Why We Should Live By Our Own Expectations and Ambitions

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations neither are you here to live up to mine, yeah. I don’t owe no one No obligation. No, I don’t mean none So everything is fine, fine

Peter Tosh,

I am that I am.

Scientists say that a person’s set of fingerprint is unique to oneself, it’s actually impossible finding 2 people sharing one, and even identical twins don’t despite having almost the same physical traits. Human beings are alike i.e. we have the same inner & outer human physiology like eyes, brain, legs, lungs, hands, heart, and also share common behavior or feelings like anger, love, sadness, happiness etc. But despite our similarities we’re engineered to be different from each other i.e. you’re unique to yourself, just like fingerprints there can never be another person like you. Hence it’s our uniqueness that differentiates us from others and likewise our similarities are what bond us together.

But what do I mean by being unique? What attributes make you, you? What differentiates us from others?

As we grow older and start exploring, our uniqueness plays an important role in defining ourselves as a person, and guides us in shaping our life’s goals, objectives and expectations. For example athletes have their own unique attributes working in their favor making them excel in athletics likewise for those good in academics .By continually exploiting their own uniqueness they make themselves better and in gradually learning what makes them different from others, their life’s goals, objectives & expectations are aligned in reaping maximum benefits.

In reality, majority of us never fully exploit our uniqueness for maximum benefit and end up aligning our life’s goals, objectives & expectations to external factors. We live our lives not knowing who we really are and what differentiates us from the next person?

From Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Usain Bolt, Christiano Ronaldo, Le Bron James, Lewis Hamilton, Madonna, Brad Pitt & Bill Gates; it’s their uniqueness that differentiates them from us and performing above par in their respective field. As they were growing up most of them were encouraged to exploit their unique attributes and align their life’s objectives, goals & expectations accordingly in reaping maximum benefits. That’s what makes them different from us; they focused on their unique attributes early in life and turned it to their advantage.

Imagine if Bill Gates never knew what differentiated him from the next guy he would probably be swayed by external factors; align his life’s goal, objective, and expectations to something different like being a professor and end up lecturing in a University. Microsoft would never come in existence, and most likely this article would never have been written. But thank God it’s not the case.

By the time puberty hits, our aspirations, ambitions are aligned along societal & parents’ expectations hence we strive in fulfilling what is expected from us and eventually ending up what they expect. It’s ok fulfilling what is expected from us after all our parents provide the conducive & stable environment to succeed in life and want our lives to better than theirs. So if they expect you to become an engineer in future, your goals and objectives will be aligned specifically for you in becoming one. But in doing so are we living other people’s expectations instead of our own, are we fulfilling their ambitions and ideally being a better or worse version of them.

Parents and society generally feel that we’re obligated to them since they strive in providing the best for us in living a better life and hence our duty in life is to fulfill their expectations. Which is okay but in contrast they’re limiting us in learning and developing our uniqueness that will help define us a person. If we live not knowing what differentiates us from the next person or what attributes makes you special then it’s safe to say we’re like minions with nothing special about us.

That’s why we should embrace what differentiates us from the rest, finding what attributes makes us special, unique and developing them further. If we knew what made us different from others then we could have appropriately aligned our goals, objectives and expectations in building them for maximum benefits. Thus if it’s your voice is what makes you unique from the rest, your goals, objectives and expectations should be aligned in building it further and becoming a world class musician.

Even Peter Tosh summed it, we’re not in this world to live to anyone’s expectations neither are they here to live up to ours, so we should live according to own expectations instead of someone else’s and embrace what differentiates us from others.