Do you have a Hierarchy of Expectations?

Or is your joy being assassinated?

Mar 13, 2024

Expectations are the killers of joy. That, and realising I’m never going to look like Jennifer Aniston, no matter how many of her Quinoa salads I eat, or pilates classes I take. Expectations suck the life-blood out of your body and mind like teenagers walking into your newly cleaned kitchen and trashing it with toast crumbs, buttered knives on the counter, and dropping an array of coats, dirty socks and random hair brushes, before grunting and walking away.

That’s just my life, and I see it all the time with my coaching clients who are being swept away in a tsunami of Expectations Hell: the expectations we place on ourselves and the ones that are handed to us without being asked. Thrown at us. Like mud. Women in particular have a lot, a lot, a lot of expectations thrown at us. How we should be, how we should look and what we should want, until we’re so covered in mud we can’t see ourselves clearly in the mirror. But often when we set a goal we also set ourselves unrealistic expectations of how that should be executed (this is why New Year Resolutions can be so hard to sustain: they bear little relation to the reality of our lives).

Recently a client came up with a a goal (a small part of a much wider reinvestment in her life) that was to reconnect with her best pals, all of whom lived far away from her. Her life has been so busy raising a family and building a business she has lost touch with the nurturing circle that made her life feel so full when she was younger. So her homework one week (honestly, I actually call it playwork) was to call each of her four friends in the week ahead. Her confidence was so low from years of head barrelled down in survival mode that one of the reasons she’d let the friendships go was feeling she didn’t have anything to say. So we practised her saying hello and asking how they were, and starting simply with ‘I was thinking about you’. Who doesn’t want to hear that?

So she made contact and (of course!) they were delighted to hear from her and exuberant conversations were had, and funnily enough she found she had plenty to say, because by connecting with them, she was connecting into a part of herself (a part she reslly liked and missed!)

But what then? One lives in Australia, another in the UK, a third in another city. She can’t suspend her real life and obligations and start visiting them every weekend (although she did set up visits with each of them over the coming year), but she did set herself the intention of keeping in touch with them every week. Her mind immediately went to setting this as a goal: a weekly phonecall, and with it then an expectation to find time each week for these four phonecalls.

Now most women in midlife - be you at the coalface of juggling family and career, or navigating the tumultuous territory of separation, divorce or grief, or just figuring out how to keep one foot grounded while the rest of you feels caught up in a tornado of roles, responsibilities, care, peri/menopause, and a bit of whatever else you’re having - can set all the goals you like, but life carries on demanding and expecting and before you know it, the four phonecalls a week - or the five gym visits, the two Pilates classes, the one book to read, the three walks in nature, the six days of water drinking - fall away and drift into the cemetery of broken goals.

But that’s because we can focus on the goal (the action) rather than the intention (the idea).

I’ve seen so many clients set themselves goals and then bail the moment they don’t meet the quality and exact perfection of the expectation of that goal. So I developed the Hierarchy of Expectations - a little breathing space to keep focussed on the intention, even if the 5 Star goal isn’t attainable today because you know, you’re spinning plates and making the dinner to serve on them.

It means that when you decide you want to create a new habit, or start a new way of behaving or work towards a major goal, you don’t get tripped up by tripping up. Often we confuse the goal with the intention, and then expectation pulls the life-support.

So for my client the goal isn’t actually to ring her four friends every week: the intention is to stay connected and weave the friendships through her life as they used to. So aside from meeting up, the 5 Star Top of the Table Expectation is to ring each other every week. But if that doesn’t happen, it’s not a failure. I asked her to create a range of ways in which the intention can be met, the expectation of the feeling of friendship upheld, not the expectation of a rigid routine.

So for example, one way is to share her Strava with a couple of her friends who are also trying to keep up the exercise so they can hold each other accountable and cheer each other on (Strava is an exercise app where you can share your runs and walks and see others). They’re not necessarily speaking but they’ve engaged in each other’s lives and then they can be texting instead of calling. Another was to send IG posts on shared interests - for one this was new house stuff and another it was cats. They only take a second but they keep the connection going.

Because it can be hard to stay motivated when life is being lived and the goal is just one of many multiples of many things to do and think about. And what helps with motivation is its cousin Momentum.

The law of physics knows that objects in motion, stay in motion. You use a greater surge of energy starting something than you do continuing something. Yet sometimes it’s all a bit of a struggle. You start off with gusto, but then life takes over, and you’re back on default mode carrying on as before because that discomfort (and it is uncomfortable) is the discomfort you know, and is easier to sit with than the unknown discomfort of trying. If you can’t make the top expectation of how you want something to go, don’t let the whole intention die away.

The sliding scale of goal scoring

I often introduce the Hierarchy of Expectation (or Actions) to my clients when they have set themselves some goals. This hierarchy literally lists options and adaptations of the primary goal, that maintains the momentum of the principle of the goal, should the Five Star, All Singing, All Dancing action not be available or doable today.

Another one of my clients was trying to make several positive changes in her life that had drifted off track. One was to instigate and incorporate more time with her family, and in particular her sister. They had busy lives, and had let their relationship drift apart. After getting together and realising how much they missed each other, they decided to try and meet for dinner once a week after work. (I knew immediately this was going to be a BIG ASK to keep going so I had my Hierarchy of Expectations at the ready!)

They initially made the necessary adjustments to home life to allow that – in my client’s case, her husband was happy to take the kids to football and make dinner one night. In her sister’s, she had her mother-in-law stay on an extra two hours. This time became something really special – not only with their own relationship, but for my client, connecting to a part of herself she had let go of over the years. However, four weeks in and her sister had to cancel. Work got in the way. My client then had to cancel the next week. Life got in the way. She began to tell me it was good while it lasted, but it was too hard to maintain and she almost spoke as though she’d never see her sister again.

So I asked her to develop a Hierarchy of Expectations relating to the goal of meeting her sister for dinner once a week, but importantly deciding what was the principle behind the goal? Was it meeting her sister specifically for dinner? Or was it connecting to her sister? Obviously it was the latter and so with that in mind, she developed a list of possible actions that could replace the ultimate action if needs be, but maintain the principle. So while meeting for a quick bite after work once a week was the ultimate goal, if for some reason that wasn’t possible, there was a list of go-to options: workday lunch, Saturday morning dog walk, doing their food shops together, a quick coffee and if all else failed, a phone call.

It meant that the momentum of the goal’s principle was never broken, even if the particular chosen action was.

Can’t go for a run? Run up the stairs a few times or dance in your kitchen. Don’t have time to make that healthy salad? Buy the sandwich but have the salad for dinner. Can’t get to the art class because you have to take a child to football? Sit in the car and sketch while they play. The goal isn’t the action: it’s the intention.

We have so man y expections sucking the joy from our lives so whnere possible, get really flexible in your expectations you cna manage, because knowing you can slip a bit makes saying ‘I can’t’ far harder. Do something, anything, to keep the principle of the goal going . You don’t just decide to have a balanced life (or a bigger life, or a deeper life, or a quieter life) and then put the thought on the shelf to be dusted occasionally. The decision has to become a messy, imperfect but living, breathing part of your life today, actioned with habits and intention.

I’d love to know how you can spread out your expectations, so please join me in the comments below (if you’re reading this in an email, please click on the link below to go through to the website to join the conversation.)

Do you have a Hierarchy of Expectations?

Or is your joy being assassinated?

Discussion about this post