BY PRIMROSE GURA – Do you sometimes feel like you are not good enough, not pretty enough, not successful enough, not tall enough or you wish you were someone else. It is because we have let social expectations regulate the choices we make or set the model of how our lives should be. We have allowed other people to influence our views on certain things about life and we feel our opinions are not ideal. This is how we lose control of our lives because we are now chasing after bars that have been set for us by other people
This begins from the time we are born. Our parents set ground rules on how we should behave. When we go to school there are expectations on how we should conduct ourselves. When we start to work our employers have certain expectations for us. Somehow this makes us develop our own expectations of how we should behave. Expectations are not bad but become a problem when other people’s expectations start weighing us down that we start living to their approval and lose ourselves in the process.
We continuously want to please or impress others at our own expense. We abandon ourselves and are at the mercy of others.We neglect our needs, our values because we want to please everyone. The need to accept what is said to be ideal by someone else becomes the better option. Is it possible to please everyone? Expectations can be looked at as illusions because people feel disappointed ,frustrated and depressed when they are not living the way they want to but rather they are living someone else’s life.
You cannot control what other people think about you. But you can control how you think about yourself . It’s not easy to ignore social expectations because they kind of determine every aspect of our lives. Most people fall into depression because they are not meeting the expectations. The ability to trust and have confidence in yourself and worth is a step towards dealing with this problem. You have to take charge of your life and not let anyone or anything influence how you view yourself.
Speak up. Most people have fallen trap to societal expectations because they cannot speak up. They continuously let other people to take charge of their life. Other people can live their life through others. This has affected a lot of people who have low self esteem .They allow to be used by others and sometimes not out of hate but because they seem to be okay with what they are told to do. It’s okay to have a choice, its okay to say no and it’s okay to ignore.