Recalibrating Expectations

Everything in life is constantly changing, including the seemingly immutable things like machines. As precise as they are, even they shift, drift, and warp. At some point, everything needs tending to for some tightening and recalibration. A computer monitor needs to be recalibrated for color correctness, a printer for alignment of print heads, a compass so we end up where we intend to go.

The mind is one of the places we need to be the most diligent with calibration and recalibration. Given the events of the last several days for me, I’m taking the time to do just that. I want to make decisions with clarity and realign my expectations with reality.

Expectations

Expectations are funny things, completely made up by humans.

Expectation will not make something so – obviously. Expecting it to rain will not make it rain. But what if we transfer our expectations into hope, equating the two? What if we lean hard into the power of positive thinking, so much so that our hopes turn into expectations? And then these are bolstered by possibilities offered by some other evidence – a similarity elsewhere, a doctor’s words of possibilities? What if we hope so hard it drowns out reality and becomes our new possibility? If we talk about and believe it hard enough, might it become our reality?

To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.
– Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

This may sound extreme, and I don’t think I take my expectation or hope that far, but maybe we all do, at least at some point? Like little kids, living in a world filled with hopes, wishes, and dreams so vivid they seem real.

Expectations can set us up for resentment, happiness, or anything in-between. The thing “being expected of” may be dumb – it doesn’t know or care what you expect! For example, it is fun and cute to imagine my little osteoblasts receiving my love letter and working harder as a result, newly invigorated with a fresh dose of joy, but to expect that my hope and positive thinking in their direction will have a mega effect of massive healing is silly. Yes, there’s psychology behind that letter, but the expectation is aligned with reality.

Running

Here’s a running example that I notice in myself during training cycles. How many times have I gone out for a shorter run, let’s say 5 miles, and that last mile seems like drudgery? Maybe I’m pushing hard into the pace, but gosh, it seems to be so difficult – when will it end! Then the next day I go for a 20-mile run and only the last mile of that run is difficult. Why wasn’t the 5th mile of that run difficult like the 5th mile of the previous day’s run? I am sure it is the mental calibration, the expectation from the two runs. I’ve mentally metered myself for the total distance in both cases. The runs don’t care, the miles are not different miles, it is all in my own mind. These are the times when I remember to run the mile I’m in and keep going. Recalibrate.

Changing Myself

I came into this most recent recovery cycle with the expectation that it would take around 6 months for the bones to fuse. It was a realistic expectation, given to me by my medical team, but this is a rare surgery so there is much less evidence to back it. All the same, it was my expectation and I metered myself accordingly.

If I had known it would take a year or more, I would have metered myself for that up front.

Instead, at six months, I’m experiencing a blow to my expectations and this recalibration process, all still headed towards a one-year plan. A plan that doesn’t care what I think or feel about it. At least I’m experiencing some personal growth with it! The need to recalibrate is not a mark of failure but rather a normal piece of course correction. I am challenged to change myself. Just like the computer monitor, printer heads, and compasses I mentioned at the beginning.

At this point, I’m not putting a lot of stock in a one-year plan as a solid expectation, instead expecting that we will get there “at some point.” The bones will fuse when they do, without a care for my hopes. With this expectation I have a lot more peace in my life with no room for dashed hopes. Instead, I can focus my energy and attention on all the parts that are going well, live in gratitude for the positives, and celebrate other successes. There are a lot of those!

Let go of expectations and find something to be grateful about, even when things do not turn out the way you hoped, and you will experience serenity rather than resentment.
– Psychology Today