Expectation Is Key - 5 Simple Steps to Renew Your Mental Energy
Photo by Lumn courtesy of Pexels
Another Covid restriction announcement was made two weeks ago (in BC) and I felt it. It wasn’t a lock down thankfully, but it still took the wind out of me for some reason - suddenly I was tired, mentally unfocussed and frustrated that we were tightening down again.
My reaction caught me by surprise and I realized I haven’t been actively managing my expectations around Covid lately.
I’d been influenced by the tone of optimism in the media and conversations with friends, the new normal and looking ahead. Without realizing it my expectations had shifted and I was expecting restrictions to ease up, not go the other way.
A decade ago I sat in three months of silent meditation over three different retreats, coming out of each one only long enough to travel to the next one. The third retreat was one month long at a beautiful off the grid setting in New Mexico lead by a monk from Burma.
One of the things I learned from him has been critical in helping me manage my mindset through Covid – our mind needs a marker to move towards.
Whether it’s a selecting a date, getting something or achieving a milestone, it uses the marker to anchor it’s thought processes and assessments.
The more compression the mind is under, the more important the anchor becomes.
In my case during the retreat, the compression was caused by the four weeks of silence, 12 hours of meditation each day, ahead. In Covid the compression is caused by no reliable end in sight, which as we’re all experiencing, makes it difficult to manage our mental energy.
The way to help your brain modulate is to create a marker so it’s no longer indefinite.
I work with this by deciding to move towards a date I’ve selected – right now it’s the end of June – accompanied by a specific mindset and preset expectations. My job becomes maintaining my routine and the specific goals I’ve set to take me towards that milestone. When I get to the middle of May I will reset and choose a new marker allowing my mind to continue to anchor.
This has allowed me to remain adaptable and has given me the ability to refresh mentally as needed.
A great place to start is to become conscious of your expectations and adjust them as needed.
Our brain is an interpretation machine.
The sheer volume of information that our minds process, decisions being made and micro adjustments occurring throughout each day to keep us safe, productive and relatively happy (hopefully) is amazing.
As it processes these million points of data, impressions, judgements, decisions, and ideas are made and formed continually. Most of them subconsciously.
“A lot of the expectations that affect us – the assumptions that shape what we see, hear, smell, and taste, for instance, or the expectations we may have that a more expensive drug will work better than a cheap one – happen on automatic. We don't spend a lot of time wondering about our expectations and considering the alternatives, and that lack of attention helps give their effects an aura of permanence and inevitability.
- Chris Berdik, author of Mind Over Mind (Scientific American interview article: how the power of expectation can allow you to bend reality )
We have the ability to consciously think about a situation, to explore what our thoughts and ideas are about it, and yet we seldom do.
When we’re unclear (or not conscious) of our expectations when creating something new, we can experience symptoms of disengagement, directly affecting the energy we have to fuel our motivations for change.
When our expectation is misaligned, we can experience symptoms like:
Back pedalling – finding excuses why this might not be a good time to change or talk yourself into adjusting or abandoning it altogether.
Feeling unmotivated, drained when you think of that new behaviour or new process.
Tiredness, fatigue – you have no energy mentally or physically to focus or apply discipline
You simply don’t want to do it anymore – you fully abandon the goal with an idea to start it again at a later date.
We’ve all been here on some occasion when we’ve tried to change something. It could be starting a new exercise routine, quitting sugar, or learning how to play pickleball – there is always a period at the beginning that requires us to explore what it is, why we want to do it, how we will do it and when.
Sounds simple enough.
And yet the start-stop cycle is commonplace for the majority of the population when it comes to trying to break habits or building new behaviours.
Use your expectations as a lever.
As you plan your new goal, spend time consciously building expectations that will support your transition. This gives you a good base to maintain the energy needed to persist through your new actions and behaviour in creating your new habit.
Our minds are constantly assessing and deciding the “what, how and why” with new experiences in our lives, using a combination of new information weighed against any relevant experience we may have in our past to determine our approach and behaviour as we start new actions.
In recent studies conducted at Stakler Center for Conscious Science (University of Sussex), they discovered that “our brain uses expectation for predictive measuring, to accurately gauge the type and timing of our behaviour in relation to the behaviour response”. The study found that “the propensity to incorporate expectations into the construction of our visual world is not constant over time. Expectations are not available or used continuously, but rhythmically”.
This suggests that our brain is continually accessing and adjusting our expectations all the time, and there is a continual opportunity to assess and adjust the settings we place on gauging our engagement. It’s not a one-time event, but a setting we can (and should) revisit multiple times within the process.
How do you do that?
When we plan to start something new, our default is to only consciously look at when we want to start and how long we think it will take us.
We don’t take time to think through what influences and impacts our timeline. We know there will be barriers but instead of diving in to understand them, we choose to overlook them thinking we can use our will and determination to overcome them.
If you have ever used this approach, you’ll know that this can stop you in your tracks better than anything.
To expand our view and bring this activity into a conscious awareness planning process, we need to:
Isolate the behaviour we need to create our goal and then measure it against our current behaviour and become aware of the gap between the two.
Analyse the level of difficulty and what we will need to get from the current state to the future state.
Look at what other areas of our lives are impacted by changing this behaviour, if any, and whether the impact is positive or negative.
Uncover the external influences that may impact our ability to move through the process.
Assess our current ability to do what is needed to get to the goal (e.g. learning, available time, desire etc.)
Knowing the above we can reset our expectations on:
· How long it will take to get to the future state.
· The level of repetition and persistence we can realistically achieve and sustain.
· The level of support we will need.
· The signs of advancement and how we’ll know we’ve achieved our desired goal.
· How often we’ll revisit and reset our expectations throughout the process.
By developing a habit of consciously adjusting your own expectations you will renew and re energize your ability to adapt, allowing you to remain persistent in working towards your goal and developing the new behaviour. Or in the case of Covid, be able to remain relatively steady and adapt as it unfolds.
Remember to give your mind a marker to anchor it. It will help bring calm and order to your thought process when you are facing uncertainty or unusually long duration events.
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