Lower Your Expectations, but...

…raise your standards. This is the key to happiness and success. I’ve found it, the search is over.

Here are a few practical examples:

In a phenomenal TED talk and in his book The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz discusses the fact that too many choices results in raised expectations. If you go into a store to buy new jeans, and there are 100 choices of jeans, you’ll always feel like you could have done better. He goes on to say:

This strikes me as true, yet incomplete. It’s true when I lay my head on my pillow at night and have low expectations about how many times my 7-month old in the next room will wake me up. If I expect to sleep deeply all night and wake up refreshed, I’m not going to be a very happy person when that proves to be untrue. But if I expect him to be up all night, but then he only wakes up twice, I am grateful for a pretty good night. 

The same is true of managing a day of work. I’ve struggled in the past to do things I don’t like to do. I don’t like to make 100 cold calls a day. I don’t even like making 1 cold call a day. If the mentality I bring to this work is one of “I expected more out of my day,” I’m either going to perform terribly or not do it at all. I’ve talked about changing the conversation with yourself before, and getting rid of Head Trash. Low expectations help me do what needs to be done, with a smile on my face.

Here's the but...

…this must be coupled with high standards. Low expectations may lead to happiness, but not greatness. A person with dementia can be happy, lost in his own mind, but he likely won’t impact the world. Low expectations must be paired with something greater - something that does not compromise, that envisions change, that produces great work. The good stuff sits in the middle of these two seemingly opposite mindsets. They tug at one another, and that conflict is a good thing. Here’s what this looks like using the last example mentioned above:

While low expectations help me avoid bitterness in making cold calls, I sustain my motivation by connecting every call to a greater purpose. I personally have 3 greater purposes for this task: 1) achieving a revenue goal, 2) the commitment to do what I say I will do, and 3) a belief that i am somehow enriching the life of the person on the other line.

Whatever it is for you, that is your sustaining force. You can not compromise your standards, your purpose, unless you are satisfied with the simple mental games that help you get through a day. 

Here are a couple other ways this could play out:

1. When hiring, have high standards for character, results, and commitment…but low expectations towards details like the precise schedule an employee should keep, where they work, etc. If the character, results, and commitment are there, the rest will take care of itself.
2. Have low expectations for your experience when traveling. Cancelled flights, delays, or rude people are not good things, but you have no control over them and you are wasting your energy to sit there fuming. Have high standards for how you spend your time, maximizing how effective you can be with your new-found “idle time." Connect that time to achieving something great, whether it is catching up with an old friend, making 25 extra sales calls, or removing some stress with a nap.  

There are countless others. Lowering your expectations is really just a provocative way to say “don’t take yourself so seriously.” Inherent in this idea is removing yourself from the equation whenever possible. It doesn’t truly matter that you could have a better pair of jeans. Nobody cares what jeans you’re wearing. Find a way to connect the energy you spend in a given day to things that actually matter. That’s what happiness and success look like to me.