Great Expectations
Posted on March 16th, 2004Sorry for the little pun in the subject title, but I suppose that I wanted to be a tad creative. 🙂
Anyhow, onto the meat of my latest thoughts… In a recent conversation with Laura and Kat, I said that I am extremely hard on myself, and they nodded as if they had known this for seemingly forever. It’s no secret that I do expect a lot out of myself, and it’s been like this for a long time. But it occurred to me that they thought of it as a bad thing. I don’t know what to say to that… While I have to admit that I often set myself up for disappointment, I can’t help but see the benefits of having exacting standards. How can I reach the stars if I’m barely looking up?
I just wanted to get this out there and maybe see what anyone else thinks… But I’m awfully tired now, so I think that I’m going to head to bed. Good night, and God bless!
March 21st, 2004 at 10:44 am
[I was going to post this a few days ago, but this “Blurty” thing was very much busted]
Strangely enough, I heard that song just as I came onto your website.
There’s nothing wrong with expecting a great deal from oneself. It does, however, become an issue once you begin to punish yourself for not living up to your own standards. Being raised to expect a lot of myself as well, I have often been incredibly frustrated when I am unable to rise up to the challenge (see: old calculus exams). However, all that needs to be done is to, on occassion, re-evaluate what really are one’s priorities, and determine whether or not what they expect of themselves is not only attainable, but also necessary. Then one can truly realize what they need to be paying attention to.
Anyways…back to studying for a solid mechanics quiz…I’ve been looking for an excuse not to study, and this proved appealing.
OH…btw…tired at 1030? You’ve been on co-op too long.
– H
March 24th, 2004 at 7:15 am
Hey now… 10:30 is pretty late 🙂 Unfortunately, I haven’t been to bed any time before 11:30 in quite a long while, so my body is starting to feel it.
But onto the main issue at hand: I believe that this is another example of something that requires a very delicate balance to be just right. It’s so easy to see-saw back and forth with being too lenient or too harsh but, given the choice, I’d rather be harsher on myself than let myself off on everything. I have to agree that it is a problem if I were to punish at myself for every shortfall, and I don’t. I do, however, often get upset with myself.. sometimes to the point where I’m blind to what good I have been able to accomplish.
I don’t know… there’s certainly no easy way out of this. Maybe with some time and a lot of grace, I’ll be able to live the life I would like to live, but it will not be an easy road there.
JC
P.S. It’s a fun song to play, too! We should jam sometime in the summer when you visit Waterloo *cough cough*