Are Your Expectations Helping Or Hindering You?

The biggest obstacle many clients face when starting their health journey comes when the client needs to adjust their time expectations. 

The modern day culture of instant gratification, quick fixes and magic pills have altered people's expectations of how much time and effort will be required to achieve a specific goal. This is because we often underestimate the size of the task, and overestimated our abilities to complete it. Hence why “not having enough time” is one of society's most common complaints. 

Of Course there is an ideal time, when would you like to be healthier? “ As soon as possible”, or “straight away”, are typical answers. But when do you expect to be healthier? Is a very different question.

Take losing weight for example, one of the most common health goals for society. Most people want to lose a stone of body weight per month. For somebody who is an expert in weight management, who has purposefully gained and lost weight before, counted calories consistently etc, this “may be” a realistic goal. For joe Bloggs who has been overweight for a decade if not more , has never successfully lost weight and kept it off before, counted calories or anything similar to that. Losing any weight at all in month one would be a success let alone the 14lbs needed to lose a stone. 

Then if you consider what impact those expectations will have on the likelihood of Joe completing the goal it doesn't look good. If Joe B expects to lose 1 stone in the first month and “only lost 4lbs” how motivated and inspired will Joe be to continue with his goal? Very unlikely.

Why? Because after 1 month he is already 3 weeks behind his expected target, Joe will start to doubt his ability to achieve his goal, because frustrated and unmotivated and very quickly think “what's the point”.

Now if the only thing we change is Joe’s expectations this scenario may look very different. If Joe’s expectations are “it will take me 12 months to lose 2 stone”, this is an average weight loss of 2lbs per month. 

If after month one Joe has lost 4lbs instead of feeling frustrated and unmotivated due to his unrealistic expectations we would feel inspired, motivated, in control and ready to attack month two. 

If he has lost half that and lost 2lbs? Brilliant he is on target, month 1 the most difficult month because it requires the largest mentally and habit shift and he has successfully achieved his goal. 

If he hasn't lost any weight by the end of month one, then yes he would feel despondent and frustrated but he’s only 2lbs behind. Can he lose those 2lbs over the next 11 months with more practice, more experience, more skills? Of Course he can. This was only month one, and that's the hardest month. 

The key takeaway from all of this is “Are your expectations helping or hindering you?”.

Are you setting yourself up for success or failure, because you are in control of your expectations, and if nothing but perfection is required for you to meet your expectations and to be happy, i would say you were headed to inevitable failure. 

If you truly want to help yourself, to give yourself the very best chance of success. I would 10x the time you expect it to take originally, and be happy initially taking the correct steps that will achieve you the outcome regardless of whether any progress is made. 

Achieving any long term success in health is difficult enough, so give yourself a fighter's chance with your own expectations.