How many times have we encountered situations where in people will tell you “Stay away from that guy, he’s no good” or “He’s ok, you’ll surely like him/her”. Then even before we even met him/her in person we started pre-judging him? Then how many times did it end up that the person we expect to dislike wound up as one of our best friends while the guy that we are expected to like turned out to be just a casual friend or at worse became an enemy or foe. Why does this happen?

When someone tells you “Don’t hang out with that guy, he’s this and that”, whether we like it or not, subconsciously we begin “to expect”. We start drawing pictures in our mind of all the devilish and evil things he/she will do to us. A lot of times it came to a point that we haven’t even met them yet we already started to hate them. How unfair indeed for them! Fact is every individual is unique and personality-blending is a case to case situation. How many times did we avoid these persons even before we get to know them? How many times before did I pre-judged? Of course some of them turned out to be true but the chances of them turning out otherwise are just as equally possible.

Ok, let’s get back to analyzing the case. Once we start to build up expectations, we have in mind a person who’s not only unpleasant and disgusting, but someone who doesn’t deserve our attention. And when on certain circumstances we are forced to meet them, we start to fear them. Yet when we did finally met them, we end up going home telling ourselves “Hey, he/she isn’t that bad, he/she seems ok to me.” Why? Because at the back of our mind all worst scenarios are already played out (which of course was brought about by our unrealistic (and unfair) expectations), so that by the time we get in real touch with them nothing could be worse than what we imagined. The same thing the other way around, when someone tells us “he’s ok, he’s super nice (heard that line before?)”, then we begin to picture a saint or somebody just as holy, that by the time we get to meet them all his virtues are already played out in our mind and we end up going home telling ourselves “Well, he’s ok, but not as good as advertised (of course the reason is because we expected too much).” That’s unfair as well because he’s human just like us and it’s our too-much-expectations that’s ruining his image in our eyes.

Same goes when someone tells you “I’ll introduce you to this girl, she’s very pretty” or “you know this person? She’s really not good looking at all.” How many times have we ended up going home thinking otherwise? We wound up saying “Not that pretty really!” or “she isn’t that ugly, actually I think she’s cute”.

Try this: Tell someone that the guy approaching him is one generous person then tell another person how stingy he is. He will give them the same amount of money, but believe me, you are going to hear varying comments. Why? Because guy # 1 expects a generous guy (thus he expects more), while guy # 2 is picturing a stingy guy (thus he expects nothing).

When we expect bad things, we are actually starting from ground -zero (0%) and it’s nowhere to go but up, that means anything above zero is better already. When we expect good things, we are starting from 100% and it’s going nowhere but down, which means anything below 100 is a disappointment already.

How many relationships began from “disliking each other” only to hear years after that they turned into a happy couple (or best of friends) and also how many love at 1st sight cases turned out into bitter-hate relationship?

So what’s the point in telling you all these?

When someone tells you this and that about a certain person, I’m not saying “shut them out”, please listen as well. But avoid making conclusions about them, avoid making having expectations as well. Instead go out there and meet with them personally, get to know them from ground zero and free of prejudice. Always go in with the mentality of “I still don’t know this person yet.” instead of drawing pictures about what you hear from others. You judge them only when you get to know them personally. You try that and believe me you’ll end up with a ton-load less of disappointments and an even more ton-loads of pleasant surprises.

After all as I’ve always said how many times did it end up that the person we expect to dislike wound up as one of our best friends while the guy that we are expected to like turned out to be just a casual friend or at worse became an enemy or foe.

“Expectations beget disappointments.

No expectations, no disappointments.”