I was interviewd this week by tennis and mental toughness coach Ed Tseng. We talked about expectations. Expectations are an interesting thing because we live by them very often and more often they are the source of our stress. We either live up to them or we do not, other's live up to ours or they do not. We tend to forgive our friends and family for not living up to our expectations but we are often much harder on ourselves. This goes back to self compassion and self kindness. Are you creating realistic expectations for yourself? Are you being honest about the results of living up to them?
It's important to set goals for yourself and create expectations around those goals. These could be small goals such as daily living endeavors, clean the house, do the laundry, meet with your boss or employees, etc. They could be more future oriented goals such as complete a project and ask for a raise, lose weight, or things of that nature. But what are you saying to yourself in the event that one of these expectations is not met? Are you spending energy on self judgment, name calling, or ruminating on what you did? If you are, then you are being extremely unkind to yourself. When you expend all that energy on the negative, "I'm stupid, why did I do it that way, I can't believe I said that..." you are no longer in a goal reaching state of mind and you've now created a new set of expectations for yourself "I expect to fail!"
Instead, be in "learner mode." Be open and honest about the situation and be ready to create a plan around re-establishing your goal and new expectations about how to reach it. Spending time punishing yourself is using energy and brain power that could be used toward creating a new and better result. So first determine if you are setting realistic expectations for yourself. Then ask yourself if it's useful to beat yourself up or is it more useful to use that energy to move forward.
Please share your experiences about changing expectations for yourself. I'd love to hear about them.
