Expectation is the Mother of Creation

I had a little paper snippet I carried around in my Franklin Covey paper planner (showing my age) that I’d cut out of Reader’s Digest a million years ago. Placed under an embroidery cat from a card my sister had given me I carried it for over 17 years in my diary. It was possibly a bit “straight” for me, (condescending, conservative, slightly pompous) but still I liked the sentiment of it, phrases such as “the person you choose to marry is as deserving of the courtesies and kindnesses you bestow upon your friends”. The one that struck deep with me was number 4 “believe in the best rather than the worst. People have a way of living up or down to your opinion of them”. If that isn’t code for Law of Attraction, I don’t know what is, though I had no idea for all those years. What I had read about, which also affected me profoundly (also in the Reader Digest I suspect) is what I have since discovered is called the Pygmalion effect proved by the Rosenthal-Jacobson study in 1968. All I knew was that a bunch of teachers had been told that their classes had been tested with some new IQ test that could determine who would do better that year, in comparison to their peers. The results were staged and 20% of each class was randomly assigned the designation of “intellectual bloomer”. Without fail, and regardless of ability, every child that had been classified as an intellectual bloomer, improved. Through expectation alone. Expectation of the teachers alone was enough to boost the children’s performance. The research that prompted this study was done in 1911, this stuff isn’t new.

When certifying for the Emotion Code, I spent a lot of time with case studies, people and pets I didn’t know, as well as with friends. At some point along the way I had considered expectation with animals and I remember mentioning it, casually, to a friend about her large, noisy German Shepherd who barked constantly at the hedge when people went past. After I’d worked on him to release his frantic desire to protect them from what he saw as a threat (strangers approaching the house), I told her to just accept that he was now perfectly behaved and not to allow her mind to “expect” his bad behaviour. The results were incredible. I like to think the healing helped some but I suspect, far more potent was her confidence in my healing, allowing her to expect his better behaviour, thereby getting it. Unfortunately it didn’t last forever, but was that him changing or her expectation lapsing? Sadly not many of us are very good at expecting good results, especially where we’ve failed or been let down before, never mind expecting them to last, we’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for it all to go Pete Tong. We never got around to doing it again for various reasons, but I’m sure if we repeated it a few times, and reinforced her positive expectation of him, his barking would have ceased long term.

Obviously I can’t go much further in any writing now without referring to my new found love of “Kate’s TV”, which, whilst I was bewitched by RuPaul, “Kate’s TV” was actually born by the Great Pottery Throw Down. In the current series the first one I watched was mesmerising and because I couldn’t wait a week for the next in the current series I watched all the old ones. Thank goodness for TV on demand. In the first episode that I saw, I watched the potters make a 3D building out of clay and I was absolutely smitten with it. They did a lighthouse, a fantasy house, an engine house….It stirred up a creative force in me that literally filled my veins with a desire to create. To give it all up and buy a potter’s wheel and live happily in a shed at the bottom of the garden. Not that you needed a wheel for this challenge, but you may as well have one if you’re going to live in a shed. I was completely besotted with the detail, the passion, the talent, everything, and that triggered me to continue watching a series I had previously shown no interest in. So this was the first time I’d watched any sort of competition like this, I may have flicked through Bake Off, but I’m not really impressed by cooking – decorating cakes, yes, certainly, but I’ve never watched a program where you watch a dozen people doing challenges and competition doesn’t really fire me up at all, and I hate the imposition of “pressure” that seems to be essential viewing in everything now. Remember when Ice Road Truckers was just the right amount of scary because you didn’t want them to fall through the ice? But you could manage it because you sort of assumed these guys knew what they were doing and they weren’t about to take stupid risks despite the voiceover implying it was certain death. Well you can’t watch it now without being constantly terrorised by the spectre not of instant death, but of dismissal, or failure because they are a minute behind schedule, endless drama because BillyBob’s speeding towards financial ruin, and missing this arbitrary, artificially imposed timescale spells the end not only for BillyBob but the whole company and community. It’s just too stressful to watch now.

Back to the Throw Down. If you want a reason to watch it, Keith Brymer Jones is reason enough, Gruff, hairy judge, he literally wells up at anything he finds beautiful, and shamelessly cries on TV. I love him for that, I love that he chokes on his words when he praises someone’s work, and I love that almost inevitably, the person he’s judging, and/or, one of the other judges, also wells up just at the sight of him crying. It’s fabulous. And I cry right along with him. But you can’t help but end up loving all of these people, the contestants, watching them, as you do, week after week, conquer their inner demons, discover their strengths and talents, and apparently, forming genuine, strong and meaningful relationships with their fellow contestants. It’s really happy viewing. But having watched all the series I could get my hands on (if anyone knows how to get the BBC2 episodes, please let me know I’ll give you a free reading!) and then RuPaul’s Drag Race, what I reflected on most was this constant referring to “personal growth”. The apparently incredible improvement these people achieved just by taking part. Potters and Drag Queens alike. How? Learning from each other? Certainly there would be a bit of that, but it’s a competition, not a teaching opportunity, I can see that you’d get inspired by your fellow contestants, but what actually makes you suddenly improve? “Grow”? I personally don’t think that being put under pressure necessarily “improves” one, and I’m finally learning the more space I give myself, the more surprising, unexpected creativity sneaks in. What I will concede is that by stretching yourself a little bit more, and by achieving it, you become a little bit more confident, and your expectation grows. And I think this is the key. This situation forces people out of their comfort zone. And as they survive each step, they begin to realise that the judges and their fellow competitors, expect them to be able to do it. Otherwise they wouldn’t be there. Is that what all this growth is about? Not just stepping out of your comfort zone, but by realising that just by being there you have the support and expectation of the judges, the program makers, the audience, and to some extent, rivalry aside, the other competitors, to succeed?

Meanwhile, I’ve just completed Live Streaming Pro’s 30 day challenge to get confident on camera and my biggest epiphany was simply that. I would not be here, being pushed out of my comfort zone, unless I was meant to be here. I would not be calling myself an animal communicator and an energy healer, despite all my misgivings and crises of confidence, if I wasn’t good enough. I would simply have fallen by the wayside at the hundreds of potentially confidence crippling events along the way.

But I didn’t fall. I am here. I am meant to be here, doing this.

Expectation is everything.