Are you handcuffed yet?

Yes, I know, it’s Monday. Which means that I should have written this blog post yesterday. I do have a really good excuse, though: I stuffed myself with crepes and escargots. In Paris. Why should I be interested, you’re asking? (Sorry for the mind read, but unless you actually tell me what you think I have no choice.) That’s a good question. I will tell you the answer in a moment. Wait ... now. Actually – there is none. I just created an expectation inside your brain to hear a logical or at least convincing explanation for my faux-pas (I’m afraid there’ll be lots of French words casually slipped in today, I hope you don’t mind). And then deliberately disappointed it. Why would I do such a thing? To make a point, of course.

When I arrived in Paris a couple of days ago I expected to get lost on the way to my friend’s house. And I did. (She found me scrutinizing the mail boxes in the lobby of the adjacent house.) I also expected les parisiens to be very helpful, generous and charming. Which they were. This phenomenon is called a self-fulfilling prophecy. It means that our expectations (a direct result of our beliefs) make us look out for experiences and information that confirm them. So of course there were people with grumpy faces and “another one of these stupid tourists” looks around me, but I or rather my expectation chose not to see them. Pretty neat, eh? Unfortunately this also works in the negative as my above mentioned lobby adventure shows. The problem is that this becomes extremely limiting when we habitually expect failure. Do I really have a bad sense of orientation? Or do I just not have enough trust in it?

I remember going to a birthday party with my parents years ago, I must have been 8 or 9. There were lots of other children and soon we had invented a new game called “Lost in the forest”. It consisted of venturing out into the woods behind the house until we felt lost and then to find our way back anyway. How? By listening to our guts. The best part was the sudden rush of exhilarating surprise when we finally saw the house and the sense of “we’ve done it!” that came with it. Although we weren’t consciously aware of it our brain had stored all the necessary information to find our way back and would release it in the form of intuitions. This actually happens all the time. Try it out. Play “Lost in the forest” (or big city if you don’t have one nearby) or invent your own version of it and be amazed by your brain.

OK, back to the expectations. People with commitment issues habitually expect to be hurt or disappointed and therefore create a wall around themselves by saying that they have commitment issues to avoid exactly that. Which in turn creates the expectation in their dating partners to get hurt or disappointed. Which they do. The question is: What came first – disappointment or expectation? Fortunately this one is not as tricky as Plato’s dilemma; it’s the expectations. They narrow your attention to what fits. It’s a safety mechanism because it makes the world predictable (just as stereotypes do). And it’s hard to get rid of because we like what we know, but you can do it. It just takes a little bit of will power and practice. And you’ll be able to surprise yourself all the time.