I was talking with a friend last night about standards, and expectations and I was surprised with what was coming out of my mouth and what I was saying. I realized that there is a lot to be said about standards vs. expectations, so I’m gonna have a nice little (that will probably end up big) blog post about them.
Standards- A Standard is something that is a realistic all encompassing thing/view. It’s not necessarily what you do, or what someone else does but more about all of what you say, do and are. It’s also how you do and say things, not just what you do or say and are. It’s a lot like a value.
Expectations- Expectations are something that come with standards. When you have a standard you show it by what you expect and do. Your expectations come with standards not the other way around.
An example
My standard might be that my future/current girlfriend/spouse pursues a relationship with God.
(this could easily be reworded to say “I value a girl who has pursues a relationship with God”)
The expectations could (key word COULD not would or are) be
- She prays on a reguar basis
- She reads her Bible regularly
- She goes to church
- She asks herself “What Would Jesus Do?” in situations
See, the standard is kind of like a value, its the big picture, the expectations come from trying to follow that standard. Another big thing that helps with this is to think about the fact that expectations can chance. Expectations might change with your life but standards do not.
For example
You might have the same standard as mentioned above but the expectations might change because of how your life is at the time.
For example your expectation that you go to church might change because you have to work on Sunday mornings. Now it would be hard to expect someone to go to a Sunday morning service when they work during that time and so it’s not an option. So the expectation might change to something like “She is an active member of a small group in order to be learn about God.”
See that’s the other thing. The expectations have to go with standards. You can back up your expectations with your standard. Though you might not go to church you might go to a small group and you can say “I go to this small group because I want to be fed and learn about God even though I’m not going to church. I’m pursuing my relationship with Christ.”
If you have expectations but no standards it can be problematic. Then your expectations become the only goal and you don’t know why you have them as goals and expectations. This can cause you or a relationship to be unhealthy. Say your job changes so you have to work Sunday mornings and your expectation was that you go to church. If you only have that expectation but no standard you might get mad at yourself for not being able to go and mad at your work for not allowing you to, but you don’t try and solve it or even work through it and figure out why you had this expectation. You view it like this “I’m not going to church, I’m not meeting my expectation. I’m mad at myself. I’m mad at my work because they are making me skip church. What can I do about it? Nothing, I can’t go to church on Sunday…. to bad”
This is why you have to have standards and with that set expectations that change to fit your standards and your life.
P.S. High standards are good (if they are realistic). High expectations are not (though this might be argued, especially if you’re open to change)
P.S.S. Whatever happened to “What Would Jesus Do?”? Was it to cliche? It is something important that I never hear or see around anymore, which is kind of sad. Hmmm… Just a thought!
