Expect Big Things of Yourself

I've just recently read this familiar story, which I would like to share to you. The story goes like this:

There was a public school in San Francisco which conducted a very interesting experiment - two classrooms were filled with random, average students. Two instructors were asked to proctor one of each classroom, however, the two instructors were told that one of the classes were comprised of the most intellectual students in the school, and the other was a class made up of the slow to average students of the same school.

All of the teacher's interactions with the students are tainted by their expectations. When the teachers worked with a student in the "bright" class, they persisted with the student until he or she found the answer. But when a student in the "slow" class didn't find the answer right away, the teacher moved to another student. When a student in the bright class struggled, the teacher thought the student was just having an "off day". But when a student from the slow class struggled, it was just because they were slow.

Statistically, the classes were exactly the same, the only difference was in what the teachers expected of them. Soon, the "bright" students began to excel, and the "slow" students began to lag behind.

I read this story from the book 'Do Hard Things' by Alex and Brett Harris. This story was an eye opener to me personally. Life today, as we know it, promotes mediocrity - we are bombarded with advertisements influencing us to live life comfortably by availing of products that make life easier, lottery and game shows telling us that we can succeed in life by mere luck, that we don't have to work for it, movies and Hollywood stars showing us that life is about glamour and fame, that life is easy.

Well, it's not.

We shouldn't think that tomorrow is all going to be okay, that it is not vital for us to work hard and excel today. We have been brainwashed, thinking that having low standards in life would get us somewhere.

But sadly, in my early teenage years, I was a victim of this mediocrity disease. I was fond of being in the "I'm-already-satisfied-with-myself" zone, lacking the drive to take a step further and to go an extra mile to excel. I had a lot of spare time, to tell you the truth, but instead of investing it on things that matter most, I decided to waste it all on computer games, playing it to my heart's content, I watched TV all day and wallow around and let tomorrow worry about itself. I do stuff just for the sake of doing them. It seems that I don't have a clear direction as to where I'm heading.

We, young people, are satisfied with the low standards society expect of us; as long as we do things right, as long as we're eating three times a day, that we have money and everything seem secured, life's okay already, no need to excel. In turn, we become a mediocre replica of ourselves, of what God wanted us to be in the first place.

As the above story mentioned, the only difference was in what teachers expected of them. Aha! Expectation - this is the formula that's been missing in me, and probably, in most of us. If we aim to burst out of that bubble the society puts us in, we should expect high for ourselves, just as the teacher in the bright class expected of his students. As the society has low expectations on us young people, we should counter the said notion by expecting more of ourselves. We should highly expect ourselves to produce results for life, to clean our bedroom to our optimum performance, to study math with passion, to handle our relationships with care, to do our best in a spelling bee contest.

And above all, we should expect ourselves to become like Christ.

If we fail to see ourselves with high expectations, we tend to lax out a bit and say, "well, it's my nature, I'm not as good as that guy", "I am satisfied with my grades, it's not that high, it's not that low either, so i must be doing a pretty good job", or "I can't enter the basketball varsity team, so I'm ok with just keeping my talent to myself". When we fail, our mindset should be from "I'm a big, fat failure, I won't achieve anything!" to "Charge that to experience." All efforts, even failed ones, produce muscle.

And most importantly, we NEED to expect ourselves to become like the ultimate role model, the best standard of goodness, the mentor of moral living, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. If we expect ourselves to become like Christ, we, in turn, achieve one of our purposes in this temporary world. We should direct our lives towards Jesus, if we expect that we can be like Him, then I assure you, we WILL be like Him. It takes a lifelong process to be like Christ, but it's worth it.

So this is what I'm voicing out. Youth, we should put high priority on what God expects us to be. That should be our standard, not the society, or our friends, or the media. What does the bible say? love your neighbor, love your enemies, resist temptation, invest your talents for His glory.

What does God say you should do in areas of your life with high expectations?

We should expect more of ourselves as God expects more of us. Expect that we can overcome obstacles, expect to do more chores than what are asked, expect to top the exams and excel in recitation, expect to soar high and be the best in every endeavor in life.

By raising the bar higher, we achieve more, we become more.