Expectations and Reality

Very interestingly, Toyota has managed to report over 1.2B worth of profit this quarter. Not only this, but Goldman Sachs are optimistically looking towards the future despite their legal liabilities. What’s this? China’s economy STILL hasn’t overheated after around 10 reports per day saying that they would by last year?

Forget these large companies; forget the economy; how often in life do we find things not turning out the way they’re supposed to?

Take a good one second to think.

I don’t know about you, but I’m already reflecting upon trends that have happened due to expectations.

Just when people start understanding relationship concepts about ‘hard to get’ it seems ineffective. Why? Because EVERYONE is now ‘hard to get’. And it gets to a point where it’s sort of annoying, especially in group projects; you know when people are deliberatively seeming busy, but actually have nothing to do with their spare time except to stall you.

Just when everyone thinks they know the secrets of business success, that formula shatters. Just when people think they know everything is good, everything turns bad.

I guess part of this concept comes from the fact that we are all human, and our expectations fuel us towards certain directions. Think about it this way, those managers at Toyota probably worked their bums off to preserve a profit gain. Likewise for officials in China and the CEO of Sachs. I would go as far to say that their strength and determination have gripped them to transcend pre-written realities.

Now, apply their mentality onto all human beings. Aren’t we all the same? Whenever our expectations become factored into the equation, the outcome turns completely differently. The fact that we are all inextricably interlinked animals makes it so that your expectations will affect my reality. In any game where you and I are interlinked, if I tell you my expectation, I can pretty much expect that my expectation isn’t going to come true, because now I have to factor in your expectations. Think for example – if I tell you that I expect you and your girlfriend are going to break up, my expectations might influence you to not break up, because you want to prove it to everybody that the relationship will work. Take another exam, if I expect house prices to rise, and I start telling everybody, then eventually everybody will start investing. If everyone’s investing, then nobody is truly buying, and therefore we’d have an asset bubble created.

So if you have any new business ideas or plans, don’t share. This doesn’t mean to say that you shouldn’t help your neighbour, but when ideas and expectations for the future are yours, you should keep it to yourself. At least this way, you can minimize the chances of an outcome which defies your expectations.