Ep #20: Mind the Gap: Setting Realistic Expectations
episode summary
A big source of suffering in our lives is the gap between our expectations of a situation or a person and the reality of the situation or person - and the bigger the gap, the more the suffering.
The good news is that there is a way to protect yourself from some of that suffering before you even get into the situation or encounter the person. The key: setting realistic expectations.
Join me as we learn to adjust our expectations, allow for pleasant surprises, and side-step some serious stress - even at the DMV.
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Podcast Ep #02: Control What You Can
For the full show notes and transcript, head over here.
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CHAPTERS:
1:37 - The Dreaded DMV
5:01 - Expectations vs. Reality
6:06 - How to Set a Realistic Expectation
8:56 - Strategic Pessimism
listen to the episode:
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Michelle: 0:04
Hey, I'm Michelle Gauthier and you're listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. Hey friends, thank you for joining. Today we're going to be talking about expectations: the expectations we have for ourselves and for other people and how having expectations that don't match reality - what really happens - can pretty much ruin a situation for you. I will give you lots of examples and tips to make sure that you aren't doing this in your own life. As usual, I'm going to start off by telling you a story that has recently happened to me and a place where I went about this the wrong way, and I'm going to tell you the right way to do it so that maybe you can suffer a little bit less. First, I'd like to give a shout out to our listener, Marie, who left a lovely review last week saying, "I love Michelle's podcast. She has a way of breaking information down into bite-sized pieces that feel manageable. The last thing we need when we feel overwhelmed is to feel like it's already out of our reach, so I appreciate the small tactical steps. I'm excited to dive into more episodes." Thank you, marie, for writing that review. I am grateful that you feel that way and I aim to continue to do exactly that to encourage everyone just to take small steps, put them into small tactical things that you can do every day to improve your life a little bit. Each and every Monday - or whatever day you happen to listen to the podcast. Okay, so you guys, I wanted to record this yesterday, but I was honestly so mad about the situation that happened that I couldn't even be clear on my thoughts. That's how upset I was about this yesterday. What happened is this: I took my son -he's - and I took him to take the driver's test. We live in St. Louis and, because I have other friends with kids the same age, I had heard that right now it's taking a really long time to get your driver's test. You have to go really early in the morning and sometimes they have you come back later in the day. They only do so many in a day. This is true for all of the locations throughout St. Louis. You, in theory, can make an appointment, but there were no appointments available, so I went in knowing that this wasn't going to be easy. I called the driver's license bureau the day before we were going to try to take the test and the helpful person told me that that morning the first person had gotten in line at 4 am. They opened at 7, just for reference. So the first person had gotten in line at 4 am and that many people had taken tests that day, so that by 7:30, so a half hour after they opened, they were closed and not taking any more driver's license tests for that day. So I was like all right, that's ridiculous, I can't believe that's true. But I guess we will just go ahead and leave early and get there and wait in line with everybody else. So I set my alarm for five and my son and I go and we get there like probably 5:35 or :45, and I'm thinking this is going to be awesome, we're going to be like the first people in line. We get there and are like the 30- somethingth people in line, and then after we sat down - we brought chairs and everything, so did everybody else, it was like a little parade out there and by the time we sat there until seven, when it opened, there was a whole line of people behind us like twice as long. So by the time the door opened, we got in, we got a spot for testing and they told us to come back at 10:45. So I was like, okay, cool, that's kind of what I was expecting. Great. So we go home, and come back at 10:45. They had told us just to sit in the car. We had like a number that we put in the car and they said, just sit in the car and your instructor will come out and give you the test. So we waited and we waited. Pretty soon it was 11:45 and 12:00 and meanwhile I start to panic because I know that my kids both have orthodontist appointments at one and it's like a 20 minute drive. So my expectation was that, yeah, this was going to take a long time, but that we would be finished by probably 11:30 at the latest. In my mind, which I just made up, by the way, that was my expectation. Anyway, what happened is he took the test at like 12:30. He finished at like 12:50. He passed. Thank goodness we don't have to do that again. Yay. And we had to run home, pick up my daughter, go to the orthodontist. We were late. I called them. They were super annoyed. It's very hard to get an appointment there. They were very annoyed, had to shorten one of my kids' appointments so I have to bring her back again the next time. I understand why they were annoyed, by the way. During that time I didn't get a chance to get any lunch, neither did Oliver. We were starving and I was so crabby and cranky. So, even though this good thing had happened, that he had gotten his license, which is what we wanted - I was just mad. Just flat out mad. And when I look back on it and see why I was mad, it's because I did a typical thing that our brains will do, which is to make up an expectation. And when my reality didn't match that expectation, that's where I created my own suffering. So I felt like because I knew it was going to take a long time at the driver's license bureau that I had set my expectations like okay, we got to get up at five in the morning, that's just what you got to do, that's fine, we can do that. But I did not think that our 1pm appointment would be in jeopardy when I was getting in line at 5:30 in the morning. But it was. And when it was, I started having thoughts like this is ridiculous, this is unfair. I cannot believe there's no better solution than this. All these thoughts and what those thoughts created was a very bad mood for me. It was very unhappy and it just continued through the rest of the day and driving to the orthodontist office as quickly as possible. My kids were like, "mom you're, why are you driving like that? Take a breath, calm down. I mean, even my kids were like telling me to