You Don’t Know: How Mistaken Expectations Are Crippling Your Future
If you’ve ever planned, mentally raise your hand.
If you’ve ever estimated how long an aspiration would take you, again, mentally raise your hand.
If you’ve ever looked at someone else and found comfort in how long it would take you to match what they did — raise it high.
We’ve all guessed with a decent degree of certainty before, right?
The truth is, you don’t know.
I don’t know.
None of us really know, when it comes to the future.
Yet, we can’t just shy away from it.
So, why all the expectation?
Why do we afford so much value to the ‘fact’ that we could?
Why do we allow expectation to rule us?
We’ve all imagined where we want to go and formulated a corresponding plan.
Detailed or brief.
Actioned or simply imagined.
We’ve all assigned a measurement to our dreams or goals.
Whether that’s in effort or time required to complete.
I’ve been there, and so have you.
And often, we hit the nail on the head.
And if not exactly, we can get very close.
There are plenty of logical reasons to expect an outcome.
You might’ve walked that road before.
Maybe, you completed ‘it’ just a couple days ago.
Maybe you know someone who completed it, and found out how they did it.
However, that was then.
When it comes to the future, we have no idea.
Let’s imagine I’m conducting an experiment with 100 participants:
I’m going to ask a series of questions and tell you the answers I’d expect to see.
All the questions are yes/no questions.
For every situation, assume it’s a normal day with no extreme abnormalities.
Bear in mind, this experiment has no bearing on their actual ability to do what they claim they can, it’s a reflection of their expectations.
Before the experiment, I have some questions for you:
What are you working towards?
Not the small aims, your biggest aspirations — think of those.
They’re the ones I want you to think of.
Got something in mind?
Answer me this:
How long do you think it will take you?
Months? Years? Decades?
I want you to hold the answer in your head.
The expectation experiment:
You’re free to answer the questions as if you were one of the 100.
- Can you confidently predict what will happen in your general vicinity in the next few seconds?
99 : 1 | Yes: No
- What about the next few minutes?
75 : 25 | Yes: No
- The next few hours?
20 : 80 | Yes: No
- The next 48 hours?
5 : 95 | Yes: No
- The next week?
1 : 99 | Yes: No
- The next month?
0 : 100 | Yes: No
- The next year?
0 : 100 | Yes: No
- The next 3 years?
0 : 100 | Yes: No
Based on the above, when it comes to confident prediction:
- The farther into the future it is, the less confident we feel at predicting.
- We acknowledge that after a few hours, it’s not unlikely that our situation can drastically change.
- The majority of people can only make confident predictions about the extremely immediate future.
Interesting, no?
The experiment is completely based on my opinions, however I’d be confident that my predictions would stand alongside real results.
The point is,
We don’t know what’s going to happen.
Not in a few minutes.
Not in the next couple hours.
Nor in the next week.
And definitely not in the next year.
Never mind a decade.
And of all those time periods, it’s only in the immediate future where we feel generally confident.
But the majority of our dreams and aspirations are unachievable in the immediate future.
We have absolutely no idea how we are going to get there, if we are and when we are (assuming we do).
We’re all walking blind.
We’re all trying to tussle with future expectations.
In his book “Beginners,” Tom Vanderbilt whilst recounting his experience learning to surf writes,
“Unmet goals can destroy motivation as much as they drive it. “
I’ve experienced this recently, for a myriad of reasons I haven’t reached the heights I wanted to in the gym.
It’s mid-May, and I feel fat — still.
Contrary to logic, this has driven me away from the gym rather than towards it.
Surely, that should’ve been motivation to become more consistent, dedicated and hard-working?
Yet, here we are.
In the opposite situation.
Yesterday I struggled to force myself to the gym.
It was the first time I’ve set foot in the gym since May 2nd.
Tom Vanderbilt further quotes learning authority Barbara Oakley, “Much of our pain in learning, she argues, comes from getting hung up on results. “
In this instance, the pain was self-inflicted.
It turned my happy place of growth, into something unapproachable and unattainable.
It made me feel as if I wasn’t worthy to go to the gym.
That I wasn’t good enough.
And if I did go, I could only go at the quietest times.
With the least amount of people.
Because I didn’t deserve to go there, as I was.
Not as someone who had failed to reach their results.
