Because Blockers are so familiar, we typically take them for granted – and in doing so, we limit our Successfulness.
Thus, an important step in sharply increasing your Successfulness is to recognize when your Blockers are operating.
Until you do, you may erroneously conclude that you have no control over that part of your life – a conclusion that just will be not correct once you learn to effectively instruct your Subpersonality that is expressing that Blocker.
Thus, in my last Post, I pointed out a number commonly encountered Blockers to assist you in recognizing them when they arise.
I am going to continue with that in this and my next Post, so that you can learn to recognize when your Blockers they are operating.
Again, the reason for doing so is that, as you develop ways of Instructing the Subpersonalities that express those Blockers to express Self-Supporting Replacement Responses, you will become more Successful and your Quality Of Life will increase.
In this Post, I am going to focus on Expectation Blockers because they can have a profoundly negative impact on your Successfulness and Quality of Life.
Expectation Blockers come in a number of varieties.
“We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.”
- Samuel Johnson
The Trusting-Others-To-Be-Like-Me Blocker
The first variation on the Expectation Blocker that I will discuss is the Trusting-Others-To-Be-Like-Me Blocker that causes you to Expect others to behave and think like you.
The basic problem with this Expectation is that very few people are like you and that sets you up for Disappointment.
My research, using my Arintel Data Analysis System, leads to the conclusion that there are 12 different Unconscious Personality Types in the world that are all present in each of the many national cultures I studied and that these cultures differ primarily only in the percentage of each such Type.
Given this, if you were to assume an equal percentage of each of these types among the people you encounter, when your Trusting-Others-To-Be-Like-Me Blocker is operating, you have roughly a 11 in 12 – or about a 92% – chance of being Disappointed.
That is because Disappointment follows directly from Violated Expectations – and when you Trust someone to be other than who they really are, they will consistently fail to meet your Expectations.
“Expectations are resentments under construction.”
- Anne Lamott
The only form of Trust that consistently yields Expectations that are met is:
“I trust you to be who you really are.”
For example, I have a long-term friend Judy (not her real name) who has, over the years, repeatedly “borrowed” money and has never paid a cent back.
So I know that I should not expect Judy to pay back a loan. In fact, knowing that, I make my decision on whether to give her money based on whether I want to make her a gift of it.
That doesn’t diminish my esteem for her because there are no Violated Expectations. I am trusting her to be who she really is.
Of course, for that to work, you have to perceive who another person really is – which you can do by observing their behavior over a period of time. Just follow the old adage:
“Actions speak louder than words.”
This saying has really been around for quite a while because it is accurate.
Its first known use in English was by J. Pym in 1628.
So observing and documenting someone’s actions over time and reviewing your documentation to draw conclusions about them is a good first step in learning to appropriately trust them.
However, doing so can be quite challenging if you have a Trusting-Others-To-Be-Like-Me Blocker running.
So let’s take a look at how you can home in on your Trusting-Others-To-Be-Like-Me Blocker.
The best way is by focusing on Situations when you were Disappointed by other people, when they didn’t behave the way you Expected them to behave. Here are some hypothetical examples to give you a concrete idea of what I mean.
For example, lets say that last Valentine’s Day, you were really Disappointed when your relationship partner not only failed to bring you flowers and candy but completely ignored the day.
For example, let’s say that you worked really hard preparing a great meal and your relationship partner wolfed it down, paying little attention, and then rushed off to play cards with his buddies or to a show with her pals. You were really Disappointed.
For example, let’s say that you thought you had a good working relationship with someone until you learned that they had “stolen” one of your great ideas and presented it as their own, reaping both praise and a promotion. You were really Disappointed.
Those examples should give you some idea of what I’m talking about. So just remember a few times when you were really Disappointed by others and you’ll find the Subpersonality that expresses your Trusting-Others-To-Be-Like-Me Blocker right there.
The Trusting-Others-To-Be-What-You-Want-Them-To-Be Blocker
This Blocker makes life really tough because it is at the root of the failure of most personal relationships.
Here’s how that works.
When your Subpersonality that expresses this Blocker recognizes – Resonates with – a particular physical or personality characteristic in someone you have just met, it “concludes” that this person is Identical to someone you already know who demonstrates that same characteristic.
You then experience the Expectation that this person will behave just like that other person did in similar situations.
But, unless you have found a clone of that original person, your new person will consistently Violate your Expectations.
Nonetheless, because your Trusting-Others-To-Be-What-You-Want-Them-To-Be Blocker is operating, you can’t understand why the new person isn’t acting the way “they should” so you push them to be that way.
Of course, nobody likes being pushed to be someone they really aren’t so they will eventually express anger, upset and rejection of you while you feel really Disappointed because they didn’t meet your Expectations.
And what you Expect doesn’t have to arise from someone you know, it can come from an imaginary experience of a character in a book or from a movie or a TV show.
For example, when I lived in Sweden, one of my ex-wife’s friends, Christina repeatedly got into the same type of self-destructive romantic relationship.
She always homed in on handsome and superficially charming “movie star” types of men who ended up emotionally abusing her.
One day, when we were speaking with Christina, she said, “I just know when I see him (speaking of her latest version of the same man), he’s the one for me. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong that makes him not be himself.”
Of course, it was pretty clear to me what was going on so offered to lead her through a Base Reframing (as described in the Chapters I gave you with my last Post) on the Blocker of picking the wrong guy.
Two weeks later, Christina called us, very excited. She said, “I just met the right man. The funny thing is that he’s worked with me for over a year and I never gave him a thought because he doesn’t look the way I wanted. But when I got to know him, he’s perfect.”
In fact, he turned out to be sufficiently perfect that they got married, had children and, at last account, were still delightfully in love with each other.
What We Just Covered
I pointed out that Blockers are so familiar, we typically take them for granted — and in doing so, we sharply limit our Successfulness.
Therefore, in this Post, I pointed out a number of commonly encountered Expectation Blockers to assist you in recognizing them when they arise.
I did this because, as you develop ways of Instructing the Subpersonalities that express those Blockers to express Self-Supporting Replacement Responses, you will become more Successful and your Quality Of Life will increase.
The first step in doing so is to recognize when your Blockers are operating.
In my next post, I am going to continue on from Christina’s story about finding her Perfect Partner and show you how to do the same.
Stay tuned.