No Excuses, It’s Time to Raise Expectations

There was no daily newspaper delivered to my driveway on Memorial Day, and it didn’t even faze me. Normally, if I miss a paper, I’ll call the neighbors to see if theirs was delivered or look online to see if there was a delay, but I don’t expect much of my newspaper anymore. Since Covid, newspapers have adopted lower standards, and conditioned their customers to accept less and pay more.

But they’re not alone. In the wake of the pandemic, it’s been hard to buy a house, a car or certain groceries, and instead of protesting and asking why, we just shrug our shoulders and lower our expectations. Employers are struggling to find employees who are willing to work, and instead of probing to find the cause, we resign ourselves to thinking that this is “just the way it is now.” Our children are underperforming on standardized testing, and instead of examining their motivations, we blame schools and their reaction to the pandemic.

It’s time to change all of that. It’s time that we raise our expectations.

When we consistently lower our expectations of so many things in our world, the world generally meets those expectations. Before long, it’s tempting to start to lower our expectations of ourselves. If newspapers, schools, manufacturers and the workforce expect less of themselves, it’s easy to expect less of ourselves. In turn, self-reliance and pride suffer, and we tumble into passive herd behavior.

My parents could have lowered their expectations of their physically handicapped son, but they did just the opposite. Instead of coddling me and allowing me to wallow in self-pity, they pushed me out the door and told me that I needed to expect as much or more of myself as any of my peers. If I didn’t want to be shackled by pity and low expectations, I needed to push myself beyond the expectations of others who might not know what I had inside.

Predictably, I failed at many of the things I tried, but I kept trying, expecting more of myself than perhaps the world expected of me. Though my failures were plenty, I experienced enough success to encourage me to reach for more. More importantly, I avoided making excuses for myself, until Covid.

Though I never contracted Covid, I was not immune to its effects. Becoming frustrated with a new reality and the challenges it presented to both the professional and personal aspects of my life, I started to make excuses and expect less of myself. That didn’t happen overnight; I slowly and subconsciously let my efforts slide alongside the expectations I had for everything around me. At first, it felt uncomfortable to expect less of myself, but after a while, it felt too comfortable.

When I looked back at 2022, I was disappointed with myself and my efforts. My business numbers were not where they should be, and I wrote next to nothing, including this blog, all year long. When 2022 ended, I was no closer to my goals than I was at the beginning of the year. Taking a step back, I saw that my performance reflected the lowered expectations I had allowed myself to live under.

In the six months since, I’ve managed to realign and redirect my expectations and performance. My business numbers have already exceeded last year’s, and I have resumed writing. In fact, I’m on track to publish my long-neglected book by the end of the year. All of that has made me feel much better about myself.

We feel at our best when we are performing at our best, and we perform at our best when we’re living under high expectations. If any of that seems familiar to you, I encourage you to challenge yourself to reach a little higher than you have been, and to ditch the excuses. Maybe, like me, you’ll be happier when you expect more of yourself.

Expect It from Yourself

There’s no question that Bubba Starling heard the doubters who grew louder with each season he spent in the minor leagues. Many openly speculated about how long the Kansas City Royals would hold on to their million-dollar investment before they swallowed their loss and moved on. I’m sure that Bubba himself wondered the same thing as he struggled through eight years of not meeting the expectations of the pundits, let alone the expectations he had of himself.

Those expectations were astronomical when the Royals signed him, straight out of high school, with the fifth overall draft pick. The $7.5 million signing bonus he received guaranteed that he wouldn’t escape the scrutiny that came with those expectations. When he signed, it seemed like a win for all sides. It’s unlikely that anyone saw the eight years of struggle ahead.

It would have been easy for Bubba to quit and fade off into anonymity, effectively quieting the critics, but he didn’t. He expected great things of himself, and persisted until he reached those expectations.

Most of us will never experience the pressure of expectations as high as those placed on professional athletes. Our expectations instead will come from the individual we see in the mirror each morning.

Nate Lashley always believed that he could succeed as a professional golfer, but his results seemed to indicate otherwise. In fact, the professional golf world had virtually written him off, until he won his first PGA event earlier this summer. It was a highly unlikely win for the golfer who had to play his way in and missed qualifying by a couple of strokes. In fact, he didn’t get into the last spot (156^th) in the tournament, until a qualified golfer backed out when his clubs didn’t make the flight. When Nate teed off on the first day of the four-day tournament, he was ranked 353^rd in the PGA.

A few years back, discouraged by his lack of success, Nate had quit professional golf and started working in real estate. He admitted, in hindsight, that he probably wasn’t ready for professional golf when he began his career. His parents and girlfriend had died in a tragic plane crash just before he turned professional, and he struggled dealing with that loss while trying to compete at a high level.

