Managing Your Expectations
Great training advice this week, courtesy of fito coach Zstrength.
What are your expectations?
Your expectations could be the cause of your failures.
Hear me out on this. How many times have you had the expectation that everything would go perfectly as planned? How many times have you seen the cup as not just half full or even full, but overflowing?
If we define failure as not reaching our goal, it would not be a stretch to say itâs the same as not meeting your expectations.
Failure for most people is exactly that, not reaching an expectation, regardless of the progress towards the goal.
This isnât a crazy thought I had one day. This is the result of working in âexpectation managementâ for over a 15 years. Over that time, Iâve watched people achieve monumental strides and quit because it wasnât fast enough or they couldnât accept that they had other more pressing issues to deal with first.
Back to the question, what are your expectations?
Everybody wants the best possible results. They want the infomercial results. They want to be the person on a website that gets the amazing headline. The unfortunate part is that the fitness industry sells dreams. Theyâve helped develop an unhealthy sense that everything can be accomplished and it should be quick and easy.
Even worse, people are surrounded by overly optimistic friends that tell them how easy it will be. Iâm not talking about the ones that offer support when struggles arise, but the ones that pad the ego with the empty words of ignorance, showing âsupportâ when they have no clue of what it takes to achieve.
The problem with bad expectations.
When someone chooses a task, a challenge, a goal; they come in with specific expectations whether they say them or not. Many times the expectations are part of the motivational factor that allows them to take on something challenging and potentially uncomfortable. When the result doesnât meet the expectation, the motivation wanes.
The challenge is to manage expectations so that progress is considered success and not failure, even when it isnât meeting expectations. The best way to explain this is with somebody looking to lose 30 lbs.
They get a plan, believing that if they do all the things outlined, they will meet their expectations and be that person that lost 30 lbs in 30 days. Itâs generally easy to fall into this trap because somebody is doing it everywhere you look. Our reality is not their reality. We donât know the foundation theyâve built. We donât know their background. We donât know if they are genetically predisposed or are taking combinations of drugs to achieve our goal. We really have no idea other than they finally accomplished what we want.
Yet we get upset when it isnât as fast or it isnât as much or isnât as easy as we believe it should be.
What if the expectations were realistic?
This is the hard part, especially if you have little to no experience in the task we are taking on and the Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook celebs that have overrun the fitness industry arenât helping us learn.
Realistic expectations means that we might fail or we might succeed, but the margins wonât be huge. There wonât be the cake walk or roadkill finish.
Developing the ability to have realistic expectations takes time and it takes the experience of getting it wrong over and over again. That means underestimating what we can achieve while other times we overestimate what is possible, each time honing the ability to make realistic predictions to set our expectations.
Time to Develop Appropriate Expectations
One of the most important parts to developing an appropriate expectation is not being ignorant. You canât develop expectations for something for which you have no experience or knowledge. You have to have an idea of what you are trying to accomplish and what it takes. Want to lose weight? Learn something about how calories and exercise play a role in keeping the body healthy and functioning. Want to build muscle? Learn how your diet and the right exercise program works for that. Want to complete a triathlon? Learn how to eat and train for the three stages.
Some will balk at the idea of setting expectations low, but earned confidence is worth more than egotistical failure. If you want to have the confidence to tackle higher expectations, you need to earn that confidence through success. If you want to set high expectations with the chance of success, you need the foundation of meeting or exceeding your expectations.
Each time you exceed your expectations you can push a little higher. The strength and conditioning board used to have âDNFFâ written on it. At first, I thought it was just about keeping athletes injury free, but it served a bigger purpose. By exceeding their own expectations, they gained confidence and they could expect bigger things.
Now that youâve had success...
You do it again. And again. Each time you succeed, you build a little more momentum. More than that, you develop the knowledge that you can succeed and you pocket that for when you do stumble, because you will stumble when you challenge yourself. Prior success gives you a reason to believe you can do it.
Now go out and get doing!
( Wanna learn more from Zstrength ? Say hi on his page or check out his latest coach group here.