in life to go around believing that you can’t grow.
In a growth mindset, you believe that even the most basic, seemingly innate abilities can be developed and expanded through specific and deliberate practice. This fosters a desire for, and love of, learning and practice. The belief that you can learn and grow through something difficult can fuel determination and resilience and allow you to continue to move forward even at times it seems like everything is pushing you not to. Combine this with a belief that experiences in life, no matter how light or dark, are an opportunity to learn something, and you are set to get through anything.
Check Your Expectations
Expectations matter (a lot). They can set you on a path to tremendous growth, or they can hold you in a place of suffering. The beauty and the burden of this is that you alone are in control of your expectations. You get to choose to hold expectations that help you or hurt you, but you can only make a choice if you’re aware of them. When you hear words like these from yourself or others, know that expectations are lurking, and use them as a trigger to tune in: must, have to, need to, supposed to, had better, should. You may discover you are should-ing on yourself all day long.
Why does that matter? Shoulds have a big impact on how successful you feel. If every little success is crowded out by all the shoulds that were not looked after, you can see it becomes easy to feel like you never get to enjoy any successes at all. “I did have a great breakfast today, but I shouldn’t have stopped for a latte on my way to work, and I’ve got to get better a drinking more water, and I was supposed to pack my lunch for today, but I didn’t.” Success breeds success, but not a lot of breeding will happen in the dark land of shoulds.
If you discover you are running around with superhuman expectations in every area of life – your eating, movement, sleep, relationships, work – you are not alone. As you tune in, you will see how some expectations serve you and some don’t. As much as you would love them to, superhuman expectations don’t necessarily make things go faster. They may actually get in the way of progress.
ex·pec·ta·tion
/ˌekspekˈtāSH(ə)n/
noun
a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future.
a belief that someone will or should achieve something.
So, what do you do? You practice checking in with your expectations as you go about building your Owner’s Manual (and the rest of your life). Ask yourself questions like, “What are my expectations right now? Do I believe this expectation belongs to me or someone else? What is influencing what I expect? Does it make sense? Does this expectation serve me? Does it serve somebody else?” It demands frequent tuning in and adjusting course. Expectations are sneaky little things.
I had no idea just how much my expectations were impacting my life until I started tuning in. I had humongous, unrealistic (and crushing) expectations weighing me down in some places. I had humongous, inspiring (and helpful) expectations lifting me up in other places. Once I started to unpack them, I soon realized some belonged to me and a bunch belonged to others (family, work, society at large). Some were fairly new, and some had been with me a long (long) time. As a dietitian, the expectations I had about what my own eating should look like needed a significant reset. I remember realizing on a call with Coach Pam that I basically had a deep gnawing expectation that I should be laying out a dinner spread like Martha Stewart each night in order to be a successful Dietitian Mother. Right. That was helpful. There is a lot of room between a Martha Stewart-worthy spread and toaster oven English muffin pizzas.
Think for a minute about what you expect from yourself in terms of eating. And then think about what you expect from your clients or your colleagues or any other human that is not you. Notice anything? Do you believe your expectations are helping you, moving you further ahead? Is there room to close the gap a little there – between where you are and where you think you should be?
Here are few expectations that will serve you well in the process of creating your Owner’s Manual (and perhaps in the process of living in general):
Expect it to be difficult, uncomfortable, and to downright suck at times
Bring to mind something you’ve done that was difficult that you knew would be difficult. Perhaps you ran a race or signed up for a super intense workout at the gym. Or you started a new job or project that you knew would test your limits. Or you delivered a baby (that’s an easy pick if you have that one on your resume). Are you with me here?
Now think about something you‘ve done that was difficult, and you thought it wouldn’t be. Maybe you even thought it would be easy, and it ended up totally not being easy. How did you show up differently for the first difficult thing compared to the second? Both are difficult, but the expectations around each were different. How do you show up differently when you expect something to suck? When you sign on for it knowing it will suck?
I can hear you saying, “Okay, Irene, but some difficulties are more difficult than other difficulties.” And I get that; you’re right. Right now, where you are and the struggles you’re having are difficult, no question. Yet, suppose for a minute you believed you are exactly where you are meant to be. What if life is supposed to go like this? Exactly like this. If you changed the thought in your head about this hard thing from “This sucks, and it shouldn’t” to “This sucks, and it should,” how would you show up differently?
You know this, but I’m going to say it anyhow. Change requires discomfort. You cannot grow from a place of comfort. If you want change – which I know you do because you’re here – you can fight the discomfort, or you can expect that it is part of the process, lean in, and get it over with. You get to narrow that gap between how it is and how you think it should be by shifting your expectations. If you want to.
Expect to have blind spots
You have blind spots even though you don’t like to think you do. There are things about yourself that you can’t see, areas where your way of thinking prevents you from a complete and accurate view of reality, no matter how hard you try. It’s not special to you; blind spots are a human thing. Expecting that you can’t see it all and you can’t appreciate what you can’t see creates room to be open to observations and feedback from others in a new way. Feedback and outside eyes stop being something to fear and become something worth seeking out (if you really want to see the truth, that is).
This video called “It’s Not About the Nail” puts this concept on display in a fantastic (and hilarious) way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg. Expect to have blind spots. Hold space for the idea that you may not see something that is plainly obvious to someone else. Not all feedback has the same weight or is deserving of your time, but seeking to understand what people in your life who truly have your best intentions at heart observe may save you from unnecessary struggle and pain and may strengthen pieces of your Owner’s Manual.
Expect to have control of your actions
It is easy to have faulty expectations around control. You live in a world that feeds the idea that you can and should take control of every aspect your life. The trouble is that can cause you to spend your precious time and energy in places that you cannot possibly, and will never, have control over.
Getting clear on your expectations around control will serve you well because you can choose to place your
