High Standards, Low Expectations

In order to keep performing with excellence I select high standards for my own personal attitude and performance, i.e. how I carry out processes, but I set a very low expectation for the outcomes of those processes and especially outcomes that involve or depend upon other people or other things coming through for me. I do this because I can control my attitude and my levels of performance. I can control how much preparation that I put into an activity, how much foresight I invest into removing barriers before I even start, how much resource of time, energy and money I will provide. I have high personal standards in these areas. Often, just by following tried and proven methods and techniques I can automatically achieve high standards of preparation and processing. I also know my limitations regarding these kind of activities and so I can organise myself to do the ‘possible for me’ and to reduce the ‘not possible for me’ factors greatly so that I don’t experience too many frustrating difficulties. When I carry out thought and preparation to high standards – normally just by following reliable processes in preparation – I significantly increase the probability of carrying out the productive processes with ease, without stress and to the fulfilment of my objective.

Conversely, in order to protect myself from disappointment and any number of other negative emotions, I set low expectations for outcomes. Normally the preparations and processes that I use just create good results to flow by default, especially when I remain in control of the majority, or the most vital, functions that deliver the outcome that I seek. However, I live in the real world and I often have to integrate with other people to fulfil outcomes. In those cases I carry out my preparations and processes but I low expectations for other people to fulfil their part. I do this so that I remain prepared to adjust to the possible reality of people not coming through. By taking this outlook I tend to think more about alternative strategies and tactics before undertaking something. I seek to cut out the reliance upon outcomes that I cannot control wherever I can. This simply adds to my thorough preparations and can sometimes allow me to design better blueprints for getting the job done in the first place. Alternatively, by thinking through everything carefully I can often carry out preparations for other people that make the job easier and more certain for them to carry out, so I further protect getting a desired outcome.

These preparations take a lot of effort so it depends upon the context of the activity as to how far I will go with these preparations. Often I just find it easier to make allowance for disappointment by building in sufficient margin of time, money or other factors to deal with that so that I can continue without too many hiccups and without building up stress levels.

I also take care to set low expectations for personal results on certain specific activities. I do this for experimental and developmental activities where I do not yet have experience or evidence of processes and performance that I can rely upon. If I attempt to rely upon unknown or unreliable factors for the fulfilment of my desires then I reduce the probabilities of fulfilment and that creates stress and negative emotions.

I continually seek to learn more about the world and about myself and to develop my competencies to understand and handle ever more challenging possible tasks. Consequently I engage in a lot of experimentation concerning theories, ideas and systems that I want to implement and test. I don’t know what outcomes I will get and so I set low expectations in order to remain dispassionate and to avoid disappointment. I also engage in skill training where I seek to advance my current capabilities and I often find it difficult to do things currently ‘not possible for me’ by the very nature of the task. So again, in order not to end up disappointed and inadequate I set low expectations for outcome.

In my younger days, I didn’t like submitting to the disciplines of forethought and preparation but over time I came to the realisation that this wisdom of the ages holds great truth, “What starts out easy in the beginning becomes hard and what starts out hard in the beginning becomes easy.” Forethought and preparation make carrying out processes easy and thus make the probability of fulfilling the desire very high. Commitment to high standards in this area gives game excellence as opposed to having the occasional excellent game.

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