chill out and I just couldn't do it. So the lesson learned there is anytime that you're feeling really upset by the way something turns out, see if you set yourself up for failure and then ask yourself this question: if I had to bet the way that it was going to go, based on my past history with this person or situation, what would I guess? So if I think back to my experience with going to the DMV in St. Louis, it has, 100% of the time, taken longer than I would have ever guessed. Like, no matter what I'm doing, it would have taken much longer than I ever would have guessed. And instead I just was thinking best- case scenario, I'll be out of there by 11:30. And the difference between what was a realistic expectation and my dreamy, overly optimistic expectation created my suffering. Another example of how this can happen is when you have expectations and keep putting expectations on people, even though they keep delivering you a reality that's different than that. So you know that saying of you know, when someone tells you who they are, just listen, instead of thinking, oh, they're going to change or they're going to do something different. This is a small example of that, but one of my kids, my daughter, will tell me when she gets home from school or when I pick her up from practice or something like that, and I ask her how it was. She always starts off with all the things that went wrong and then she'll eventually tell me you know what was good or whatever. What I want her to do, what would make me feel more comfortable, is if she told me the good things first. I want her to think positive. I want her to be positive first. That's not what she does. So if I had to guess, every day when she comes home from school and I say, how was it, she'll say, oh, it was okay, or I'm just really hungry, or I have a lot of homework, or whatever. If I asked myself that question, what would I guess would happen, or what her response would be? Based on my past history, it would be that, exactly that that she would tell me all the things that went wrong first. But yet I keep having this expectation that she's just going to like wake up one morning and do that differently for no reason. So if I just accept that that's how she is, that's the order that she tells stories, and just know that that's going to be it, I don't have to feel upset when that happens. Maybe you've got a situation like that, maybe when every time you get together with your family, someone ends up arguing and when you have your next family gathering, instead of thinking, "this time is going to be different, I'm really going to enjoy myself. This time. I don't think anybody is going to get in a fight. Then you're setting yourself up just like I set myself up. You're setting yourself up that something will just magically be different than it's ever been before, and the chances of that happening are very unlikely. So if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that I am all about thinking positive, and a lot of times people will say to me well, this is like thinking negative, it's like believing the worst, and I like to think about it as strategic pessimism, strategic realistic expectations, where you're on purpose, thinking about what might really happen. Even if that really happens thing is negative, it still helps you have a more positive and calm mind because you know what to expect and anytime you know what to expect and it happens that way it's much easier. Now an example I just gave of if your family fights all the time and you go to I don't know Thanksgiving and you just know that there's going to be some kind of outburst and there isn't one, great, you can be pleasantly surprised. It doesn't hurt to have a realistic expectation. Another question I get about this concept a lot of times is so I'm just letting that other person off the hook. They just get to keep behaving in that way. Let's take this example. So let's say every time I see my mom, the first thing she does is looks me up and down and says what are you doing with your hair? Or that's not a good outfit for you, or insults me in some way. By the way, I'm not actually talking about my mom. My mom would not ever do that, but let's just pretend, for the sake of example, that that's what she does. So if I decide that, I'm going to expect that from her. So when I see my mom, within the first two minutes she's going to criticize something about me. The question that I get from my clients is, "So I just am going to let her get away with that. I'm just going to expect that that's how she's going to act and then she just gets to keep on acting like that" But the question I would ask is if she's been criticizing you when you see her forever and that's a habit she has a habit enough that you can predict that she's going to do it, and you have said things to her about it and she hasn't changed, what makes you think she's going to change, whether you expect that she's going to do it or you expect that she won't do it? Your expectations are private. They're within your head. Your expectations have no impact on what she's actually going to do, so we're not really thinking about the other person. My goal in that example would not be to punish my mom or change her behavior. It would be to make me feel better. So I'm going to say, "I like how I look today. I know my mom's not going to. I know she's going to say something about it. That's just what she does. I'm not going to take that opinion on. I'm going to let it roll off my back and I'm going to move on with my day." So what you have done there is, you have saved yourself the suffering. Right? On the other hand, if you had the expectation, I would like how I look today. I hope my mom likes how I look today. I hope she tells me I look nice. And when she doesn't, and she criticizes you, then you're kind of crushed and you're feeling so upset about it. So neither one of those scenarios is any different for your mom, but it's very different for you. So what I'm recommending is in order to save yourself the hassle of getting upset and the exhaustion that it takes when you get upset and get in your head and act like I did yesterday when I got so upset about the driver's license/ orthodontist situation, save yourself from that by setting your expectations based on reality, and if reality is better than your expectations, great, you win. Let me know if you've got any questions about this concept as you give it a try. I promise you, I promise you you will feel better, and that's the only thing that we can work on. We can't work on changing other people's behavior. We can't change them anyway. If you are not familiar with that concept, go back to I think it's episode two what's in your control and what's not. Okay, that's it for this week. I'll see you next week. Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthier.com. See you next week.
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