“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” ~C.S. Lewis
Wanting something that is out of our reach can be motivating yet when the goal is too far away, the struggle to achieve it can lead to frustration and unhappiness.
The challenge of setting realistic expectations came up often when I was teaching in physical therapy school. My students struggled with how to help their patients establish goals that they could achieve within the time frame allotted.
Some patients wanted to, for example, run or play a sport which seems fair enough until you learn that they’ve had unrelenting knee pain for ten years, are 30 lbs overweight and rarely exercise.
Other people seem to aim low. One woman I worked with who underwent a below the knee amputation due to her diabetes, had less lofty ambitions. She just wanted to be able to get her clothes out of her closet by herself.
Part of the equation for happiness includes how to set expectations for yourself that are motivating and rewarding without being too grand and out of reach or too low and too easy to achieve.
What Makes Expectations Realistic Or Unrealistic?
Three things come into play when you ponder the answer to this question.
The Magnitude of the Task. Setting your goals high isn’t an issue in and of itself but many of us tend to think we can accomplish more in a given period of time than we really can. For example, a group of women who entered a weight loss program (all of whom were classified as “obese”), expected to lose much more weight in the study despite the input and opinions of several experts. At the end of the 48 weeks, the women averaged about a 35 lb weight loss which was in line with the experts projections.
The women were disappointed.
I’ve experienced this too but have learned how to make the necessary adjustments to increase my level of happiness.
I started playing trumpet about two years ago after a thirty-five year break.
Trumpet is a physically demanding instrument and requires diligence and patience to develop your playing ability. Although I knew that my progress would be slow, after about three months, I was frustrated, miserable about how poorly I played and could not see one positive thing about the choice to re-start my love affair with this instrument.
The magnitude of the task was large. I had in my mind that in a matter of months, I could be on stage at Carnegie Hall or playing front and center in a hip jazz band. This expectation or goal was unrealistic and if I hoped to ever play anywhere, I would have to find a way to make peace with the slow progress.
The solution, and this is true even in the case of the women in the weight loss study, was to find an expert or someone with much more experience and understanding about the rate of progress.
I found a teacher and he explained to me, patiently, what I could expect to achieve over the ensuing months and years. While hard to hear, I knew he was right.
The key to managing the magnitude of change is to accept the present without letting go of hope.
The women in the study could still want to lose more weight than what the experts suggested was reasonable, just as I can hold onto the idea that I might make faster progress than my teacher believes. But, to hold onto your happiness, you have to accept that the lofty goal in your mind may never happen but let hope keep the dream alive.
Time Frame and Ease of Change. The ease of change and the time to achieve the goal is often overlooked when setting expectations. In my case, practicing is, at times, a grueling experience. It’s physically tiring and mentally challenging. Developing the various trumpet technical skills, acquiring the knowledge of music theory, sight reading, improvising and developing your own “tone” takes daily practice and the improvements come in small increments.
To make this process easier, take the big goal and “chunk” it; create smaller goals that require less time to achieve. As you hit these smaller milestones, be sure to “celebrate” your success. Small rewards issued frequently tend to be more motivating than large rewards issued infrequently.
Assumed Change Effect. Sometimes we assume that losing 20lbs, or increasing our bank balance will bring us a new, higher level of happiness. And the unspoken motive is what we believe other people will think about us. For example, some research has shown that while compensation is important to people, at some point it becomes neutral. The issue is what other people think about my compensation. Sort of “keeping up with the Joneses”.
To counter this, be honest with yourself about why you’re setting your goals and what achieving those goals will do for you. If you discover that your motive is, for example, to look like someone else, to have the “body of your dreams”, because you’ll be happier or feel better about yourself, be aware that happiness is state of being and not a destination. If you can enjoy the process to your goal, almost without regard to achieving it, you’ll likely experience more happiness.
Is It Possible To Be Realistic About Being Unrealistic?
Setting lofty goals is not a bad thing. But to optimize your happiness, be honest with yourself about the magnitude of change, the time to achieve it, and the degree to which you have attached your sense of self to whether you achieve the goal or not.
By being honest about these things, you can still hold in your mind what seem like opposing thoughts: being realistic about your goals while not giving up on what may appear to be an unrealistic dream.
