Entering the world of work comes with new responsibilities and the need to manage different aspects of life. Often, we create expectations about our professional future, but reality may not always align with them, leading to uncertainty and frustration.
Many people who I’ve asked some questions about jobs and careers, have told me that when you start working everything changes: you have more responsibilities, you have to start managing different aspects of your life and you have to do your best at your workplace. Therefore, after all these discussions, it’s normal to start thinking about what will be our future, what will we do.. so basically try to forecast our future by making expectations. The bad side of this exciting process is that most of the time we fail with these predictions. I’m not saying it’s our fault, it’s totally understandable not to get them right at the first try, how are we supposed to guess the future? The real problem comes out when we realize what we have thought doesn’t coincide with reality, and when it happens we feel lost and mystified. At least once in our lifetime everyone has ever thought “It’s not what I expected”.

Imagine if that happens with our first job; personally I’m a bit scared of how I would feel if it would happen. By the way, fortunately, there are some tricks that can help us manage expectations in our first job experience.
Expectations can be linked to personal standards, aspirations and ambitions. Right from here we can extract the first and maybe most important point: set realistic expectations. I understand sometimes it could be tough, I am the first person that always expects the best from her and from every situation, consequently for me it’s easy to create false standards in my mind. But precisely here we can find the key: we don’t have to let anyone, either ourselves, our family or friends, influence our expectations. Everyone wants different things and prioritizes different aspects, so it’s unthinkable to suppose that what someone considers the most important aspect it’s the same for each one; we’re all different and we all have different interests and passions.
We can try to achieve this goal by
- informing on the company aim for example, so we will be prepared on what they might ask us.
- understanding the importance of our role: if we’ve just started we can’t think they are going to give us as many responsibilities as the manager.
- it’ also really important to set realistic goals for ourselves, obviously we need to aspire to the top, but it’s not always possible in the short period. Maybe it requires years, so if this is our single goal at a certain point it’s possible that we will fall apart because we aren’t satisfied with our work. Instead try to choose small goals, even difficult ones, but achievable in a, more or less, limited period.
- Another tip, that actually is a fundamental factor, is to stay calm and trust the process, it takes time so maybe at the beginning our expectations aren’t real, but in a few months, when we will have settled down and understood how everything works, they might come true. Especially during our first job experience we can’t expect to know everything immediately, it’s the first time for us so it’s totally normal to take some time to learn. Do not expect to know everything since the first day, it’s unrealistic.
- Last but absolutely not least keep a positive mindset, this will be the game changer to face everything in a more constructive and useful way.
Remember not to feel trapped in a career; with Dreamando I’ve learned that if we choose something that we don’t like and now we feel constricted in a place that doesn’t suits us we are totally free to change, even if we have been studying it for our entire life.

We have to change in order to give ourselves the chance to do something that we enjoy more. There’s a sentence that says “don’t be scared to start from the beginning again, you could like the new story more than the old one” so don’t stop yourself if you are in that situation, see it just as a possibility of growth.
Just the other day, reading an article, I refound the word serendipity, I’ve read it for the first time some months ago and I immediately fell in love with the meaning: literally the occasion of making desirable discoveries by accident, and also finding something we weren’t looking for while searching for something different. I loved it because it explains my vision of expectations: sometimes we think we want something and we start making everything we can to make it occur, but it could happen that during the path we discover something new and we realize that our expectations don’t actually coincide with what we truly want.
I’m trying to say don’t create impossible expectations, especially during your first job experience, keep your foot on the earth without forgetting your big dreams.
“Your expectations, more than anything else in life, determine your reality. When it comes to achieving your goals, if you don’t believe you’ll succeed, you won’t. Dr Travis Bradberry”.