's from witnessing people around you who are your age and they're accomplishing certain things that your parents are now putting pressure.
Ruth:You know what I mean. Like I hear so many people say different things, and so we naturally make this connection between success and time, when in reality, time is not a factor. In my opinion, mentality is a factor, because you don't want to rush, like you said, to reach this level of success and you're not prepared for it. So now that success comes down into crumbles because you don't know what to do with it, you don't know how to handle it, you don't know how to nourish it, you don't know how to maintain it. So it's interesting to think, like how much has been placed into us that we don't realize. And that's why I'm always asking myself these like annoying, deep-rooted questions is because we often put blame on ourselves Although, don't get me wrong, at a certain age you gotta take accountability. We're at an age where now, no matter how it was put in, it's your obligation to correct it. But in my opinion, you can't really correct it until you recognize where the foundation was set.
Sam:Yeah, I love that. The tricky part with that is a lot of these beliefs, as you said, not just came from some outside source, where there's family, culture, society, but oftentimes the things that we think we desire we don't even desire. We don't even desire.
Ruth:It came from somewhere else.
Sam:It's hard to decipher what's you and what's not you.
Ruth:Right, yeah, that's big. For me. What I found is self-understanding, because if you don't understand yourself, you're not going to be able to recognize what's actually you and what's everything else or everyone else. So I feel like until that's done, you're always gonna have those toxic comparisons that you don't recognize you do So-and-so got married at this age why am I still not married? So-and-so got this job. Why couldn't I do that? We were in the same elementary school. So-and-so living in this neighborhood. Why can't I get that done? You know what I mean? I feel like there's these toxic comparisons that people tend to do. That gets us nowhere, absolutely nowhere. So I feel like that's one factor that has to be reversed. Stop looking at everyone else and start looking at you and within.
Sam:I love that you just said it's all about understanding yourself. I was just having this conversation with someone highlighting the importance of understanding yourself. A lot of people think, because it's you you know yourself. You'd be surprised we don't At the amount of information that you don't know about yourself. You may think, for example, you know what makes you angry, but you don't understand what led you to that. So, when we're talking about understanding yourself. It's literally asking yourself these basic, thought-provoking questions what's the angriest I've ever been? And let me just think about that.
Ruth:Why was I angry when?
Sam:did it come from? What happened in my childhood that correlates back to my adulthood is literally those little things that help you understand yourself, and you'll start to notice, just from that, the why that makes you who you are, and you will also notice that you won't start comparing yourself. That's something that happened to me where, when I started learning about myself more and more, I stopped comparing myself with others Because I started to understand how I'm on a completely different life journey from them. What they did may have worked well for them.
Ruth:But you'll be surprised.
Sam:But you'll be surprised that if you follow their exact same path, you would be miserable, because they're not you, and we're always talking about authenticity. That's why understanding yourself is so important versus studying other people is because only you could be you, the path that's laid for you. Only you can walk it Right.
Ruth:Yeah, everyone's journey is different. We just have to understand that and stop looking at outside sources and start looking within on, like you said, identity. That's big. You have to be able to identify yourself, the feelings that you feel, the thoughts that you have. Where do they come from? Is it something that you even agree with? What's causing you to put these unrealistic expectations or these toxic expectations on yourself? That's getting you nowhere and, like you said before, some expectations that we put on ourselves, even when they're high, sometimes they get us to places. You know what I mean. But again, everyone's different. What works for one person is not going to work for the other. So it's identifying those things about yourself to understand what works for you, because what works for Ruth won't work for Sam and what works for Sam won't work for Ruth.
Ruth:We have different walks of life. Even people who are raised in the same household may have very similar experiences. They turn out completely different. Why? Because they're characteristics and who they are are different. People tolerate things differently. People have different perspectives. People receive information different and interpret it different. So you can't look at someone else's story and compare it to yours. I read online about three aspects of self and understanding self. And it said we have three aspects to ourselves, and that's the physical and tangible, which is relating to the body, the intellectual and conscious, which is related to the mind, and then the emotional and intuitive, which is relating to the spirit. So, personally, for me, I feel like being able to comprehend all those aspects of ourselves will give us a better way of dissecting things. Does that make sense?
Sam:Yeah, ok, because I suffered so much from trying to rush the process. One of the things that helped me and I'm still practicing this is when I feel like I failed or I haven't met a deadline, I actually sit in the emotion to try to understand it. That's good and it's very uncomfortable to do. You naturally want to find something to give you joy, you know, to take your mind off it, to do something even further, to rush the process. But I've learned that it's important when you're feeling like a failure, to sit there and ask yourself why and keep asking yourself why until you get an answer that can satisfy your understanding. So when I've done this, I realized that the reason why I started rushing the process is because I thought I had to save everyone. Like, I'm sure, many people out there, you count on yourself to take care of your loved ones and take care of the people around you, and it was a tough pill to swallow that. Unless I'm talking about my immediate family, of course my wife, my daughter it's not my job to save everyone.
Sam:That was a tough pill to swallow because when you win, you want to see others around you winning or at least taking part in your success, but it was to the point where it was becoming detrimental to my emotional health, my mental health. So I got that answer from basking in the failure, the emotion that I was feeling in the failure, and it gave me so much understanding and, on top of that, it actually gave me patience, because I was able to identify the root cause of why I feel like I have to rush the process and do something about it.
