Expectations are the Enemy of Success
Expectations are the Enemy of Success
Let go of expectations. Instead, take values-based actions to cultivate the emotions that light you up. This will lead to fulfillment and long-term health and fitness success.
One of the many factors in my success in losing 140 pounds — and maintaining it — is continuously letting go of the expectations I place on myself.
In the past, I had taken on every diet and fitness challenge under the sun: calorie counting, low carb, low fat, keto, paleo, 75 Day Hard, Whole 30, fasting, a juice diet, and even a potato diet!
And every one of these efforts failed.
What was the reason for these failures?
My success and happiness were tied to my expectations of the outcome of these efforts!
What changed?
I began to take a mindful approach to my health and fitness, shifting my intention from achieving outcomes to creating fulfilling emotions.
When the intention behind our actions is focused on achieving an agenda, it is not sustainable and depletes our energy. This is because we seek a feeling that we hope to get at some point in the future “someday.” As a result, we are left feeling empty in the current moment.
When the intention behind our actions provides meaning and is connected to our values and purpose, it becomes sustainable because it creates a feedback loop that reenergizes us. We continuously cultivate feelings that align with our why in the current moment, and as a result, we are left feeling fulfilled.
Five steps for a mindful approach to health & fitness.
Here are my five steps for a mindful and fulfilling approach to health and fitness.
1: Let go of expectations.
When we put expectations on ourselves, we attach our happiness and success to achieving that specific outcome.
When we are attached to an outcome, such as losing weight, we have outsourced our happiness to that result. We are left feeling anxious in the current moment, and we suffer.
The key to acceptance is viewing what is true in the current moment as just what is and not adding meaning to it.
We must drop our story and focus only on the facts to do this. This requires objectively looking at the story you are telling yourself about where you are at and seeing it for what it is - a story.
After losing 140 pounds and coming off the weight loss medication Mounjaro (Zebound), I was honestly really nervous about keeping the weight off.
Over the summer of 2023, I cultivated a renewed love for running — After coming off Mounjaro, I put all my energy into running and eventually committed to running a marathon.
Running a marathon had become my new metric of success. It kept me showing up for myself every day. However, shortly after running a half marathon in November 2023, I started to get severe pain in my hip. When my marathon training went into full swing, the pain became unbearable.
As my training progressed, I tried to work around my hip pain. I went to physical therapy, took a few weeks off, changed my strike pattern, focused on my cadence, and even started the walk-run method.
Nothing worked! Every time I ran, I felt pain deep in my hip. In my gut, I knew there was no way I was going to be able to run a marathon, but I wasn’t willing to accept this. I ran through the pain.
Finally, in mid-February, I saw an orthopedic and got an MRI. The diagnosis was a gut punch!
I found out I have severe osteoarthritis in my right hip and multiple labral tears.
Running is no longer an option for the time being.
This was the wake-up call I needed. I had shifted from running for my health to running despite my health.
My expectations of completing a marathon drove me—my ego was at the wheel.
I had been ignoring what was true in the moment, my hip injury. I believed the story I was telling myself about what it would mean about me if I couldn’t run.
After I did some inner work and reflection, I understood my story and fear.
“Without running, how will I sustain my motivation to be healthy — what if I regain all the weight I lost?”
Acknowledging this story allowed me to look at the facts objectively.
I called the doctor to ask straightforward questions about what would happen if I kept running. The answer was that I would destroy any hope of a less invasive hip scope and guarantee that I would be getting a hip replacement.
Without my story distorting my reality, I could sit with the impact of this information.
After creating space by clarifying my story and examining the facts, I was able to let go of my expectations of running a marathon. This allowed me to work through the adversity of this injury with much less suffering.
2: Get clear on your core values and your why.
Once you have let go of your expectations, the next mindful step is to clarify your core values and your why.
According to author Brad Stulburg, core values comprise your fundamental beliefs and guiding principles. The things that matter to you the most.
Core values make up your fundamental beliefs and guiding principles; they are the attributes and qualities that matter to you most. - Brad Stulburg
The first step in clarifying your core values is to craft a list of the attributes that resonate with and light you up.
For example, the list of attributes that form my core values are:
Vibrancy
Presence
Joy
Excitement
Love
Once you have the list of attributes, take some time to form a mission statement to guide you. This is your why.
Here is my health fitness mission statement:
To live the most extended, vibrant life possible. To show up for myself, my wife, and my kids with joy and excitement. For my kids to not experience the pain I went through of losing a parent at 25 years old.
This is my why. It gets me up in the morning to work out and keeps me on track, even when I don’t want to.
No matter what happens, I can always come back to this.
3: Orient on your vision.
Now that you're clear on your values and why, it's time to set your goals. These goals will be your orientation in moving toward a vision of realizing your mission statement.