Whilst walking back from my gym session last night, I realised something.
None of that means anything.
Results mean nothing.
Expectations mean nothing.
Why?
Because often they’re all lies.
And we confirm them by treating them as if they’re truths.
Contrary to how expectations made me feel, after completing my session:
I didn’t feel like an outsider.
Or an alien.
Or a failure.
I felt amazing.
I felt free.
I felt like me.
I wondered to myself, why did I ever voluntarily give up this feeling?
Expectation.
It perverted my desire for growth into a strict quota for success.
A quota, that if I failed to meet would result in sanctions.
But that punishment is imaginary.
At least, in terms of meeting my expectations.
However, the punishment for allowing expectations to pervert your growth journey is very real.
I felt it in my performance.
I felt it in my stamina.
I felt it in my discomfort.
I felt it in my comparative decrease in strength.
I felt it in my general confidence.
We perform better when we feel good, and I felt horrible.
Borderline sick, at that.
But that’s life.
The problem is your calendar:
The best thing I’ve learnt this year is to expect that life would be life.
Life can be horrible.
Life can be draining.
Life can be unreasonable.
That’s just part of the package.
It isn’t all daisies and roses.
The sun isn’t always beaming.
It isn’t always easy to look at our situation and smile.
But that’s just life.
Vanderbilt further writes that,
“More than age or fitness, the prime determinant in learning to surf is the calendar.
Reinhardt told me that people will book a package, show up for the first two or three lessons, begin to get a feel for it, then miss a week or two as some work-related thing comes up.
Then it gets colder and the commitment level drops off. “They’ve missed a whole winter and have to start from scratch in the spring,” he said,
One’s schedule must match up with the wave conditions, which were, more often than not, suboptimal or non-existent.”
This image struck me.
Beyond the applicability to surfing, it’s poignancy in general life was striking.
The reason my commitment was derailed was because my calendar was set up all wrong.
It got “colder”, and I fell off.
His point was, beginner surfers often aren’t committed to surfing in every condition, just when the conditions are favourable to them.
That’s how they’ve wired their calendars.
They are dependent on favourable conditions.
However, we don’t know what conditions will occur.
We don’t know if we’ll ever see the bright side to life ever again.
Does that mean you should just give up?
And abandon every single thing in your life?
Just because the reality hasn’t met our expectations?
Of course not.
And the best example of why we cannot allow expectations to determine whether we act, is the example given by Tom Vanderbilt.
Wasted time.
“They’ve missed a whole winter and have to start from scratch in the spring.”
The consequence of wasted, or rather, squandered time is regression.
You back-step.
You become worse.
Weaker.
Fatter.
Less proficient.
Less confident.
The whole 10 miles.
We waste every single ounce of effort we initially poured.
It’s like embarking on a marathon, reaching the halfway point, then turning around just because the wind starts blowing in a way you dislike.
Completely and utterly stupid.
What was all that effort for then?
If some failed expectations were enough to derail you, why did you ever start?
Why did you ever put growth in your calendar if you couldn’t commit to the whole year?
And let’s say the wind stopped blowing in that jarring way, what now?
You’re significantly further away from the finish line now.
It’s so much harder to get there now.
And it’s much easier to go back to square 1.
And who knows, when that jarring variable may arise again?
Why even bother?
That’s the trap within failed expectation.
The point is, we don’t know what’s going to happen.
We can only confidently predict the immediate future.
And in terms of the goals we have, that predication means jack squat.
Absolutely nothing.
So why base our calendars on expectations?
Why set conditions on your growth?
Why make it harder for yourself?
Do away with expectation completely.
Simply take life for what it is.
Rain or shine, life is life.
And growth is no different.
Rain or shine, growth still needs to happen.
It’s either that or we back-step.
You choose.
I’m no longer going to allow expectations of the future to derail me.
I’m not telling you to stop setting goals in general.
Nor, am I telling you to stay in your comfort zone — your realm of predictability.
Neither am I telling you to base your calendar on the things you can certainly do.
That is ignorant of the benefit in pursuing risk.
I’m telling you to expect life to be life.
Since we don’t know what life could throw at us, change your expectations.
Expect to keep making a step forward regardless of what life throws at you.
Rain or shine.
Paddling pool or the deep-end.
Think one thing:
How can I grow?
There is no room for expectation there.
LM
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