Expectation management

Today has been a rather odd morning.

Actually, today has been a very frusterating morning. For the sake of keeping things nice and simple I'll explain in one word: housing.

I've had it up to here with just about everything. So, the question is: how many of my actions are based on expectation management? How much of what I do is done because of how I expect other people will view my decisions? Frankly should it matter what everyone else thinks? At the moment I'd say no. Actually, I'm tempted to write a loud resounding NO complete with slamming my hand down on the table and maybe an extra word or two thrown in for good measure. But of course, I won't. Why? Because "I" does not swear. Nor do "I" ever get really mad. Why not? Because of my reputation. Almost everyone knows that I don't swear and I don't get mad. I might be annoyed, but I don't get mad.

So, why does it bother me that so many of actions are a result of my monitoring your expectations of me? Because. For whatever reason, I have a real "fear of man" complex. I'm not going to get into all my theories on why...you'd be here a long time.

I'll admit though, I do get tired of doing things because that's what is "expected" of me. Notice I didn't say I get tired of doing things that are "morally right". I said I get tired of doing what is "expected" of me. By that I mean that I get tired of doing something only because I know how people will react if I don't do it. I'm tired of doing something for the sole reason that if I don't do it someone will react negatively. Flip. It would be nice to go through the world without that. It would be nice to do something without thinking ahead and taking into consideration the reactions of everyone else and then changing my action to accomodate.

I remember learning about this in Theories class. I think the concept that best explains how many of my decisions are made is Feedforward from General Semantics. Or, to use a completely different theory, it could be said that my front stage is imposing itself on my back stage. Either way. I'm not doing so great.