Over the weekends, Don asked a question:“Why does she always think of others as the evil ones? Isn’t she too quick to judge?”

My response was:“I agree, but don’t you think we all do the same, all the time?”

Who this “SHE” is, is not important. But the discussion made me realised something: We all do that, all the time.

Whether we like it or not, unconsciously, we always put the fingers at others first before we could even think twice. It is so easy to complain how “unhelpful” our colleagues are, how “unreasonable” our bosses are and etc.

Come and think of it, is expectation to be blamed in this situation? Does that mean they are “bad” if others do not behave what we expect them to do?

Why do we say that our colleagues are not helpful? Is it because we “expect” them to help us while they don’t? As what we always say:“Com’on! It’s common sense that he/she should come and do this!!!”

But how “common” is common sense?

Just as how sometimes people complain about their spouses, how insensitive, unloving and unromantic. Do we have the “common” image in our mind that our spouses should open the car door for us, call us everyday, cook us dinner every night? If they fail to do so, they are insensitive or unloving?

So, because of expectation, we fall into self-victimisation mode if things do not turn out the way we expect them to be. An issue that may or may not be what we see as “bad” also becomes something “REAL BAD“.

Somehow, the brain seems to process the situation in the same manner when we are in bad situation:
1) EXPECTATION: If met, -END-

If not, -> OH! I am victimised! -> By WHO? -> WHY?

And it takes awhile to reach what “ME” got to do with the situation. I too, struggle to reverse the process. It always take a loooooooong time for me to learn that I am indeed, not victimised by others. In fact, it is us who have the power to decide if we ARE indeed victimised or not.

The perspective matters here.

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