08
Expectations and Beliefs
Filed Under (Writing, Writing Prompts) by Kari on 08-02-2010
My husband and I were talking today about expectations and beliefs.
I am a firm believer in self-fulfilling prophecy. That is to say, if you believe you’re going to fail at something, then you probably will fail. This is the philosophy behind a lot of the focus of the public school system (or was, when an aquaintance was getting his Master’s). And they are completley correct in saying that kids need to believe in themselves in order to be able to succeed in life.
What they are NOT correct about is to the extreme the school system wants to focus on raising children’s self-esteem. Self-esteem doesn’t come from a bottle nor does it come from being put into positions where it is impossible to fail. As I have said before, the thrill of success is only matched by the thrill of escaping failure. Or, in other, more familiar words, you cannot succeed unless you take the risk of failure.
You can nuture an atmosphere where children begin to develop their own self-esteem. Some kids may be better at Mathematics, some at English, some at Science, some at Mechanics… But they have to have the chance to figure out for themselves the areas where they excel. Once they do, they then learn to set their own expectations of themselves.
When setting these expectations, you have to have a balance of realism. Realistic beliefs go a long way to helping build self-esteem and I think people who are truly successful and innovative have taken baby-steps towards their expectations, learning as they go along that they can achieve more than they expect.
You can outshine your expectations, but not your beliefs. It’s a balancing act — if you don’t believe you can meet (or exceed) your expectations of yourself, you probably won’t meet your goal and your goal is a false goal, doomed to failure from the beginning.
Yeah, what’s this got to do with writing?
As a writer, I am all too familiar with the Grumpy Editor Man who lives inside all of us. He takes away any itsy-bitsy little thread resembling a smidge of self-esteem, especially when in front of the All-Powerful Blank Page.
But I also know if I set expectations and then meet them every day, I will increase that thread of self-esteem and the Grumpy Editor Man will have to go away and come back and visit me the next time I have a Blank Page (or a New Project) in front of me. You will begin to believe in yourself and you will start the long, difficult road to success. Just keep moving and meeting your expectations of yourself.











