Expectations

Both in economical and financial terms, expectations are taken into account in the analysis of financial assets, such as in the expectation of return of an asset or in the expected inflation rate. We assign them a statistical distribution and we calculate the probabilities of the expected event to happen at a certain confidence level. All this analysis remains strictly within the field of mathematics and statistics. However, we will later find out that despite our thorough mathematical effort the result was different from expected. Then the moment comes in which we go back to the random walk theory.

I ask myself: what are expectations? I look for answers and I reach the conclusion that expectations are based on the uncertainty over a not determined future, and can be defined as the anticipation of a certain event happening in the future.

In finance, despite repeating once and again that past returns do not necessarily yield future returns (and despite repeatedly punishing the technical analysis from a theoretical point of view), it is normal to use the historical of prizes and quantities through econometrics in order to calculate the different probabilities of future events. This can be very useful as a mental support in face of uncertainty regarding a future result. However, it does not guarantee the event happening.

What I am interested at here is expectations and the effect they have on us. Beyond the economical and financial worlds there are general phenomena that are involved in the fact of expecting. I am talking about the emotions they create in us; emotions which will actively affect our next steps and our general emotional and intellectual state.

I must consider that minds tend to be very active and disperse, that they have the capability of imagining different future scenarios. Our mind can cast expectations about our own future actions, those of others, and those of societies as a whole. These prospects are applied on the possibility that one of these agents says, does or thinks something; as well as on specific events. What our mind is doing here is to imagine a possible future scenario and to deposit in this possibility the expectation of it happening.

This is how the emotions, ideas, needs and hopes of each expectant mind are placed on that possible event. This creates anxieties, fantasies, physical conditionings, irritability, depressions, distress, and so many other effects over our mind and body.

So this is how the roller-coaster of symptoms over our mind and body begins, effects which we not only feel and suffer – and that have been created by our own selves, but that also affect in our way we act from that point on. Because according to these effects we have created for ourselves we will start interpreting the experiences presented to us, not from a conscious standpoint, but from our conditionings. And to act from this unconscious conditioned state becomes a Russian roulette of possible future events, which will finally correspond to our conditioned acting.

Something very interesting occurs at this point. This conditioned acting I am talking about has the power to influence the object of our expectations. Following Carl Jung's theory on synergy and causality, we will directly have an effect on the event on which we are placing our expectations – this can be a prolific field of essays on Karma.

We finally have the emotional, intellectual and physical state that the event itself produces in us once it occurs. The event might agree with our expectations, but it can also differ from them. If the result is “worse” than expected (and I put “worse” in quotation marks because this is an evaluation that will depend on each one's own categorisation), then one could find himself in face of a disappointment, which can entail anguish, anger and painful emotions. On the contrary, if the result is “better” than expected then one could find himself visited by a joy, which can give rise to excitement, happiness and other pleasant emotions.

So, then...what shall we do with expectations? According to Asian disciplines – I am thinking of certain schools of Buddhism and Hinduism – we can neutralise them by the repetition of mantras, the avoiding of thinking in future scenarios, the fully living the present without placing any hopes in the future.

However, I am fully aware that, valid as it may be, this is not an option that agrees with the daily life of most that read me. Many of you belong to a western world of activity, where expectations play a significant and important role in your lives. Knowing this, the best I can suggest for you is to be conscious of what expectations generate in us, what imagining future scenarios implies, and to try and be responsible for your own emotions and ideas; as well as proposing that we constantly apply ourselves in an introspective effort.

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