"You have to expect great things of yourself before you can do them!"
-Michael Jordan
I read this quote a while ago for a class, & later had to write an interpretation of it..1st thought after was reading it was "why does the greatest basketball player the world has ever seen say a quote as simple as this?".. B/c thru his minds eye, there is more than meets the eye! Here my interpretation.
The definition of expectancy is to look forward to; regard as likely to happen; to have have hope in something happening. All in all it is the believed outcome of a goal being accomplished & its likeliness to be obtain by an individual. It is grounded in what one believes to be capable or probable of happening. What ever you want to do, you have to make the room in your mind to do it. If you believe your limits are limitless, your limited to your limitlessness! Sound elementary but to perform something a task you have to first believe you can do it. What you know to be true about yourself & your ability controls the level of your expectation, and your level of expectation controls how high you set a bar. The boundaries you place on what you believe you can do, effect what you expect yourself to do, which gives an idea to what you will do, positive or negative. Raise the level of your belief in what can happen and everything else will fall along.
So why does one of the greatest basketball players in history feel intrigued enough to mention a quote as basic as this well, your beliefs are influence by a number of things in your environment. We are affected socially physically spiritually, financially, and emotionally amongst other things such as; your passion, desire, but mainly your exposure. Many of us have unknowingly low expectations of ourselves some from ignorance and some a deliberate attempts to protect ourselves. Ignorance is simply not to ignore or not to know, it must be discovered and understood before it can be removed. Ignorance is powerless to remove itself neither will it pass away of in and itself. It only disperses from the introduction of knowledge. Therefore we only know what we are exposed to and we are exposed to what our environment shows us. We only expect as much as our eyes can see, or what has been told to us. Its a tendency to only believe the things that are tangible. Our imagination stems from our environment therefore naturally we only dream what our reality shows us. To imagine anything greater to occur is rare due to mundane routines & lack of exposure. We don’t think outside the box because we only know whats inside the box. Ultimately your level of exposure determines your level of expectancy. Many people dont know therefore expect less & don't demand what they could if they did know.
Lastly some people have quit expecting great things because they might have experience disappointment. In order to avoid getting their hopes up and getting let down they don’t expect anything great to happen. A form of pessimism, which avoids the hurt of failure in all, by not expecting nothing at all, so it would be a "win-win situation" when any gain is considered success and any failure is considered neutral. They consider this a safe zone. They do enough just to get by hoping to prevent the intense discomfort that’s associated with expecting too much & being disappointed.
So I believe that this charge that the greatest basketball player the world has known is meant to be taken to heart, literally to the extreme, applied to one’s life and lived by & on a day to day basis in all aspects of our lives. I don’t believe he achieved what he achieved by taking quotes as simply as what it implies but he used it to allow his imagination to supersede his reality until his dreams came true.
