Wk 2: Comments on Alison's Blog

Alison,
I know all about “unspoken expectations,” I face them everyday as an adult. It was harder to deal with as a child. Everybody wanted you to do this, be that or act some kind of way according to their standards.
I think I turned out pretty good among the madness of those expectations. I have started taking risk now since I am old enough to handle what ever comes with taking those risk.

I have a “bucket list” that is forcing me to be more adventurous and push me to experience life by my rules. I learned that those “expectations” made me afraid and my own worse critic. Now I just say, whatever if things do not go as planned or something messes up. Life is about right and wrong, making good and bad choices. You have one life so live it on your own terms and to the fullest.

As I read the first four chapters of The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander, I started to reflect on how their ideas impact me.  As I was growing up, there was an unspoken expectation that I was going to do “right” – go to college, get a good job, get married and have my 2.5 kids.  I was afraid to fail.  Because I was afraid to fail, I took no risks.  In college, my viola professor was desperately trying to get me to play a piece I was working on more passionately, but I just didn’t get it.  Trying to get me to open up, she told me to yell.  Yell anything.  Scream.  But I couldn’t do it – in fact, I couldn’t even make a sound.  To me, that was so wrong, and definitely NOT proper.  However, over time I started to realize that that was exactly what I needed.  All these ideas of what were right and wrong and what was expected of me were all things I had conjured up myself.  I was hurting myself in this “safe” place I kept myself in.  I began to take risks, and I began to see the world differently.  While I allowed myself an A in many things, I realize now that there is so much more I should be giving myself an A in.  Not only that, but giving others around me an A.  Changing that perspective and opinion in others, be it students, colleagues, friends or family,  I can only begin to imagine the difference in changing my life as well as others.