Great Expectations

What are your expectations of yourselves?

How do you rate yourself? How do you see yourself?

These are the types of questions that one rarely asks themselves. I guess it’s difficult to make a judgement call of how you’ve met your expectations Or how much of a bad-ass you are at something. For instance, I can be telling myself that I’ve met all my expectations set by myself and others, just because that’s what I want to hear.

It goes back to the question of how DO you rate yourself? Do you bring your A-game all the time?

A conversation with my superior at work made me stop and give this idea a thought. Apparently, from other people’s perspective, I set high expectations of myself. If a task is given to me, I’ll mull it over and decide, “This is not going to work” or “This is too much” or something along those lines.

It appears as though, through my initial analysis of the said project, if I’m unable to produce a masterpiece, I will back away from whatever it is they dropped on my table. I have it somewhere in me that if I’m unable to produce a brilliant piece of work, it’s either not worth my effort or I’m not willing to have my name on it. I’d imagine someone asking, “Who did this piece of shit?” and all eyes are staring directly at me. I can’t have that on my conscience. That’s the flaw of being a perfectionist. I can’t just wing it or go with the flow.

I highly suspect that this behavior was imbedded way back in school, always thinking that I’m going to flunk an exam, always expecting the worst. And it’s dragged on to my adult life. I’ve never given myself any credit for all the effort that I’ve put in, irregardless of the score that’s on the page. In a perfect world, 100% effort equates to 100% output, but that just doesn’t translate in real life. Shit happens along the way to throw the equation off balance.

When trying or doing new things, people always say to just put in your best effort and try but what’s the point of trying if you know you’re going to make a mess out of it or producing only sub-standard results? I don’t want to be remembered by that piece of shoddy work.

I know I’m better than that.