What do you do when you write a blog post in answer to a question and then find out you misinterpreted the question?
I don’t know what other bloggers do, but I write a second post in hopes of trying again, but also to explore misinterpretation!
In my post “Hold Fast to Dreams” I discussed being asked the question “what’s the point of having dreams if they turn into expectations and then you are disappointed?” As it turned out, upon further discussion, I misunderstood the question.
My misunderstanding reminded me of some things I know from my professional life, but often forget to apply in my personal life.
First, what we hear can vary widely from what was said. We often hear what others say to us through a lens. Among other things, that lens includes our own history of experiences, our current environment and our current emotions.
In the current scenario, I was asked the question while I was at work. There, I work hard to understand the way my clients experience the world. For a lot of them that experience is framed in depression and anxiety. However, the question was asked by someone who was not feeling depressed or anxious. I was interpreting pessimism that didn’t exist based on the context of depression in my clients.
It is because we filter information through a lens that I always recommend that listeners check their understanding of what was said. Sometimes that lens we are using acts like a game of whisper down the lane. One person says something, it goes through the listener’s filter and then what is reflected back sounds nothing like what was originally said.
I probably should have used my own advice before writing a post about the wrong question!
However, now that I have checked out my interpretation, let me try again. In that way I can also remind everyone that we can always try again when we make mistakes.
On that note…
The clarified question was more about making sense of two common pieces of advice. The first is that we need dreams. The second, seemingly contradictory piece of advice, is to not set expectations too high because it increases the likelihood of disappointment. That question strikes me as far less pessimistic than my initial understanding of the question.
I actually don’t see those pieces of advice as mutually exclusive. The “D” in DBT stands for “dialectical” and a dialectic is when seemingly opposite ideas can both be true at the same time. That is the case here.
We thrive on dreams. At the same time, we set ourselves up for disappointment when our expectations around that dream become all or nothing. Dreams are meant to be a rough outline of what we hope for. When we create expectations of perfection around how that dream unfolds, we are more prone to disappointment. Dreams can be worked for and even realized even if they aren’t exactly how you expected.
Setting expectations too high also reflects the need to focus on what we control in making our dreams happen, not the parts that rely on others and our environment. We can work towards our dreams, but we can’t expect that the universe will be working towards the same dream.
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