Expectations VS Reality

Cori (00:00):
Welcome to the Redefining Strength Podcast. Everything you need to succeed on your health and fitness journey. Even the stuff you don’t want to hear, your expectations can make or break your success. How you really manage them can be everything in you achieving the outcome that you want. And I want to share a little story with you because I think this really highlights how our expectations can shape our perception of things and really put us in a mood to move forward, or that emotional sabotage that leads to us giving up on everything. So you go to a restaurant and you go up to the stand and you ask the host is how long it’s going to be? How long a wait? And she said it’s going to be 45 minutes. And so you go back and you’re waiting and you’re waiting 45 minutes, 45 minutes, and all of a sudden it’s 45 minutes and you don’t seem any closer to the top of the list.

(00:49):
An hour goes by and finally you get a table. You are frustrated, you’re hungry, you are miserable. And it’s all because she said it was 45 minutes and you ended up waiting an hour had she told you it was going to be an hour, and then you got the table at an hour or even 55 minutes. All of a sudden, you would’ve been waiting basically the same length of time, but you would’ve gotten in at the time you were expecting, and you wouldn’t have been as frustrated then had you even gotten in earlier, say 30 minutes. All of a sudden, you’re super excited that you even gotten earlier. So it’s not the time, it’s the expectation of how long it will take. And I bring this up, especially when we talk about expectations of how long something will take because especially when it comes to weight loss, we’ve heard, oh, one to two pounds per week.

(01:32):
So if I do the math, I can lose it in this time. We expect progress to be linear, even while we know it’s not, or we expect results a little bit faster because we’ve seen X, Y, and Z person do it on X, Y, and Z diet. But the thing is, that expectation of how we’re going to see results is what sabotages us. We can expect to achieve a goal, but we can not control the rate at which we see progress towards that goal. And the more we try to, the more we stare at that scoreboard hoping for it to change, instead of impacting what we’re actually doing on the field, instead of impacting the habits that we’re doing, the more we’re just going to hold ourselves back. So when you’re thinking about the goal you want and the expectations you have, you need to set expectations based on the things you can actually control.

(02:14):
If you’re expecting to lose one pound per week, well, you can’t actually control if you lose one pound per week. What can you control? You can control how you hit your macros, how you adjust your diet daily if you do your workout routines, if you get moving, if you sleep well, and even sleep I guess is a little bit out of your control, but you can control your sleep routine. Try and set yourself up for success, but you want to expect and have expectations on the things you can actually take action on that will drive the ultimate outcome you want. But expecting a rate of change, expecting an exact outcome in an exact timeframe, well, you can’t control that timeframe as much as you might want to because life will always do its best to get in the way. All we can do is control the actions and mindsets that build.

(03:00):
So as you are setting an expectation, an ultimate goal, I want you to break that down into the habits and actions and mindsets you can actually control today. Because when you do that and then you set expectations on those things, that’s where you gain power to make changes. I expect myself to do this thing today. I expect myself to do this thing tomorrow. And then you can check those things off. You are in control of those actions. Again, you cannot expect the scale to change despite even doing everything you’re supposed to because maybe it didn’t poop that day. Maybe you have a little extra inflammation. There’s so many other factors you can’t control, but you can control your daily habits. So as you’re setting those goals, think about what you’re expecting to have happen and the expectations you can actually control and the ones you can’t. Because the more you focus on expecting things that are within your control to change, the more you’re going to see that momentum build, feel successful with everything, and ultimately reach your goal. Staring at the ultimate expectation and things you can’t control will never move you forward and often sabotage you emotionally so that you fall off and keep yourself stuck in this horrible loop of starting over and never truly gaining momentum towards your goal.

*Note: This transcript is autogenerated there may be some unintended errors.