How to manage your expectations?

A lot of our stress has to do with unrealistic expectations. This article is about how to manage your expectations while pursuing your goals and dreams.

Why is it important to manage our expectations?
Let’s look into the definition of the word: An expectation is “a strong belief that something will happen or be the case.” (Oxford dictionary)
We human beings love to believe. Our beliefs, hopes, dreams often keep us going. But careful: Just as they can help us to move and achieve wonderful things, they can make us stuck. If we only see, believe and expect one certain outcome; it can lead to stress, when the outcome is different.
Mo Gawdat, the author of “Solve for Happy” and “Unstressable”, has formulated the following “Happiness Equation“: “Happiness is greater or equal your perception of the events of your life minus your expectations of how life should behave.” (Details and visualisation: https://www.mogawdat.com/solve-for-happy)
To me personally, this equation has helped me explain the frustration and stress I’ve felt in different situations of my life. I think there is more to happiness than just achieving what we expect and I don’t think we should live completely without expectations so that the results are “always better”, but – as Mo explains – “if you perceive the events as equal to or greater than your expectations, you’re happy—or at least not unhappy”. To conclude and draw this a bit further: If you perceive the events as equal to or greater than your expectations, you might feel relieved—or at least not stressed.

How to manage our expectations?
Based on my experiences over the last years, I honestly think we can try to manage our expectations towards a “more realistic” understanding of today’s life, where things just change a lot, and where many (sometimes complex) factors are part of the result, something like this:
I’m trying to believe, trust, create, prepare as well as I can – and keep my mind open for surprises, new circumstances, and most of all: experiences.
It’s a constant learning process. Here is my reflection / what helps me:

• Use every new experience to reflect on your expectations: A few weeks ago it was the first time a workshop got canceled. Everything seemed fine but there were circumstances the client hadn’t seen coming. I hadn’t expected it either so it was frustrating and I allowed myself to feel this frustration. Then I started reflecting: What can I learn from this? Is there any way I can adapt/prepare better? I’ve personally decided to “plan a certain cancelation rate” in the future. Circumstances can always change. And in the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world we live in, the truth is: Things are changing all the time. Some for the better, some for the worse. Let’s keep our mind open. Maybe something good will come from it afterwards?
  
  
• Live in the present: The more we focus on today – today’s action, today’s goals, the little things of life – the less stress we experience when things change. “Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.” (Khalil Gibran) Of course we can – and should – dream about the future. Our dreams and visions make us get up, move, take care of our wellbeing, look after our loved onces, work on our professional development etc. Let’s move and dream but not try to control every detail. Dreams and visions can also develop further, take on new forms and shapes – if we allow them to.
  
  
• Don’t expect a certain outcome from something that doesn’t only depend on you: If you like to run and plan to run 5 times a week, that’s probably something you can manage and decide. There might still be some external factors like the weather, urgencies that can come up, etc. but 90-95% of your running habit is on you. But there are many life situations that are not only on us. A relationship. A meeting. Anything really that has to do with human interaction and more people. We never know what happened to the other person that day. We can’t control someone else, their feelings, reactions, actions etc. It’s even hard and often impossible to control our own body, emotions, reactions (see the last point). Let’s focus and prepare – with our best, possible intention – on the part that depends on us. Let the rest be part of the experience.
  
  
• Plan some overflow TIME for changes and to adapt: Let’s work on ourselves and our goals with kindness and compassion – this also means to have space to adapt and plan/prepare some time, for when things changes, eg. when we don’t feel well or when a task takes longer. We just often try to squeeze everything into one day – it happens to me as well – and then we don’t understand how we are so exhausted at night. Let’s not expect that everything will work out and take exactly the minutes we plan but maybe longer or shorter. Let’s plan 70% of our time and leave 30% to new circumstances. Let’s create time in our agenda. Or if I have an important meeting or event then maybe I arrive 1 hour earlier to prepare for the setting instead of just 10 minutes, because this helps me to calm my nerves. In this article, I’ve explained this concept in detail: https://littlehealthyhabits.com/how-to-live-in-the-moment-in-our-agenda-society/
  
  
• Remember we are emotional human beings, not machines: Not every day we get up with the same energy and mood – at least I don’t. There are days or moments when it just all seems off. We might even drop something, miss the transport, forget an important call… It happens. Or we had a difficult conversation or stressful event the day before and our mind is still busy thinking about it. If there is time and space for it, my recommendation is to slow down, connect to ourselves, maybe write down our thoughts or move our body. A walk in nature or even a little dance session can reset our nervous system. But still it might be a day where we are just not as efficient as usually. And that’s OK. Let’s not expect we are capable of ticking off countless To Do’s. And if we expect to have some emotional, bad or sad days – then it’s easier to accept them. Remember the happiness equation above?

I don’t know if I’ve satisfied your expectation with this article. Maybe you expected something different. Or maybe you didn’t have any expectation when you read the title? I leave it to you to reflect on it and I’m happy to read your thoughts and inputs. How do you manage your expectations?