If you go on a heart-aligned path and you come across a situation where your inner compass is going off on a tangent, do you take it? What if it violates other people’s expectations?
Violating expectations is not the same as violating boundaries. (And seriously, fuck anyone who violates boundaries consciously and willingly– you’re trash.) Violating expectations is about going against what is considered “normal” or “acceptable” because you know intuitively that it is right.
People often confuse intuition for fear. These are not the same. You can get an intuitive feeling that something is off. However, it is not fear-based. It’s more of a signal indicating that you need to recalibrate. Intuition guides you. It can stir up emotions, but the action that your intuition guides you to take feels more energetically aligned than ego-driven.
A heart-aligned approach to violating expectations is to broadcast your own needs and desires without exploiting or manipulating others. If you have to convince someone to do something for you, most likely, you have a shitty offer or invitation. If you have to resort to any low-level emotion such as fear, guilt, or shame, again, you have a shitty offer or invitation. That might sound harsh, but it’s true. A partial match is pretty much a zero match. (There are exceptions to this though, which I’ll get into in a bit.) But the more than you violate expectations and the less you are unattached to any particular outcome, the more you “attract” those situations that are appealing or favorable to you.
What’s more fascinating to me lately is when I catch someone violating my expectations. When it happens, I feel a range of emotions: curious, intrigued, confused, concerned, thrilled, skeptical, uncomfortable… Especially since experiencing psychosis and all the repercussions, I’m usually trying to process new/different experiences through what actually happened vs. the meaning/subtext I assigned to it. Sometimes, my mental frames could use upgrades, especially if they have been continuously generating poor results.
I love when a heart-aligned violation of expectations leads to, “Wait… hold on… this is possible? How?” Usually, my brain is scrambling to understand this anomaly in the context of previous experiences. Except, sometimes I don’t even have any good prior reference point to go off of. Sometimes, I have to throw the control out, because this new experience is vastly different or on a whole other level (or whole nother level!).
What usually ends up emerging are blocks that have been weighing me down for some time. Depending on how expectations were violated, it could be incredibly liberating or downright vulnerable, maybe even both. When you open yourself up to having your expectations violated, you either grow/adapt fast or you completely shut yourself off. And honestly, it’s fine to hard pass on certain types of experiences if you know it’s not for you. I do know people who have experimented with substances and such for example, but I myself am not interested in having such experiences. So, I wouldn’t say that every time that expectations are violated that it is something I’d want to explore more. For example, I was initially shocked back when I received many 1D invitations, specifically requests to only explore the physical dimension and nothing more. Sure, I was mostly curious and was wondering why this was happening. But at some point, that kind of invitation became dull fast. And more recently, I realized that I don’t care so much for the fragmentation of my social circle. I want deep, rich, abundant, meaningful connections.
But then also, I noticed how refrained I was from expressing my desires. Especially after the 30-day Guild course by Steve (#notsponsored), I’ve been thinking about how unfulfilled I was by not sharing certain aspects of my life. I’m instead busy worrying about people who don’t even contribute to my life aside from casting judgments and opinions. I’ve been avoiding polarization, and I don’t really have any reason to do so, other than some immediate backlash/rejection… And why am I reframing rejection so harshly, again? It’s because I’ve been assigning the meaning of rejection from random people as being the same as rejection/coercion from an immediate toxic/abusive “support” system.
So starting today! (This is a message for myself just as much as it is for anyone else.) I am tipping into violating expectations, but this time, with everyone. I’ve been hesitant to do so, mostly because… well, some of you know me in real life or have known me to be a particular way. And… that’s essentially what I’m trying to break (more cohesion, less fragmentation).
I was quite hesitant to share my online life with friends in real life or with family. And then sort of by accident, friends and family found out. And then even more by accident, I started amassing a fragmented audience, the most questionable demographic being IRL aunty/uncle boomers. 🤔 And that held me back a bit, since I wasn’t sure what to make of it, one. And two, because… I was under the belief that my parents were doing this to control aspects of myself (they were the ones sharing my music with some of these folks), what was immediately visible/present or not. There seems to be evidence of this, but regardless, I’m violating expectations by no longer censoring myself for parts that I want to share/express.
I’ve also been holding back a lot, mostly because of recent years and how violated/traumatized I felt (imagine thinking you’ve overcome some serious shit as a child, and then experiencing it again as an adult– WHAT!). And on top of that, I was being discouraged from sharing my experiences, because of how I would be perceived in the immediate brown community… as if I owe it to them to keep under the radar. I’m not really sure how this fear became so ingrained or conditioned, but… I don’t owe anyone anything (no one really does). And, I certainly do not deserve to suffer at the expense of other people’s entitlement or inconsideration.
No one has discouraged me more recently from pursuing my interests. However, I’ve been feeling like I’ve had to contain myself or present a certain image. I’m not gonna lie, sometimes I want to express myself in darker ways… Sometimes, I want to curse or sing more suggestive lyrics. Sometimes, I want to share stories of questionable experiences, and I don’t want to have to care about the backlash I’ll receive. If you have an old-school mentality that has you rooted in fear more than anything, then I don’t know what to tell you, other than that’s not for me anymore.
I do have a significant Gen Z audience as well, and I try to be mindful of that. But let’s be real, lol, I’m in my thirties now. I’ve experienced quite a few things by this age and… I’ve been wanting to share more of that. Obviously, not specifically to younger Zoomers, lol. But, I’ve been thinking about my content creator friends and how they’ve purposely been rating their content as for adults. I’m interested in dabbling into this, possibly marking my channels as “not for kids”. 😂 It feels odd, though… that’s where my mind has been lately! Most of my thoughts these days are not PG, and not to say that they’re always sexual/explicit in nature, but sometimes they involve themes that are not necessarily kid-friendly. I’m used to people wanting me to present as demure or sweet or something to this extent. Uhhh, sure, I can be sweet. But have you heard the rap verse of my song cover Oppa? You might have missed the subtext there, if you didn’t catch that…
I’m also loving the frame that Steve mentioned in a coaching call once (when I was still in CGC), which is, “What if you were to overreact?” Honestly, sometimes I do fear people’s reactions, for legit valid reasons. And sometimes I’m like, fuck man, why am I freezing up? If this person knows who I am or what I am about, would they respond in such a wildly inappropriate way? Fuck no. If they don’t see that (or if they don’t want to see that), then they’re probably a degenerate. And, I don’t care to appeal to degenerates. If they’re allow to blow up on me for a small miscalculation, then I’m allowed to express mild irritation or disgust or apprehension… That’s another facet of violating expectations. I’ve been leaning into that more the past year or so, delving into those difficult, negative emotions, without feeling the need to reframe them into “good vibes only”. And in “safer” or more “private” spaces, to express raw emotion, without censoring thoughts/feelings.
These are some free-flowing thoughts I’ve been having lately. I’d like to dive deeper into this, especially in terms of action.
2022-06-19