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How Internal Contracts Keep Us Back
Internal contracts create expectations and when they’re violated they hamper our abilities in so many ways. At the same time, learning to set them aside can provide tremendous growth.
The unspoken rules that go on inside of our heads can be good things or bad things depending on the situation and what those rules are. In short, the unspoken rules are expectations that we have, otherwise known as internal contracts.
If we do something we expect this person to do something or to get particular results. Or maybe we expect when people accept something they’re expected to behave a certain way or to perform specific actions.
These are the “terms” of our internal contract and should they ever be violated, our expectations and view of that person become negative.
It’s why people write hate posts about Medium or complain about the platform. It’s also why I got involved in a miscommunication problem with one of my clients recently.
Internal contracts are something that we can’t really turn off, but there are clearly ways that we can work around these. To understand, we need to look at internal contracts and how they affect us on a mental level.