His hiatus from golf didn’t last long, as he had high expectations for the guy he saw in the mirror each morning. Those expectations took him to PGA tournaments where he was forced to play his way in, like he did the 2019 Rocket Mortgage Classic. There aren’t a lot of outside expectations when you tee off in the 156^th spot. Most of those golfers are hoping that they make the cut at the end of the second day, which qualifies them for prize money.

Nate took the lead on that first day, and never lost it over the four-day event. I imagine that he survived and maintained the lead because of the strong expectations he had for himself. He knew that he could do it, even when there were many others who doubted him. Now, he has a $1.314 million dollar check and a PGA card that will ensure his entry into events until the end of the 2020-21 season. Now, he knows that he belongs.

Bubba too has ascended quickly, after his slow climb into the big leagues. He is now a regular starter, and has even hit a couple of home runs and made some spectacular defensive plays, https://www.mlb.com/video/statcast-starling-s-sick-defense. None of it would have been possible if he didn’t believe in and stay true to the expectations he had for himself.

Expectations come from many sources, but none are more important than those that come from within. By setting high expectations for ourselves, we challenge ourselves to be the best that we can possibly be. Don’t wait for others to do that for you. Set your own expectations, and SET THEM HIGH!

New Year’s Resolution? Uh, Try Again!

Did you already blow your New Year’s resolution? Didn’t even bother to make one this year? You’re not alone, but it’s not too late.

According to a study by the University of Scranton, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology in 2014:

• 25% of people who make New Year’s resolutions maintain them less than one week
• another 4% make it just one more week
• by the end of the first month, 36% have given up
• at six months, just 46% are still adhering to the promises they made to themselves at the beginning of the year
• only 8 percent remain committed to their resolutions for the entire year.

Fewer than half of us even try.

If you have beaten the odds, and your resolution remains intact, congratulations! Don’t quit. If you haven’t made a resolution or it hasn’t worked out for you, hope is not lost, if you don’t let failure intimidate you into a resolution-free year.

While the beginning of the year is a good time to start a self-improvement mission, it’s not the only time, and just because you dropped the ball early, the game can continue, if you pick it back up. 300-plus days is too long to wait to try again.

First, we need to acknowledge that failure isn’t exclusive to us. The statistics above bear that out. When we try something that is new to us, like dieting or budgeting our money, we’re stepping away from the comfort of familiarity, we’re pushing our boundaries and we’re exposing ourselves to failure. These are good things, because they help us grow and enhance our experiences.

In strength-training parlance, this is called the last set (* explanation below), and I’ve been teaching my son about it. When you have pushed yourself hard in previous sets, it’s tempting to take it easy on the last set, which is exactly the wrong thing to do, because the last set is when the most development happens. The last set should have a success rate of less than 50%. This is when you add more weight than you know you can lift, and though you’ve never done it before, you convince yourself that you can lift it.

Patrick gets mad when he doesn’t get all the reps in his last set, but I assure him that he accomplished more by trying and failing than he would have by lifting a comfortable weight. Besides, he can try again during the next workout. When he does get all of the reps, the sense of accomplishment motivates future workouts. He experiences growth and success when he exposes himself to failure.

Second, we need to accept that failure isn’t synonymous with defeat. Famous inventor Thomas Edison was fond of saying, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” If you didn’t exercise three times per week, like you said you would at the beginning of the year, don’t give up. Just figure out why you didn’t exercise as consistently as you would like. Do you need to do a better job of scheduling your time? Do you need to go to bed earlier? Do you need to work on your motivation? Repeat the cycle of planning, trying, evaluating and trying again, until you are successful.

Lastly, find some way of optimizing accountability. Many of us find it much easier to make excuses to ourselves than to make them to others. I’m guilty of this one, so I tell my wife what I have resolved to do, and you better believe that she holds me accountable. Not only will she quiz me about my progress toward my goals, she has trained our kids to do it too. I often write, even when I don’t feel like it, because I know that someone is going to ask me about it during dinner that night, and it’s a lot more pleasant to talk about progress than it is to make excuses.

If you are more comfortable keeping your resolutions private, it’s still important to optimize accountability. Writing down your goals and tracking your progress in writing is a very good way to do this, and my good friend Jeff Beals has some excellent advice to help with this, in his recent column, This Is Why You Don’t Accomplish All Your Goals.

New Year’s resolutions have helped many achieve goals that were previously out of their reach and to achieve them more quickly than they otherwise would have. The self-improvement opportunity that a resolution provides is much too powerful to limit to an annual event or to abandon because of an early mistake. Make this year as good as it can possibly be by resolving to do something that you know you need to do.

* Most strength-training sessions consist of sets of repetitions of a particular exercise, with short rests between. As an example, an athlete might do two sets of ten repetitions of a leg press, i.e. he does ten leg presses followed by a break, followed by ten more leg presses.