Reflections & ruminations: managing expectations
I thought that growth meant constantly going upwards, even if it was in increments.
wishing you growth as fruitful and bountiful as this garden 🌱
Not gonna lie, 2021 has been a good year to me. Obviously I don’t say this in terms of global events, but in a personal sense, rather. It’s been a breather compared to 2020, where I felt constantly unstable and burnt out.
Yet… I constantly found myself disappointed. At myself. It often felt like I was backsliding—because I journal often, I often find themes in my thinking patterns, and the feeling of disappointment and failure is one of them.
But lately, I realized that it doesn’t have to be that way:
If I stopped expecting that I’d be at 100% all the time, I wouldn’t find myself constantly disappointed.
In some aspects of my life, I experienced being at my ‘peak’ (ex. waking up at 6 AM each day, and reading books daily instead of doom scrolling on social media), so performing less than that made me feel like I was backsliding to my ‘old self’ even though where I am now is eons farther than where I used to be.
I thought that growth meant constantly going upwards, even if it was in increments. What I didn’t realize was that growth could also mean going three steps forward and one step back.
Despite disappointment, I’ve tried to take a more positive and proactive approach. At the end of the day, I’d often encourage myself to try harder and be more disciplined the following day. Instead of constantly telling myself to try harder, wouldn’t it be better if I was gentler on myself?
What would growth look like if I accepted the fact that my best will look different each day, instead of constantly trying and pushing myself to work harder?
I’d rather approach growth as I am instead of projecting the person I want to be, and go from there.
