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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):