I truly believe expectations hinder our ability to be at peace. Expectations cause unhealthy attachments to perfection, people, things, the future, and outcomes we wish we could control; but can’t.
If you keep up with the blog, you know I had a bumpy June (can read here). As I was re-playing the month in my head, I uncovered the one factor that “triggered” my setback: intense disappointment with not meeting my extremely high, unrealistic & perfectionistic expectations.
Can you think of a time you were perpetually stressed and unhappy because your expectations of yourself or someone else weren’t met?
What would happen if we tried keeping expectations out of our realm? If we stopped expecting outcomes and started consciously accepting the outcome?
Personally, I expect too much from myself, which harms my self-worth, confidence, and motivation. Others may have too high expectations around other people or experiences.
Whatever type of expectations you grip onto, wouldn’t we all be so much happier if we let go and surrendered?
SO, WHAT’S NEXT?
I want to work on finding the balance between striving for more and being grateful for the present moment.
I would like to get to a place where I just “DO THE THING” (whether it be exercising, following my food plan, etc) and be okay with the fact I’m not always going to be 100% successful. Since I won’t be holding on to expectations, I’ll be untroubled with the mistakes and imperfection.
If the end result is not of my liking, I’m sure I’ll learn from the experience; and if it’s a good outcome, we’ll be pleasantly surprised!
THE MAIN TAKEAWAY IS …
We can still reach for greatness and success without having expectations. Let’s just try our best each day and surrender the unrealistic expectations.

Great message today! I was thinking about something similar the other day with SMART goals and process goals. I like that process goals focus on the actions daily that end up adding up to amazing strides.
It can be hard to stay motivated if you always feel like you can’t measure up or hack it.
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