The Power of Positive Expectation

Over the past six months or so, my son's academic performance has improved by leaps and bounds. But during the previous year and more, his grades were at the lower-middle level of his class.

When his grades were unsatisfactory, his mother was very anxious and always hoped I would do something to push his grades forward. I took no measures at all; the only thing I did for the child was to keep expressing my positive expectations of him.

I told the child that I firmly believed he simply had not yet adjusted to the state best suited to him, and that when he adjusted to that state he would definitely be able to achieve excellent results.

I told the child the family history of our Zhou clan, telling him that among his father's generation there had emerged several top-scholar talents, that his overall qualities were entirely without problem, and that he could achieve excellent results. I hoped he would keep confidence in himself and work hard to adjust his state.

Besides this, my other great expectation for the child was that he become a broad-minded person. I hoped he would have sympathy, tolerance, and a sense of responsibility, know how to yield and how to help others. Again and again I clearly expressed these two expectations of him to the child.

His mother felt that what I said was utterly empty, with no practical content and no help to the child; she would rather I pass on to my son my own study experience from my school days, or accompany him doing exercise problems.

I think none of that matters; what matters is to help the child build a positive expectation of himself. If he has a positive expectation of himself, he can find the methods and state suited to him. Education is not the work of a single day; when the time comes for the child to struggle, he must be allowed to struggle, and his path needs to be explored by himself.

I persuaded his mother to accept everything about the child—to accept him completely even if he never becomes a talented person in the future. Beyond that, the only thing is to believe in your child; there is no other good method. Time has proved that my positive expectation of the child was right.

These past two days, the child's head teacher told us that over this year she has seen clear progress in the child. She hopes our child will become a benchmark student in their class, inspiring and leading everyone forward.

I remember that when the child first enrolled, I once said to his teacher: my son is not the most outstanding now, but I believe he will certainly become very outstanding. Give my son time and he will prove that he is an excellent person. These words have now become fact. If nothing unexpected happens, my son should graduate from his school with a very high ranking and be admitted to an ideal high school. His own ambition is to be able, when taking the college entrance examination, to enter any university in China.

More importantly, his teacher told us that the child behaves quite unusually at school. A new student sat in a corner and was not satisfied with his seat and wanted to change it; not a single person in the class was willing to swap seats with him. At that moment my son stood up, gave his own seat to that student, and sat himself in that less good position.

This is exactly the outcome I have most hoped to see for years. I have always hoped my son would grow into a broad-minded child, and now it seems he has done it. Not long ago he had a bit of adolescent rebelliousness, and I once worried about my child. But after I heard about his conduct at school, I stopped worrying about him at all.

Many parents fear their children will suffer losses, but what I fear most is precisely that my child is unwilling to take a loss. If he becomes a selfish child unwilling to take any loss, I will be very worried about his future. Because in that case he will not gain the trust of others in his future work and life and will be hard pressed to become a reliable person.

This looks like a pumped-up success story, but in fact it is something that truly happened to my son.

My own growth also looks like a pumped-up success story. For a time I was discouraged by my failures and poured out my depression to my beloved teacher. My teacher listened quietly, then said to me: great talents mature late; great accumulation leads to a sudden burst; don't be impatient; don't forget the original intention. That is how he always was, full of positive expectation toward me; his expectation helped me build confidence at my most depressed. Although I am still far from the level he expected, I at least have not abandoned myself or fallen into a deep abyss. I have not wasted my years in self-pity and have, after all, learned a thing or two.

Among the cancer patients I treat, many have fallen to a low point in life, and I also always give them some positive expectation. Some of them have almost completely lost their fighting spirit and lost confidence in their future. Whenever I meet such a patient—and I can clearly feel that they still have faith in me and that there is still hope for treatment—I will, besides diagnosis and treatment, talk heart-to-heart with them and give them sufficient positive expectation.

To speak without modesty, over these years at least several hundred people have benefited from the positive expectation I gave them. My positive expectation gave them back their confidence and renewed their fighting spirit, and their lives were thereby extended.

To create any kind of miracle, this kind of positive expectation is indispensable, because the power it brings is enormous. Only this power, arising from deep within the heart, is the most important helper for a person to overcome setbacks, loneliness, and depression.