As humans, sometimes we may feel like a stress ball. You know when you get really anxious and someone hands you a stress ball, you squeeze it as hard as you can from every surface to get your stress or anger out. But what if you are the stress ball? The pressure of expectations everybody has just squeezes you into a teeny tiny clump of sheer anxiety. Then what do you do?
I don’t think I have to tell you that we live in a fast paced life. Everybody just wants to go somewhere, do something and never really take the time to take a breath. That’s not because we want to ,of course, that’s just how we need to live to survive. But why? Why do we always have to feel like we have to be the best at something? Why do we feel like we have to succeed all the time? It’s probably because of expectations.
When we say expectations it doesn’t necessarily have to be from someone else. You may have big expectations from yourself, but also you may be crushed under the expectations of your family ,friends or school . Your school want you to succeed so that they can advertise themselves to make sure that they seem like a perfect school and make money. Your parents want you to succeed because they can brag about you or maybe they just want you to have a “good” life. At the end of the day, everyone thinks about themselves, but no one considers how you feel under every possible pressure that you can think of.
Since no one thinks about you, you should think about yourself. A wise person once said that we can’t control what other people do, but we can control how we react. we can’t control the expectations that people have for us. But we can control which ones to take into consideration while we’re building our lives. This means that maybe you shouldn’t care when your aunt says “You need to get your life together, you’re falling behind everyone else.”or when your dad says “You’re gonna major in that? You’re never gonna make money.”
Just remember, you know what’s best for you and only you know what success means to you. You decide your goal in life and your goal shouldn’t be based on other people. It should entirely be based on what you want. Some people set expectations and pressure you because they think that you would be happier that way. But they don’t know you like you know yourself. You would know what makes you happy. They don’t. So try to only care about the things that matter. By being selective about your attention and your care, you can live a less anxious life.