Jeff has taken the same route to work every day for the last 2 and a half years. Of the 500 times
he’s traveled the route, there have only been 3 occasions when he didn’t get stuck in traffic.
As he travels to work on Tuesday, Jeff has his entire morning ruined
when he gets stuck in traffic. This is nothing new for our friend Jeff.
What Jeff doesn’t realize is that he his is committing emotional suicide by way of unrealistic
expectations. Jeff runs into traffic 99% of the time on his way to work. Yet, he pulls out of the
driveway every morning expecting to beat it. As a result, Jeff is disappointed 99% of the time.
By simply modifying his expectations so that he expects traffic, Jeff can change his experience
of it. If he would expect the traffic, running into it wouldn’t be perceived negatively. Let’s
say he accepts it as a part of his day and it quickly meshes into his morning routine.
He’s now got hundreds of hours of podcasts lined up on a playlist and he’s even started
a few audiobooks on how to control his anger. Before long, Jeff is enjoying the part of his
morning where he can relax his thinking mind and begins looking forward the moment of tranquility.
In this video, I’ll explain how we invite significant disappointment, sadness,
and regret into our lives by placing unrealistic expectations on everything. (1 Second Pause)
How we perceive any future event is based on nothing other than the expectations we put on it.
When we have an upcoming experience, we paint a picture of how we expect it to go inside our mind.
When we have that experience, we define it by comparing it to the expectations we put in place.
In other words, what that experience ends up meaning
to us is how it compares to those expectations.
For example, let’s look at how your expectations could
influence your perception of making an 82 on a recent psychology exam.
After studying for a week straight, you couldn’t be more confident as you turn in your exam. You
call your friend as you walk out of class, “there is no way I made below a 95… To be honest, I might
have made a 100!”. You spend days celebrating. A week goes by and your grade is posted online:
you made an 82. You absolutely cannot believe it. You’re angry at yourself and at your professor.
You lose confidence in your test-taking skills and stop putting effort into preparing for the exams.
You go on to fail the class. The thing is – a score of 82 isn’t that bad, and it’s not
the grade itself that has caused you to feel any particular way… What has caused you the
emotional turmoil is how that grade compares to your expectations of what it would be.
You make an 82 and pass the test with a ‘B’. But because of the top-notch expectations you
placed on the outcome of your grade, you pass the test but fail yourself.
Now, what if you go in to take this test having logged no more than one hour of study time?
Your stomach is in knots as you walk into class the morning of your exam.
You flip it open and know immediately that this won’t end well. After 2 hours
of guessing, you leave the professor a side-note complimenting his new shoes and turn in the exam.
In this scenario, the call to your friend looks like this, “Oh no… I just got butchered!
I only knew 5 of the 80 questions! I’m sick to my stomach!”. After days of holding your breath, your
grade is posted while you and this same friend are at lunch a week later: “No Way! Oh my god, this is
the best day ever! I made an 82 on that exam! This calls for a celebration!”. (1 Sec Pause)
Notice how the exact same outcome on your exam creates two radically different versions of
reality that you find yourself living in. Nothing objectively changes in our examples: You take a
psychology exam and get a b minus on it. Yet the life you go on living after receiving the
grade is dramatically different. And in the case where your expectations were set extremely high,
you let some incorrect answers on your study guide cause you to fail the course.
Ultimately, your experience of your exam grade depends more heavily on the
expectations you put in place than it does on the grade itself. What matters isn’t the
grade you get – what matters is the grade you expect to get. (1 Pause)
A large chunk of the people and things we encounter on a daily basis are consistent
throughout our lives. People often don’t do what they say they are going to do. The weather channel
often gets the forecast completely wrong. Time and time again, Jeff runs into traffic. Time and
time again, our college professor grades exams much harder than we thought. And these things
are always going to be here, as they’re a part of life. Jeff will run into traffic again – that’s
not the question. The question is whether or not Jeff will allow traffic to ruin his morning.
We’ve got to accept these things as a part of life and expect them to happen.
In the name of accepting them as a part of life and expecting them to happen, they lose 100% of
their influence on us. When we acknowledge that traffic is unavoidable it meshes into our day
and becomes normal. So much so that when we run into traffic, we won’t make a subconscious peep.
It becomes as expected. The moment we begin to truly expect traffic, traffic can no longer
ruin our morning. But what can happen is the absence of it can make our morning better.
As a thought experiment, imagine if even though you studied like crazy for your exam
and were as prepared as you’d ever been, you took into consideration the fact that this
is only your second exam with this professor, and you very aren’t familiar with his grading system.
And that you did get those three answers on the study guide from Jenny,
and she almost failed the last test. As confident as you were, you take all of this
into consideration. Instead of expecting to make above a 95 with all the confidence in the world,
you expect to make no worse than a B on the exam. While you still won’t be jumping for joy,
these expectations radically change your experience of the 82. Now, you are as content
with a B minus as you would have been with a grade of 95 in the first example we used.
Our perception of a future experience is determined by comparing it to the
expectations we put in place. If we lift all expectations,
what we are confronted with is easier to accept. If we expect the worst,
a mediocre experience can bring us tremendous joy. But if we always expect the best,