Get what you expect

This morning I was listening to the Russ Parr morning and they had Iyanla Vanzant, and this young guy called about how he’s really apprehensive about him re-uniting with his father who has been in jail for the past few years, because it always ends up that he gets abused. But one thing that really made me think was that Iyanla said that what you expect is what you get, NOT what you think you deserve. How many people expect to get shitted, cheated on, lied to, or just hurt but they think they deserve to be treated the complete opposite.

So many times people come into a relationship with the expectation of getting hurt that they focus so much on that, that in fact that’s all they get, hurt. I’ll take myself for example, this summer I re-met this one guy, who just so happened to be in my frat and my sands. With that, we both came to start dealing with each other timidly, but we started the beginnings of something pretty nice, nothing serious but it was cool for what it was. Then as things progressed, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen, or that I was going to hurt, this was due in part b/c previously when we first met each other and hung out, he told he cheated on his ex. I can honestly say, even to this day this has somewhat tainted my every dealings with them to a certain degree. But the bigger part, lied in me, I did not feel that someone caring for me was a possible, that there had to be some ulterior motive behind someone dealing with me. Then when things began to fizzle, I automatically erased them from my buddy lists, phone book, and pretty much tried to get rid of any memory I had of them. Why, because I felt that this was just another instance that I was getting hurt, but in reality I was reading much more in their actions than that were there, because I was seeing what I wanted, a self-fulfilling prophecy in many respects.

Now you can juxtapose that with one of my friends, he is always finding people who are willing to bend over backwards to prove their interest to him. To illustrate, this brotha lives in West Virginia and he had one of his boyfriends come from Ohio, at least a 2 hour drive one way, to come visit him. Then another man he had, this other one was in Philly and would make the same drive to West Virginia. I used to be baffled, b/c here I am in the DC metro area I can’t get a brotha to make a 30-45 min drive to see me, but this man got negroes doing some crossing state lines to see him, what in the world?!?!?!?!?!?! But the difference was not only was he willing to drive to see them as well, but that he knew that he was worth AND expected such behavior. Because he expects such behavior he gets guys that will reciprocate.

You can expand this idea to theory of entitlement, if you think you are entitled to such behavior you will get such behavior. You get what you put out there….



Just my thoughts