You are not living in a fish bowl
“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” — Bruce Lee
Did you ever feel like your actions and decisions are being watched and critically analyzed by people around you? Did that feeling influence the decisions you make? For example, did you ever let go of an opportunity because you thought people around you may not think suitably well of it.
More often than not, authenticity and spontaneity are sacrificed to adjust to people’s expectations of you. You inhibit your natural flow of thoughts and actions to align with expectations of people around you. You feel like you live in a fish bowl where everyone is watching your every move. You end up living an externally enforced life and this leaves you with a strong sense of living a limited life. Many a people live off their entire lives with extinguished or unlit sparks.
This can be averted. More to the point, this should be averted.
“Having expectations of others means you are trying to fix their lives. Don’t do that. Fix your own life — that is freedom” — Sadhguru
It is a fact that you are judged by others. You can’t help it. It is in the essential nature of humans to judge others. And also, it is a fact that humans are inescapably social beings. No matter what the modern “on-line” world leads us to believe, belonging to society is a primal need for humans. So, you cannot avoid humans and hence cannot get away from their judgements. Then the trick is in balancing our urge of expressing ourselves fully with the weight of others’ expectations. One at the expense of the other will inevitably lead to problems for us.
Why write about this in a blog on decision making? Because we constantly make sub-par decisions in our lives just to cater to people’s expectations of us.
My grandfather, despite being highly educated by the standards of his time, had to take up farming as was expected of him. From the many years of my interactions with him, it was clear to me that he was not interested in farming at all but spent most of his life being a farmer anyway. My father-in-law on the other hand bucked society’s expectations, left a highly secure government job and pursued private jobs and retired from a job that defined his personality more closely. One more personal example, despite tremendous opposition, my father too left a highly secure and progressive career in a public sector undertaking (similar to a government job) to pursue his own interests. Unfortunately for him and us, his private enterprise failed with non-trivial financial implications for us.
I have come across a whole lot of people during my corporate career who tried in vain to get ahead in their careers by doing exactly what their boss, their peers and their teams expected of them. Where is extraordinary value when you do only the expected things? And if you are not creating extraordinary value, how will you move ahead in your career?
On the flip side, risk with doing things outside of expectations is that you may go wrong, you may make mistakes. And in case of mistakes, you will fail alone — you will not have the security cover of collective failure. Even when you do things in accordance with others’ expectations, you may still be judged unfavourably because others’ expectations of you are generally fluid.
You get ahead in life by acting in accordance with your intuition. Your intuition is prescient in spotting opportunities that are suited to your strengths. Your intuition is also somewhat of a skill. It can be deepened and sharpened by mindful living and critical introspection of your thoughts.
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need, and the things you own, end up owning you.” — The Fight Club
Definitely, advertising plays a part in setting expectations of what a good life is but it is largely our own need to be accepted by society that sets us on the path of abandoning our true calling.
On the flip side, however, nothing — absolutely nothing in life — can be achieved without involvement of others in your lives. Every endeavour is a collective endeavour. So, the idea is not to become a social recluse but to hold yourself sufficiently back from others’ expectations such that you live the life you want to live.
Bottomline
“He was swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.” ― Robert Jordan
Society needs you and you need society. But the real value you create for yourself and your society is by being sufficiently “unique” you. Your biggest competitive advantage is being you. Your best chance at extraordinary success is by playing to your strengths. However, as social beings, we are programmed to consider others’ expectations of us. There is no escaping this. Living entirely along others’ expectations leaves us with insipid lives. The trick is being just enough (un)reasonable that you accommodate others’ expectations only to the extent that they do not inhibit you from living your natural life. Chances are that your claim on others’ mindshare is nowhere near what you imagine it to be. It is just your imagination that you live in a fishbowl!
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Thanks for taking time to read this. In this newsletter, I share my learnings that could help you improve your decisions and make meaningful progress on your goals and desires. I share stuff that I have personally experienced or experimented with. If you find this newsletter worthwhile, please do share it with others — of course, only if you do not mind it.
A bit on my background
I worked in India and the USA with most of my work experience with large global organizations. My last corporate role was the Head of Technology for “Treasury and Trade Management Solutions” for Citigroup South Asia cluster. At Citi, I set up from my Business Unit and grew it from a team size of 1 to over 1900 Citi employees in a span of eight years.
I quit Citi in 2021 to focus exclusively on my interest area of improving decision making. In the last 2 years, I studied this topic closely and developed a training course to systematically improve decision making ability. I’m also an Investment Advisor (RIA) registered with the Securities and the Exchange Board of India (SEBI). As an RIA, I analyze and prepare financial plans to help people achieve their financial goals.
I have done MBA in Strategy and Finance from Carlson School of Management at University of Minnesota and B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay.
More about me
Rama on Linkedin (CV and Blogs)
