I'm helping a lovely couple work through some important issues in their relationship, and in our most recent meeting we discussed the tendency the wife has to hold negative predictions about many of the major goals in her life she cares about. She doubts that most of the things she wants for her future will come true. She explained that this way she's not overly disappointed at negative outcomes but she gets to be pleasantly surprised if things go well. Her philosophy was that hope and optimism are the roads to inevitable and bitter disappointment, which no one wants.
We were quickly and successfully able to track back in her life to gain a compassionate understanding of how her childhood family experiences contributed to this form of self-protection. (As is so often the case, "symptoms" start out as solutions to earlier problems.) We also got a better handle on how this "philosophy of negative expectations" contributes to her tendency toward free-floating anxiety and undermines her faith and confidence in her ability to achieve what she wants in her life.
Nobody wants to be disappointed or frustrated all the time, and one way to avoid this is to hold your expectations in check. It's easy to get caught up in the outcome of almost any endeavor. "It's not whether you win or lose but how you play the game" sounds good as a children's moral but barely seems supported in our winner-take-all culture. But as the band R.E.M. sang, "everybody hurts"; loss and failure are an integral part of life. While it's a good thing to think positively (that's what affirmations are about) expecting only the best can lead to crushing demoralization when it doesn't happen. But there's a subtle yet crucial difference between low and negative expectations.
People in 12-step recovery programs often hear the advice to "stay out of the outcomes business". As humans we are quick to assume that we know what is good or bad for our lives and we make judgments about success or failure based on this limited perspective. How many times have you suffered a loss that later turned out to have been a good thing either because of what happened later or because of how it helped you to grow as a person? If we do our best (which is setting high expectations for our actions)and give the rest to whatever higher-power-or-purpose we are able to conceive and willing to believe (which is letting go of any expectations for the outcome) then we are devoting our energies to the only thing we can influence: our selves.
Disappointment, pain and heartbreak can't be avoided on the path to a full life. By guarding against these so-called "negative" emotions we risk cutting ourselves off from the full spectrum of emotional experience that goes into the making of a complete human being. Lowered expectations about outcome are like a cushion against a hard fall, but negative expectations are more like a bed of bricks: solid to be sure but uncomfortably rigid and almost always crushing to anything underneath.
I remember a client years ago whose motto was "plan for the best, expect the worst." I was delighted when he was able to modify this essentially negative expectation just slightly to "plan for the best, prepare for the worst." After all, in the end it's not so much what you are willing to expect but what you are able to accept that matters.
So remember that a negative expectation isn't the same as a lowered expectation any more than a yelling voice is lower than a laughing voice: it's just as intense, only in the opposite direction.
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