One of the timeworn ideas in the happiness world is that low expectations are a secret to boosting joy.
I spent a lot of my life believing this. The premise seems sensible enough: if you manage your expectations and keep your desires in check, you leave more room to be delighted by good fortune when it arrives.
This makes sense if you believe that joy is a mercurial force entirely out of your control.
But if you believe that you have a hand in shaping your joy, then I believe this approach is misguided.
Why High Expectations are Key to Finding More Joy
Low expectations train us to assume things won’t go well, and often hold us back from doing the very things that might increase our joy, because they seem unlikely or not worth it. Why bother submitting our art to a contest when the chances are so low that we’ll ever get picked? Why bother going to a new restaurant when it’s probably just going to be a letdown?
Truth be told, I didn’t realize how much I had internalized the dogma of managing my expectations until I decided to experiment with intentionally raising them. Suddenly, I was confronted with hundreds of ordinary moments when my mind seemed to forecast annoyance and doom, causing me to fret for no reason at all.
Expecting things to go well
Driving to town on a busy weekend, I tried on the alien thought, “I’m definitely going to find a parking spot right in front.” Whether or not the parking space materialized (and it often did), it was liberating to not spend the entire drive stressing about it.
I tried it at work: “I expect that the writing will be easy and my ideas will flow today.” I can’t overstate how radical this thought has been for a constant worrier like me. Instead of torturing myself at the blank page, sure that it will be a difficult slog, I sit down to write calmly, and when I fall out of flow, I go for a walk expecting that I will re-find the thread when I come back.
I’ve even tested it with sleep. When I wake up in the night to tend to G, instead of a long inner monologue about how awful this is and how I’ll never get back to sleep, I say, “I expect that I’ll fall back asleep quickly.” Strange as it sounds, I’m usually back asleep before I know it.
Research on the benefits of high expectations
There is some research to support the idea that higher expectations can lead to better outcomes. For example, several studies have shown that when teachers are induced to have higher expectations of their students, students perform better, even if they do not show high potential at the outset of the study. This is known as the Pygmalion effect, after the play by George Bernard Shaw, and suggests that others’ belief in our abilities creates a positive feedback loop that increases our performance and potential.
Other research suggests that people who believe they are lucky tend to spot more opportunities and take advantage of them than those who believe they are unlucky. Low expectations can keep you from taking the risks and making the effort that leads to joy and success, and over time this can shrink your world and make you feel even more unlucky.
I believe our fear of disappointment leads us to try to prevent pain however we can, and managing expectations is part of that. But pre-living disappointment doesn’t prevent it from happening. Sometimes, it actually makes it more likely that it will happen, because low expectations lead us to self-sabotage. If you don’t believe success is possible, you may start to behave in ways that confirm your expectation, giving you the cold comfort of “knowing” you were right from the beginning.
It can be scary to abandon a strategy you feel has saved you from hurt. But the freedom that comes from expecting good things is such a joyful change. I hope you’ll try it, and let me know how it goes.
Discussion (16 Comments)
This was my coping mechanism from childhood. Then I was an engineer and learned even more look for all the things that could possibly go wrong so you can try to mitigate them. But one day I decided I didn’t want to live like that anymore. It’s too negative of a mindset. I’m still slow to make decisions and over think things, but as much as I can I assume things are going to go right. And I’ve learned over the years that the things that get you, are never ones you anticipated. So there’s really no point in assuming the worst.
As Brene Brown says, “You can’t dress-rehearse tragedy”.
Yes to all of this, Cindi! I really appreciate you sharing how your career and training influenced you to keep an eye out for problems. It makes a lot of sense. I love that you made a conscious decision to choose a different approach!
My mantra lately has been “what if everything goes wonderfully right?”
Love this mantra! So many of us fantasize disaster, how wonderful to replace that with this question!
Hello! I still like lower expectations but with a different definition. I lower my expectations to a level that I think is enough to satisfy, and then I’m delighted when it is more but am happy with a fine outcome if that’s the result. For example, the parking space in front of the house (hello Brooklyn!) is a gob smacker, but if I get one on the block, I still feel lucky. I’m Swedish where the concept of “lagom” (just right) rules and I think it’s a good one for a healthy psyche.
