Three Ingredients to Help Set Realistic Expectations
Expectations can be a friend or foe. This is true any time in life, especially when dealing with loss and the journey of getting back on track after a set back.
The challenge is to dance with expectations so they remain reasonable yet hope giving. How exactly do you do that?
Avoiding These Two Ditches
No expectations
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. — Alexander Pope
As simple as it sounds, having no expectations is mythical in nature and doesn’t provide enough push in life to provide healthy growth and learning.
If you expect nothing, you can never be disappointed. Apart from a few starry-eyed poets or monks living on a mountaintop somewhere, however, we all have expectations. We not only have them, we need them. They fuel our dreams, our hopes, and our lives like some super-caffeinated energy drink. - Tonya Hurley
2. Unrealistic expectations
You fall into this ditch when your plans don’t match your capacity to achieve. It happened to me after my motorcycle accident when I expected to be back to work in six months but in reality, the months turned into two years.
The pathway in between these two ditches is a balance of the plan you have for living forward along with the capacity to follow through.
Three Ingredients to Help Pave the Way to Realistic Expectations
1. Take a frequent and honest inventory of your expectations
To know what your expectations are is a great place to start. To do that you must exercise your self-awareness muscles. Look inward and ask yourself a few questions:
What do I value? How am I honoring or dishonoring those values?
What gifts or talents do I possess and can share with others?
What am I expecting that’s unrealistic based on my situation?
Where have you lost hope for things to change?
2. Pick three life giving (and realistic) actions you can do today
There is nothing like a simple and realistic plan of action to help you move forward when you are a bit off track. If you’re feeling disappointed, lost, frustrated, or had some dreams dashed, realistic activities to keep you moving forward in life.
Do what you can with what you have where you are. - Theodore Roosevelt
Being in control of your life and having realistic expectations about your day-to-day challenges are the keys to stress management, which is perhaps the most important ingredient to living a happy, healthy and rewarding life. - Marilu Henner
3. Include struggle and disappointment as part of your expectation
People get into trouble with expectations when their mindset doesn’t allow for possible heart ache and pain. You don’t have to go looking for it because it will come and find you. Expecting a struggle will soften the blow of disappointment when it does come.
We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, “Blessed are they that mourn,” and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. - C.S. Lewis
The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem. - Theodore Rubin
Reflection
What unrealistic expectations do you need to lay down to make room for some realistic ones?
