Situations and expectations

Where do our personalities and behaviors come from? 

Are they hereditary or do they come from where and how we were raised?... Or somewhere else entirely?

Successful people practice helpful behaviors that enable them to achieve more in life. But what if their behaviors were not from their genes or from where they were raised but merely a reflection of the situation they are in. What if people subconsciously acted a certain way in a situation because they are expected to.

Expectations seem to play a heavy role in how we act in every situation. For instance, a CEO is generally expected to display confidence, intelligence and authority, whereas a prisoner might be expected to act unruly or disobedient. These are stereotypes, and whether we like to admit it or not, our brains very often use stereotypes to make sense of the world. Stereotypes use past memories to predict a future event. We are all victim to stereotypes.

You have just finished eating at your favorite restaurant and you are ready to pay. The check comes out and you stare at it for a moment while you calculate twenty percent of the $12.84 meal. Why did you leave a twenty percent tip? While you may be a genuinely nice person, that's not why you left a twenty percent tip, or a tip at all for that matter. You left it because you were expected to. Yes, expectations play a large role in everyday situations as well as the roles we play in our lives.

Successful people have a way of putting themselves into situations where they are expected to succeed. They are able to manipulate bad situations into good ones and when they have succeeded in the past, they are expected to succeed in the future which keeps them at the top.

I challenge you to think about how expectations play a role in your life. Place yourself in situations where you are expected to succeed and see how well you perform. 

"High expectations are the key to everything"

-Sam Walton