Locking yourself in your mind through Expectations - day 523

In this blog we will have a look at 'Expectations' to potential (positive/negative) outcomes and how within that, we lock ourselves into the mind, to specific experiences that we would rather live without.

So what is an 'expectation'? Let's have a look at the definition:

noun

1. a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future.
   "reality had not lived up to expectations"

• a belief that someone will or should achieve something.
  "students had high expectations for their future"

From <https://www.google.com/search?q=expectation&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8>

In looking at the word 'expectation', nothing looks out of the ordinary - we all know what the word 'expectation' means. What we haven't consider is how the word 'expectation' is directly involved with how we create ourselves and our lives as well as how we lock ourselves into the limited realm of our minds.

Let me explain:

When we look at a baby coming into this world, their mind is clear and sound. There isn't yet any memory base for them to work with.. Everything is new, everything is to be explored and they have NO expectation of something in particular to happen. They are innocently exploring their reality.

Now, when a baby touches hot surface and get hurt for example, a memory of the experience is logged in their memory data base and from there, one of two things can happened:

1. They log the memory has a supportive memory - they learn that touching hot surface will harm their body and therefore, they will not touch hot surfaces again without protection devices/tools.
2. They log the memory with contaminated negative reaction of fear to the experience of touching hot surface. In that, they are locking themselves into the mind, with fear of touching hot surfaces and thus, when hot surface is around, they are expecting that the worse would happened and they will get hurt again. In this scenario, the memory is not backed up with practical solution of for example, preventing the harm by using specific devices/tools

Years go by and the baby is now a parent whom have babies of themselves. As a parent, you do not want negative experiences to happen to your child. And as a parent, you are holding all your memories from your life experiences which one of them would be the experience of touching hot surface.

Your baby is standing around you while you are cooking and the oven is relatively hot so you don't want your baby to put their hands on the oven. Now, depends on whether your childhood memory was stored as a supportive memory or contaminated memory, you will act the following:

Say your memory is stored as a supportive memory, you will calmly guide your baby to be aware of the hot surface (oven) and you will explain to them the consequences of touching the hot surface. In that, you will also show them that when you touch the oven's door, you always use gloves to protect you from the heat.

Say your memory is stored as a contaminated memory, you will react to your child coming close to the oven and you would shout: "NO, don't touch that, it is dangerous".

Now, all parents know that usually when you shout "No", your child will do exactly the opposite and essentially, unless you remove the baby from the kitchen, most likely that they will touch the hot surface and a whole crying saga will start, you will feel frustrated.

How all of that has to do with expectations? Let's go one layer deeper.

In scenario 1 where your memory is stored as a supportive memory, you are EXPECTING your baby to explore everything that you are busy with, and one of them is the oven, because you are busy open the oven's door to check the food. However, there is no part of you reacting to the expectation of your baby touching the oven's door and you simply know that there is a possibility that your baby is going to touch the oven's door and when the moment is here, you take a breath and you start explaining them the consequences of touching hot surface and how to work around the heat, say, using specific gloves to protect the hands from the heat.

But in scenario 2, where you are storing a negative emotional experience of fear, you are EXPECTING in fear that your baby is going to touch the oven's door and with that expectation, you are locking yourself in your mind, in fear of potential consequences and guess what will happened - as mentioned before, most likely that your baby would touch that surface because what do we know about fear? As long as you fear something, you will create it.

Will continue more in the next blog.

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Art work 

Expectation - by Valentin Podpomogov, Museum of Modern Art, Yerevan.