What if people have negative expectations of your language skills

Recently, I heard bestselling author Tim Ferriss mentioning that what helped him grow and experiment was that people around him, at that time, had so low expectations of him. It took the pressure out of the experience, because it gave him the permission to fail. 

Typically, we want the people around us to be encouraging and telling us that they believe in us and in our potential.

Psychological research on this issue is, of course, mixed. Why? Because, as with many other practical questions, the results depend on a number of factors. Whether people around us have high or low expectations of us is most probably not the only or even decisive factor.

However, human beings have a preference for mono-causality. We want to interpret events by a single cause.

Now, what can we say, based on research and personal experience?

Yes, for some people, it may take a lot pressure from us, if we are not expected to be successful. This, of course, can take a wider spectrum of manifestations. People just ignore you, or they don’t expect you to excel in something, that is, they don’t tell you regularly that you are going to become the next sensation in any given area. Or it can be outright negativity or toxicity: You have no talent for foreign languages; you are too … (fill in the blanks).

In some people, even openly hostile comments may trigger reactance. That is: I am not going to conform to your expectations of me, so I will prove you wrong.

Probably, in more collectivistic cultures, where the opinions of others (the community) are valued higher than in more individualistic cultures, negative expectations may have a more crippling effect.

It may also depend on personal qualities like your level of resilience or optimism. Individuals differ in this regard, too.

In the end, in most situations, you cannot control other people’s expectations of you. However, you can always work on your reaction to them. And, you really have no better choice.

So, even if you are a more pessimistic, less resilient person living in a more collectivistic culture (e.g. in East Asia), you can still make an effort to reinterpret the situation in your favor.

In my case, it seems to have worked. At school I was very bad at foreign languages, which allowed me to experiment with new methods to learn multiple languages in parallel. I knew, in the worst case, I wouldn’t disappoint anyone close to me, so why shouldn’t I try?

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

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Want to get rid of insecurity and bad feelings regarding the foreign language(s) you have already started to learn? Want to learn a new language, without going through various levels of standard courses? You feel you are making no progress?

Go to Amazon and grab a copy of my classic book ”The GO Method – breaking barriers to language learning”.

https://www.amazon.com/GO-Method-Breaking-barriers-language/dp/1973118688/ref=sr_1_1?crid=ZLMGYKR6PDY3&keywords=Gerhard+Ohrband&qid=1694099394&sprefix=gerhard+ohrband+%2Caps%2C239&sr=8-1

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Gerhard Ohrband is a communication consultant, psychologist and author of 9 books from Hamburg/Germany. He speaks 11 languages fluently and assists individuals and companies in doing business in foreign languages.

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