Brilliant post, Ingrid. I’ve often used a similar mantra… “Wouldn’t it be nice if..,” as in “Wouldn’t it be nice if I found a parking space,” or “Wouldn’t it be nice if the grocery store had fresh asparagus today.”
You are absolutely right: why expect the worst?
I’m going to write “Great Expectations” on a post-it note and put it on my laptop keyboard as a reminder.
Haa joyful day!
“Wouldn’t it be nice…?” is a lovely and gentle way into this practice, especially for those who struggle with disappointment. Thanks for sharing, Elaine!
About the parking spot….i very often find a great one. My thoughts: All of our needs are met. There is a need to park conveniently for this activity, so a parking spot most often materializes at just the right time. Life is actually intended to be effortless…embrace it.
I couldn’t agree more!
Upping my expectations saved me from pending heartbreak. I have a beautiful Kooikerhondje dog who brings me great joy. The trouble was, he liked me and only me. Hours and on training with multiple trainers had had no impact. No one would visit the house anymore, and my son’s bestie nicknamed my dog ‘the horror hound’. When my best friend started taking pops at my kids, I made the horrible decision to give him up. Reading the advert to re-home him shattered my heart in a million pieces. But that advert led me to a breed specific trainer. Just when my confidence in handling him was at zero, she told me to stop expecting the worst. My expectation was having a profound impact on my dog’s behaviour. We did a visualisation exercise, which sounds a bit woo woo when it comes to dog training, but it was effective. I let go of all my bad experiences with him to reset the story. Things did not happen overnight, but we just crammed 7 people into our tiny flat for 4 days with no problems whatsoever with my dog. Yes, there are rules in place, like strong mat work and guests cannot pet him, but I no longer expect things to be awful. And I get to keep my furry best friend.
What an incredible story. People, and animals, may not always rise to the full expectations we have of them, but having high expectations at least gives them a chance to. Yet how often we keep our expectations low to avoid being disappointed and find those low expectations confirmed. And while the visualization exercise might seem woo-woo, research shows that there are parts of our brain that treat visualization as indistinguishable from the real thing. I loved reading this – thanks so much for sharing, Jessie!
This is so funny – my expectations are too high (eternal optimist), so I end up easily disappointed. I’m trying to manage them better, which sounds like I’m using the swedish method, lagom, and I never knew it!
This is interesting, Siobhan. I’d love to know more about how this shows up for you.
Taking it a step further, I wonder if it’s not the high expectations that are at issue, but the attachment to the result. When you do get what you expected, can you still enjoy it? And when you don’t, how do you make peace with it?
¡Hoy es un día hermoso para ser feliz, y caminar alegre!
Thank you for this article. I always try to remind myself whatever happens in a situation, it would be the best possible result for me and it would be good enough.
But I still have a problem with raising my expectations for the big things in life. I feel keeping the hope alive for months or years could become so hurtful that I’d rather lower my expectations.
Love to hear your thoughts on that.
I went through this with infertility. I was so worried that I wouldn’t end up getting pregnant that I used to always say “if I get pregnant…” Eventually I started to realize that I was living in so much fear of it not happening that I wasn’t even really allowing the possibility for it to happen. It occurred to me that not being able to have a child would be devastating and it would really not matter whether I had allowed myself to believe it could happen or not. I would be crushed either way. But what would really be devastating would be if through my fear of it not happening I somehow didn’t fully open myself up to the possibility. If I didn’t give it every chance. So I started saying… “when I get pregnant…” I allowed myself to hope and plan and dream. And I did end up getting pregnant shortly after, but if I hadn’t, I knew I could make better peace with it knowing I had fully committed to my dream, rather than hedging because of fear of disappointment. I hope that makes sense. Basically, disappointment is a kind of grief and while it’s painful it’s not a bad thing. It tells you you cared and wanted something and feeling it allows you to move through it toward the next dream, as opposed to always being tentative and aloof.