Using the mission statement from step two as a guide, set some meaningful, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound (SMART) goals.
Instead of “I want to weigh 150 pounds,” Try something like “I want to hike the continental divide with my family by the 4th of July.” Remember that being meaningful equals aligning with your values.
When I took time to pause and reflect on my running injury, I quickly determined that I had some inner work to do and that I needed new goals and actions that were consistent with my new reality. Goals and actions that pointed me toward my values.
Given that I am likely facing hip surgery, my new goal is to be in the best shape I can be before my surgery by keeping up my VO2 max and improving my core, hip, and leg strength. To lose an additional five to ten pounds, which will aid in reducing joint impact and improve my post-surgery recovery.
The key here is to remember that your goals are only your compass, something to orient on.
In the past, my goals were a destination I was fixating on in the distant future, my salvation, and the eventual source of my happiness. My goals were my perceived escape from my suffering and a distraction from the current moment. A reminder that I need to be anywhere but right here, right now.
Today, my goals are my compass. They are the mountains in the distance, reminding me I’m going the right way.
My focus is on the current moment—the actions I’m taking today.
4: Focus on the step in front of you.
Now that you have oriented your vision with meaningful goals, the next step is to focus on the action in front of you.
This is the workout today. The food you are eating today. The things you are doing today.
OR
The act of setting your intention for things you will do tomorrow—for example, setting your gym clothes out before you go to bed so that you are ready to go in the morning.
The critical thing to do here is to keep your current actions aligned with your vision and connect with how they make you feel in the present moment…
And know that your ego WILL try to pull you off track.
My ego has a remarkable doing this.
It did it just this week—I caught myself wanting to do more than where I was at, to lose weight like I did at the beginning of my journey, even though I know that's not realistic right now.
My job is to recognize that my ego is at play and that it has hijacked my efforts to be healthy and taken them too far.
I know to look for subtle clues. This usually shows up for me as a feeling of shame that I quickly skip, followed by thoughts of fixing it.
For example, if I eat poorly the following day when I wake up, I will feel shame, followed by a stream of thoughts about going on a long fast, being super strict with my diet, or working out harder than I need to.
All these thoughts have something in common. They are trying to fix something I perceive as wrong!
They are not about feeling good today—they are trying to escape what I did yesterday so I can feel good tomorrow.
Another place my ego hijacks my fitness efforts is by taking me way out into the future. I might think of a vacation we plan to take this summer, and pretty soon, I’m thinking about how I will look in July.
I've learned to become aware of this tendency very fast.
When I become aware that I’m doing this, my next step is to look up and determine if my thinking and actions are taking me in the right direction. Are they cultivating the desired feeling or creating tension and suffering?
Am I facing west toward the mountain I want to climb in July? Am I taking the actions that will get me there and filling my bucket right now? Or Am I facing south toward the beach, imagining having a body that will validate me? Are my actions leaving me feeling empty?
5: Celebrate Success Daily!
The best way to keep the action you are about to take aligned with your vision is to celebrate the step you just took!
I make it a daily habit to celebrate the small wins.
Each workout.
Catching myself moving toward or even in an old, unhealthy pattern and stopping it.
Sticking with my rituals.
Remembering to give myself grace when I slip.
Sticking with my nutrition and fasting plans.
Handling the daily challenges that arise.
Letting myself relax and enjoy life.
Being consistent.
Success IS a constant feedback loop of wins and challenges that reenergizes and informs your mindset along the way.
Celebrating my success and challenges has been critical to sustaining my momentum throughout my weight loss and fitness journey.
Each time I celebrated a small win, I connected to the feelings I wanted to cultivate in the current moment.
When celebrating success, it’s easy to focus on the wins. However, talking about our failures and challenges is just as important because that is where growth happens.
With an open-minded Mindset, our failures and challenges are no longer presented as obstacles to accomplishing our dreams. They become the Sensei of life, teaching us the lessons we need to learn to grow.
Our failures and challenges point us to the Emotional Work we must do as we become more integrated.
For example, when I sat with the lesson of my running injury and let go of running a marathon, I was given a gold mine of insight.
I saw I had let training for a marathon and accomplishing that goal become more important than my why—being the healthiest version of myself. At some point, I shifted to pursuing a goal despite my health instead of my health.
I also noticed that I was letting the amount of training I was doing become a distraction from other important, internally challenging things, like writing this fitness publication and sharing my journey on social media.
Reflecting on my weight loss and fitness journey, I can see that the most meaningful times were found in failure and challenge—the moment I accepted that failure or challenge and surrendered to the lesson it was trying to teach me.
Every time I accepted my failure and challenge and surrendered to life’s lesson, I was unburdened by the weight of a wound from the past.
I was able to let go of the expectations that were the enemy of my success, and I found joy.