Are your expectations unrealistic?
I really am dying to check up on your progress since last week’s blog post. I heard from a lot of you afterwards as to how you are committing to your 3 Daily Non-Negotiables. It was great to see your lists and to hear you are making time for your well-being. I have a confession to make though. I wasn’t very forthcoming in my last post and I feel a bit guilty about it. But it was with the best of intentions, I promise! Let me explain…
Firstly, I think I know you pretty well. I know for a fact that you have HIGH expectations. This is why you have the results you have in your life - look around you! You also tend to hold those around you to high expectations too, especially those family members of yours. I bet that means your expectations of yourself are even higher. I wonder if you even realise how high and unachievable some of those really are? I’m not referring to the ones you have for others (although you might realise this through this post), I mean the expectations you have for yourself!
When I started the 3 Daily Non-Negotiables for myself, do you know what I initially committed to?
Read every day
Go for a run every day.
Meditate every day.
Day 1 was awesome! I did them all! I felt so good about myself, really accomplished!
Day 2 was a bit cold - so the run was just a walk.
Day 3 I slept in so missed meditation.
It just got worse from there. By day 5 I felt like a complete failure! Can you relate?
At this point I had to check-in with myself. Because I started these Non-Negotiables to find self-connection and instead I was only finding reasons to be ashamed of myself. It was not working. So, I had to calibrate my expectations by asking myself:
Is this REALISTIC?
Is this NECESSARY?
Can this big expectation of mine be a GOAL instead?
What is the first small step I can take TODAY to take me towards this goal?
I realised that I had to re-clarify my 3 Daily Non-Negotiables. As you are aware, they are now;
Read a few chapters of a story book every day.
Go for a walk or exercise every day.
Take care of my skin.
These 3 tasks give me self-connection and a re-set as I intended. I am proud to say I do them effortlessly but I also find I am meditating and I am running more often every week too!
So, why is clarifying all this relevant you ask? And why didn’t I mention this last week? Well, I did want you to have a go first and really, to notice what works and what doesn’t. Most importantly, I wanted to raise an important point here.
Knowing how we do the little things, will help us to understand how to do the big things!
When we understand how we approach these “little” daily tasks of ours, we start to understand our daily mindsets. We start to learn how we motivate ourselves, how we connect with our environment and even how we are limiting or sabotaging ourselves!
“Your success in life will be in direct proportion to what you do after you do what you are expected to do.” - Brian Tracy
If what we expect out of ourselves is extremely out of reach, we will never get past it to do the extraordinary. It’s the hamster in the wheel scenario. When we look at our environments, we might even notice that we hold our loved ones to unrealistic expectations also, especially our children. So can they ever exceed our expectations? Wouldn’t it be amazing for them to know they can?
It is also important to not confuse being realistic with lowering standards. It’s not the same thing. When we are realistic about our expectations of ourselves and clear about our goals and our standards, our motivations become intrinsic. Our level of effort becomes seemingly effortless. It really will shift how you ultimately experience your life. Lowering our standards is actually accepting a sense of failure even before we start. (That’s another conversation for another time!)
So my friend, I encourage you to revisit your 3 Daily Non-negotiables and be brave to make the changes you need to make. The successes in the seemingly small tasks sets you up for being open to and working towards your bigger goals too.
I trust this check-in was of value and I look forward to seeing how you have calibrated your 3 Daily Non-Negotiables! Send me an email like you normally do, or else, feel free to comment below!