Thursday, August 26, 2010

Nobody's Perfect

There’s pretty much something about everyone we know that we don’t like and I am sure the same can be said about us. Without thinking about it consciously, we tend to like those people who have more of the qualities we like than dislike but even the best of the best, will have things we wish where we could change. The other day while talking to a friend they said, “I really expected more from this person, they are one of my closest friends.” The key word in what they said was, “expected”. As we talked about it some more he said, "if the shoe was on the other foot, I would have done...’’ and then he went on to say how he would have handled it. How can we hold everyone to a standard based on what we would do as opposed to what they would do? Maybe the things that occur to us, don’t occur to them. Maybe we have more insight or have been exposed to a different way of handling things. For many reasons, we all handle things our own ways because we are all individuals with a lifetime of different experiences. The key is managing our expectations of others as well as our interpretations of their behaviors. We cant assume that because our doing something means something, that it means the same when another does it. The fact that one might apologize quickly when in the wrong, doesn’t mean everyone will. Maybe it just comes easier to one person than another. I would assume that it means more coming from the person whom its harder for. The point is that everyone is different and therefore we all handle things differently. If we hold everyone to our standard and expectations, it will be hard to find anyone that doesn’t eventually disappoint us. In the end, I gave my friend this example that has always been helpful to me.
“I have many pets. I have two birds, a rabbit, two dogs, a cat and some rats in the attic but they don’t count. I may like some of my pets more than others but enjoy all of them. I never ask the birds to sit or play dead. I never try to put my rabbit on my finger and ask him to sing or talk. I never get mad at the dog for not using the litter box and I never take the rabbit for a jog. I enjoy them all for what they can offer and my expectations for each one of my pets are in line with what they are capable of offering. Just imagine how frustrated I would be, if my expectations were not.”


This example is by no means comparing the ones we love to our pets but meant more as an illustration of the influence our expectations can have on our relationships.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I loved your example! You can see your point so clearly. (Maybe you can teach you rats to play dead, without the play part.)

Anonymous said...

Great post!

Alex said...

Thanks, for the encouragement, I will tell the rats you both said hi.