Always keep your Expectations low!

Okay, probably not the kind of blog post title you’d expect from a personal development and NLP training company so let me explain...

Last week I began to ‘believe’ again...I began to ‘believe’ in something that had lay dormant inside me for what seemed like an eternity...

Something that had been bubbling under the surface waiting to come out...Something that had desperately wanted to come out but, up until that point, had been skilfully suppressed.

I was sitting watching the Scotland v Wales Football 2014 World Cup Qualification match and I could feel it start to well up inside me....The national pride, the excitement and above all, the expectation of what this could potential mean. Scotland were 1-0 with 15 minutes to play...Looking comfortable...

I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

I sat with a cool beer basking in the glory of the imminent Scottish victory, opening up to the possibility that ‘just maybe’ we could qualify for our first major championships since 1998.

What an idiot :-) I really should know better! 15 minutes later (after 2 goals by Gareth Bale) the dream lay in tatters. I felt like a dog that had been lured into a room with a pile of doggie biscuits only to suddenly find out that I was actually at the vets!

Fast forward to Tuesday and, following their 2-0 defeat to Belgium, the final nail was firmly driven into Scotlands' qualifying campaign.

A funny thing happens when we raise our expectations. We suddenly have something to lose! Disappointment does indeed require adequate planning.

Now I know you’re probably thinking that I've lost my mind here or that I'm suggesting you don’t set high standards for yourself.

It’s okay my mind is fully intact and I’m not advocating that you just ‘settle’ for mediocrity or worse.

The problem with setting expectations happens when we start to create one with something that is outside our sphere of influence. 

If I'm running a training course then I have a large amount of influence over how it goes...I don’t have complete control and never will but i have enough of an influence to have high expectations.

But I had absolutely no say whatsoever in the outcome of the Scotland match.

Unless you believe Yuri Geller’s story that he once influenced the outcome of the Scotland V England Match with the power of his mind while flying over the stadium in a helicopter, there’s nothing any of us could have done to affect the outcome of that match (outwith perhaps the crowd at Hampden).

It was up to the players and the managers...They were responsible, not me.

So if you think about it, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to raise your expectations for something you don’t have influence or control over. In fact, when you do, you put yourself in a pretty vulnerable position. It could pay off but it can also backfire (as my foul mood for the rest of the night can testify).

Of course with sport, for some people, the elation of the occasional victory or the drama of not knowing is enough to merit the potential consequences. I totally get that but what about the other areas of your life and how is it affecting your stress levels and general happiness?

Do you have expectations in your personal life that are almost completely out of your sphere of influence?

What about your job?
Your business if you have one?
Or your relationships?

It’s a big cause of stress for a lot of people when they start building expectations with something they have no or very little control or influence over...

Have a think about it, where in your life do you do this? And what would it be like if you just let go of the need to control the things that are quite obviously outside of your control.

Disappointment does require adequate panning but it’s also a product of inadequate planning. 
You know it makes sense.

Steven Burns

NLP Trainer & Coach

The Scottish Centre of NLP

NLP Training Scotland

info@scottishcentreofnlp.com