People Who Disappoint You // Dealing with Difficult People, Part 5 A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Sometimes, it seems like … all people ever do is let you down.  We expect something of them – and yet, they disappoint.  Question is – how do you handle that sort of disappointment?
We all have high expectations of other people, we expect our mothers to be perfect mums, we expect our fathers to be perfect dads, our teachers to be perfect teachers, our friends to be perfect friends, our wives or husbands to be perfect wives or husbands, our kids to be; you get the picture right? We have high expectations of other people. What happens when they fall short of those expectations?
I mean, when our friends aren't as friendly as they should be or our kids aren't as well behaved and balanced and obedient as they should be. Other people disappoint us, in fact, I guarantee you that today won't pass by without someone else in your life falling short of your expectations for them. People can be difficult can't they? So what do we do when those difficult people disappoint us?
I've spent seventeen years as a consultant in the IT industry. Now consultants aren't cheap. They have an hourly rate. Mine wasn't really expensive and it wasn't really cheap but I charged people quite a bit of money for doing what I did. And at the beginning, because of that, I tried to be an expert at everything. After all I was charging them quite a bit of money but the result was, well, no-ones an expert at everything, right? We can't all be good at everything and so the clients were happy with the things I could do well and they were a bit touchy with the things that I couldn't do so well. Why is that? Because they had wrong expectations.
And one of the things I learnt, as a consultant, was that it was really important for me to set limits, to set realistic expectations, with my clients, as to what I could do and what I couldn't do. Berni's good at these things but you know this thing over here, well, I need a specialist to do that because I can't, that’s not my area of expertise. And once I had learnt to set those expectations correctly, consulting as a business was much easier because people accepted, kind of, that I couldn't be good at everything. I just thought that I had to be good at everything because of the money I was charging them. That story, for me, serves to illustrate why we get disappointed with people sometimes because we expect them to be perfect.
Now, let’s get a revelation here today. Nobody else that walks this planet is going to be perfect - nobody. There’s only been one person in all history who has been perfect and that’s Jesus, the Son of God.
Some people are really good at detail, you know they like doing crosswords or they like doing stitching and sewing. Other people are 'the big picture' people and the detail drives them nuts. Some people are really relationship focused, other people are more 'outcome' focused. Some people are very good communicators, other people are very good doers. Some people are very good navigators, some people, come on husbands, are not good navigators. You know we are all different aren't we? And praise God that we are because it would be a boring world if they all looked like you and me out there. So why is it then that we have these unrealistic expectations in our hearts of other people?
We set this standard of perfection. What's perfection? Perfection is when they're exactly like me, perfection is when they see the world the way I do, when they're good at the stuff I'm good at, when they conform with what I want them to do, that's perfection - they're like me. Come on; and then we wonder why they fall short of our expectations and then we get all disappointed with them and it ruins our relationship.
We do some silly things sometimes don't we? We have these expectations of people that they're never going to measure up to. My wife is a wonderful woman You know, Jacqui is the most wonderful wife and man could ever ask for but she is never going to be able to help me navigate with a st