American philosopher, founder of general semantics Alfred Korzybski said: A map is not a territory. What you expect from this article is your map, and what you read next is already territory. It is quite normal to expect that we will receive bread if we paid for bread, and that our key will fit the lock of our house - and when this does not happen, then something is wrong. When reality does not match our expectations, we are disappointed. And this can lead to loss of interest (in work, in relationships, in goals), and sometimes in depression. Being fixated on expectations can seriously ruin our lives.... He was flying from London to Astana and was worried. Tomorrow is her birthday, and they decided to spend it together. He has six months left to study, and then they can get married. Even though they communicated on Skype every day, it’s still not what will happen tomorrow. Tomorrow he would propose to her, and this was worrying. They agreed that he would pick her up at seven in the evening, and they would go to dinner at a restaurant. He fluttered around all day looking for a gift, flowers, a table in a restaurant, and in the evening he called to pick her up, but she didn’t pick up. He called three times. And she cried and was terribly angry with him, the evening was ruined... In the morning he flew away, and that’s it... they didn’t communicate anymore. A week later, she, angry, sat at my reception and dreamed that he would also be in pain, like her . After all, he knew(?) how important it was for her that he congratulate her. He should have called three times during the day and congratulated her first at 12 at night, but he didn’t do this, so let him roll. The guy left without talking to her, and this is how the romantic story of two loving people ended. We always expect something. These same expectations have destroyed more than one marriage. Many people expect that a candy-bouquet relationship will last forever, that this love-passion should always continue. And when the fuse subsides, the spouses (or one of them) begin to terrorize each other. Each person has certain expectations about everything that happens. Our thinking works on the “if-then” principle, assuming the probabilities of events, and this is convenient. Why are there so many disappointments in real life after long-term correspondence? It's simple. People endow their interlocutor with qualities that they would like to see in him and when he does not show them, they are disappointed. We are not talking about getting rid of expectations, we are talking about being more flexible about them. This will reduce the negative emotions associated with expectations. Our expectations affect both us and other people. Let me remind everyone of the well-known experiment with students and teachers. Researchers Rosenthal and Jacobson came to one of the schools in San Francisco at the very beginning of the school year . For this study, children were selected at random, many of them did not show themselves in school. And some were even considered weak. But the teachers were told that these were very gifted children. Therefore, they need to be given special attention, supported and promoted. Naturally, the teacher believed that this student had exceptional abilities and expected high performance from him. And the child actually showed good results. So, the teacher’s expectations became an incentive for the student’s success. Well, I don’t think it’s worth talking about the “placebo effect” here, except that kids don’t know about it. If expectations do not correspond to reality, they can even destroy someone’s life.. ..Timur ran home to show his certificate for taking second place in the mathematics Olympiad. What did the child feel when the father said that it was stupid to rejoice at failure - second place is not first? Or the mother scolds her son for getting a C in English: “How stupid you are!! Nothing will come of you! You, like your dad, have no brains at all!” Instead of motivating their children to achieve better results, parents sometimes “slap their children on the wrist,” dooming them to failure. Use your expectations correctly and usefully: Note what you think.