What Are Reasonable Expectations?

This is from my weekly email series, The Weekly Mixtape. I would appreciate it if you subscribe to newsletter. All the cool kids are doing it.

Hey Indiepreneurs,

Last week, I came across a hilarious topic on a discussion board. It asked “Is this the consequence of participation ribbons?”

The reason for the gripe? The US is behind in the Olympics on Gold Medal counts.

Yes, that’s right. It doesn’t matter that the US has the most medals in total. It doesn’t matter that China has a huge population and has clearly dedicated massive resources into trying to beat everyone in this competition. No, America is falling behind because the Baby Boomers gave participation ribbons to Millennials and Gen Z when they were young.

I have so many problems with this. The expectations that others succeed on our behalf or they’re the failure. Treating individuals as if they are just interchangeable pieces in a generational pool. The overall harping on the young’uns (a 2,000+ year tradition). And so on.

But what this complaint really comes down to is expectations. This particular poster had the expectation that the United States would dominate the gold medal count in the Olympics. Anything less is considered failure.

This particular case is pretty benign, the typical sour grapes about your sports team not doing as well as you hoped. It just happens to be that the sports team in this case becomes a stand in for a country rather than a city, a school, etc.

Setting realistic expectations, though, can vastly change your reaction to any situation. If your expectation is that you’re going to write a book and suddenly become JK Rowling, any success you have is going to be shrouded in disappointment.

Even if you were to set it lower but still very high expectation–making millions, getting a movie contract, being able to leave your job to write full time, and so on–simply getting people to read and love your book will still be seen as a failure.

I’m not saying that it’s bad to have goals or aspirations. The problem is when those goals overshadow the here and now. If you tell yourself you won’t be happy until you reach a certain level, I have some bad news: you’re NEVER going to be satisfied. Even if you do reach that level, guess what? Chances are you’ll move the goalpost on yourself.

Some people look at the winner and loser mentality in sports and say we need to get rid of it completely (e.g. the participation medals). I’m of the camp that this is going a little too far. But if you have winners and losers, and you tell SOMEONE ELSE they’re only good enough if they’re the winner, I can’t see how this could possibly lead to a healthy mental state (see Jamie Tartt as a great fictional example).

No matter what generation we were raised in, many of us will have some disappointment with our current level of success. But need to refrain our expectations. What do we really want in life? What makes us happy? What do we enjoy and love in the in here and now?

It’s not bad to want to be better. It’s not bad to want to improve. But if the constant reach for improvement makes us miserable, what joy do we really expect to feel if we were to get a brief moment at the peak?

The Links

• Setting up your own company? I took a long form look at what you need to do to get an LLC in place.
• This week’s review is the budgeting program You Need A Budget.
• I’d rather pay $5,000 for two days role playing in the Star Wars universe than cough up the money to actually go to space…but seriously, $5,000?

Service Dog Update

Wilson has healed up from his surgery, and he is bored. We’ve started ramping up his walks and trainings again, but apparently he needs more to keep his mind and body moving than we’re currently offering.

Case in point: the day before I wrote this, we put him to bed. He’s supposed to ultimately sleep with our son to help with anxiety, but he’s clearly not quite ready for that. We had Wilson in the room with my son…and then the cat came in.

From downstairs, we heard the barking, which is not typical for Wilson. So I went up to investigate to find the cat sitting in the window, and the dog not leaving her alone.

“I’ll solve this,” I thought in my stupid brain. All I need to do is get the cat out of there. So I picked up the cat and stepped over the door gate we put up to keep the dog contained. Then Wilson charged through the gate and jumped up on me to get the cat.

Let’s just say that it did not go well for me. I now have deep rear cat claw marks in my chest, deep front cat claw marks in my upper arm, and deep cat bite marks in the webbing of my right hand (currently covered by a Muppets Band Aid).

Also, I lost a shirt.

I keep saying that we’ll get there. And we will. But, as the Spanish saying goes, “del dicho al hecho hay mucho trecho.” Or in English, “it’s easier said than done.”