So you have some crazy high expectations not just for yourself but also for everyone around you, but lately you’ve noticed that they aren’t working out for you so well. You’re finding yourself overworked and underwhelmed by the things happening in your life, and you’re starting to wonder if it’s time to lower your expectations.
I totally understand what you’re going through. Today markets 72 straight days of writing blog posts and I’ve got to say, I’m getting a little tired. Sometimes in an effort to have things move super fast or in an need to have things working out perfectly we can overstretch ourselves. But it doesn’t have to be like this.
As I’m sitting here in my cocktail dress and heels trying to quickly smash out day 72 in the next 15 minutes before I have to jump in an Uber to get to my friend’s birthday party I’m acutely aware of just how high us high-achieving folks have set our expectations.
It’s time to lower your expectations.
I’m not suggesting that you make excuses for yourself or other people. You’re probably an incredibly hard worker and it has got you very far in life, but sometimes you need to just loosen up the grip that you have on your expectations.
Because the reality is that…
When you lower your expectations you may reach more of your crazy big goals.
Sometimes you’ve been shooting way higher than what was physically possible in the given time-frame. There have been countless occasions where I’ve beat myself up for not completing a job when it was hardly realistic to begin with. You too? This really isn’t productive or fair to yourself.
I’m going to have a real moment with you here. It’s now 1:27a.m. I had to leave the blog post halfway through and come back to it. I’m stupid tired and I’m ready for bed. And let’s face it, the quality of my writing is slipping.
Which brings me to my next reason…
Lower your expectations so that you can improve the quality or efficiency of your creative output.
I often find myself in this struggle between perfectionism and wanting to churn out a huge amount of content. It’s about finding the balance between maintaining a good quality of work but not being such a perfectionist that it takes you hours longer than it should to get the content out.
When you lower your expectations you can stop feeling guilty about unmet goals, start showing leniency towards others, decrease your procrastination and restore the quality of your work.
It’s an all-round win.
