My coworkers expect me to show up at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday to answer questions on Zoom. Mortgage and credit card companies expect me to pay my bills on time. The elderly seniors who live with me expect me to have their meals ready on time every day.
These are expectations borne out of social contracts—with repercussions, sometimes dire, if I don’t uphold my end of the bargain.
But there’s another category of expectations, the kind we quietly impose on ourselves. What we believe we should or shouldn’t say, how we think we should look, or why we believe people should exhibit age-appropriate behaviors. I’m not exaggerating when I say we each have thousands of such expectations, even if we can’t articulate them clearly. I like to call these the Pegasus expectations—mythical yet with elaborate, universal storylines.
We prefer to remain silent when the right thing would be to speak up, for fear of offending the speaker. We judge others (and ourselves) for eating the wrong types of foods, or eating too much food, or not enough food, because we believe doing so deviates from our deeply conditioned cultural norms, which, by the way, are constantly in a state of flux. But we are still stuck in 1992 to notice.
Unlike expectations from voluntary sources (jobs or bills) or an inherent sense of duty (family commitments), Pegasus expectations are often a product of how we perceive the world and how we’d like others to perceive us. And they are driven by our basic emotional needs—to garner attention, to belong, to be liked.
However, instead of springing us forward, Pegasus expectations hold us back. They tie us down, overwhelm us, and make us dislike ourselves when we inevitably fail to meet them. The obvious solution to the problem would be to learn to release expectations that don’t serve us.
As an experiment, I started with a quest this week to let go of one minor Pegasus expectation. I took up a minor digital detox every day. Instead of responding like a Pavlovian dog to my phone and computer’s beeps and dings every 30 seconds, I decided to forgo checking my emails, phone calls, and social media messages until I felt it was time. As a result, the great Black Friday deal on a handheld vacuum cleaner is now sold out; I forgot a close friend’s birthday; and I missed the registration deadline for a music workshop I really wanted to take.
For context (and for people who don’t know me), here’s a confession: I get FOMO from something as pedestrian as watching Instagram stories of people buying groceries. My whole identity is tied to Zero Inbox, so to let messages pile up—unaddressed—gives me indigestion.
Others seem to have noticed the changes, too. Two friends have already called to ask if I’m okay, because I’m a key contributor to the endless stream of irrelevant messages in our group chats.
I’ll admit. This whole releasing expectations business is hard. Instead of feeling unburdened when I don't check my emails, I feel the mounting pressure of unattended messages. My brain has tried hard to return to its comfort zone (my old, obsessive phone-checking self), suggesting scenarios that almost sounded convincing: “What if someone had an accident and they were trying to reach you for help?”, “What if someone stole your SSN and bought themselves a beach home in Malibu with your name on the mortgage?”
But I’m digging in. I’ve heard it gets better.
For starters, I’m somewhat surprised that the world seems to be operating quite well even without my reaction emojis. That it’s okay, even gratifying, to let someone else enjoy the Black Friday deal of the decade.
I’m also starting to develop a sense of discernment about what matters and what doesn’t.
The Bhagavad Gita does not mince words when it comes to expectations. In two verses, it sums up the entire human condition.
“When a person dwells on the objects of the senses, attachment to them is born.
From attachment arises desire; from desire, anger is born.
From anger comes delusion; from delusion, loss of memory.
From loss of memory arises the destruction of discrimination.
From the destruction of discrimination, one is lost.”
— Bhagavad Gita 2:62–63
My next goal is a bit loftier. I want to try letting go of my expectations of others (okay, just a few “insignificant” ones). It shouldn’t be hard to pick a handful from the ten-volume collection of expectations I’ve meticulously compiled for everyone around me. The good news? No one else will ever know, because I’ve never shared what I expect from them.
It turns out that releasing expectations doesn’t make life smaller. It makes me lighter.
What expectations (cultural, familial, personal, professional) are you ready to release?