Ruth:I love that you said that, because that's one of the things I was gonna mention disappointment, because that's the common thing that comes with having crazy expectations of ourselves, and one of the things that was suggested was sitting in that disappointment and understanding it. So I love that you mentioned that, because I think that's the right way to go, and in doing that, you'll also find that that quote unquote failure was not a failure but a lesson. That's one of the things that we have to unlearn. To relearn is that failure isn't failure unless you completely quit, cause I say the same thing where I'm just like, oh crap, I failed. But we have to constantly hold ourselves accountable when we start to have that type of thinking, because if you didn't succeed at something that you wanted to do in the moment, that doesn't mean you're not gonna succeed at it in the future. You just have to now find a different route or retry it again. You know what I mean Adjust, pivot where needed and go forward. That's one of the things. I think that will set the tone on how you feel after the fact of not getting something that you want or not being able to do something that you expected to do. That, along with letting go, which I love that you mentioned that as well, because, while letting go doesn't mean it may be in the form that you just expressed, but letting go of that negativity and letting go of that toxic thinking when it comes to expectations of yourself and shifting it to positive talk. So, like we just said, it's not a failure, it's a lesson. And if it's a lesson, now that's applied, that lesson, and let's go achieve what we had planned to achieve.
Ruth:That and giving yourself grace, giving yourself time because, like we mentioned, success is often linked with time. Like everyone wants quick, quick achievements, microwave achievements it's not realistic. Everyone's journey is different. So it may take you two years, while it takes me five. It all depends on how much you're applying, if we're honest, because sometimes we don't pivot as much as we need to pivot in order to move forward. We tend to sit too much in the moping phase. I don't think there's anything wrong with sitting in the disappointment. I think that's healthy and it's necessary, but I think it's also important to give yourself a time limit on when we're going to get up and keep moving. Even if these emotions are here, let's start shifting them, let's start changing them, let's start focusing on what we have accomplished rather than what we didn't accomplish.
Sam:And when I'm talking about just sitting in your sadness for the sake of sitting in sadness we're talking about going into the abyss of your sadness and trying to understand why.
Sam:So, even if you're in your sadness, you're still doing work. You're uncovering, you're digging, you're asking yourself questions, you're reflecting, you're trying to understand. Why did this cause me sadness? Because if you really look at the differences between someone who's consistently successful and someone who may be successful one day and failed another day, or continuously going through a loop of failure, the successful people understand why they fail. That's what they do in their failure.
Sam:I was actually having a conversation with someone earlier and we were talking about how important it is to, when you make a mistake or when you fail, journal it, write it down, figure out what lessons were learned and move on. That's the kind of idea that we're, that we're hopefully translating here is not just sitting down and you know, just yeah, there has to be purpose, right watching TV, feeling your sadness or talking, talking about actually doing work within right emotion, like we said, from the job it's sitting in it, so you understand the foundation of it and where it stems from.
Ruth:So, once you understand the foundation of it, you can now move accordingly. You know where it stems from, so you can, like I said, pivot right pivot where needed and change that mentality Right.
Sam:definitely it has to be done with purpose and I want to add Quickly at this the reason why that's important is because once you're able to identify it, you'll see it coming and you'll be able to better prepare for it.
Sam:So a lot of times we get into these pitfalls it's because we haven't identified the why. Right, we don't. We haven't identified the why, so we don't know when it's about to hit us. It's kind of like like boxing, when you, when a boxer, studies their opponent, they able to time their jab, they able to time their hooks, their cross to uppercuts, all these punches, their movement, to the point where they can tell what you're gonna throw before. Maybe you even realize.
Sam:They're able to pivot and adjust with that. That's what we're talking about. When you understand your why, you're better able to Expect it.
Ruth:Yeah, I love that, I agree. I think that's definitely the key Understanding. You have to understand self, and in order to understand self, you have to sit in those emotions and understand where they come from, because they often stem from other things or other experiences, and we then carry it within us and Make ourselves believe that these are our thoughts and these are our feelings, when in reality they're often not. They come from something, they come from an experience. They come from somewhere Outside of us. We're not born feeling these things. You know, and we say this all the time. We're not born having these emotions and feeling these things.
Ruth:It's taught those, learned behavior.
Ruth:Yes, it's learned behavior, whether it's from our experience, but it's learned doing that along with having a mentality of gratitude as well, and then doing things to build your confidence, because obviously having unrealistic expectations of yourself can often tackle your self-esteem.
Ruth:So as you're doing all of these things, you should be also working on your confidence. At least for me, I think that's what helped me is building my confidence, and it naturally will help you start to shift things and instead of the negative talk, you start to replace it with positive talk a reminder that I give myself that I also want to leave with you guys is remember that no one is born knowing themselves. Self-views are built from expectations of our leaders, experiences or our environment. Identity is something that is to be discovered. So, like we've been saying over and over again, at some point in your life, when you start to notice some of these trends that are not Leading you in the path that you want to go, rather than putting unrealistic expectations on yourself, find ways to unlearn and relearn who you actually are and Understand who you are at the core.
Sam:I love that your identity is being discovered.
Ruth:Thank you for spending your time with us. We hope you gain some knowledge today that will promote poise in your life. We have new episodes uploaded every Thursday right here. Same place, same time. Until next time, you can follow us on Instagram at noir poise podcast to stay connected. That's noir po Ed podcast.
Sam:We'd love to hear your feedback and remember your wisdom is power.