I want to talk about not meeting expectations and how that can affect you. You as in anyone, but specifically in this context, someone who is trying desperately to better themselves.
It is incredibly frustrating to know what you have to do in order to become the person you really want to be and more often than not to not be able to make yourself follow through. We have dreams. We make a goal. We sit down and make lists. We meditate and journal about it. We make schedules. We visualize what our lives will be like once it is achieved. But in the end, we just don’t do it. We don’t check off the to do’s. We don’t make the change. We don’t meet the goal.
It is tempting to lay the blame anywhere but where it belongs… on yourself and your inability to just fucking do what you know you need to do. I’ve read so many self-improvement books trying to find the approach that will help me to follow through, but I find it difficult to implement even the simplest of strategies they suggest.
Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do… therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit.” Even he knew way back then that habit is the building block of becoming the best version of yourself. So I started researching how to build better habits.
In Atomic Habits, which I’m re-reading for the third time, James Clear says, “We do not rise to the level of our goals but we fall to the level of our systems.” But building those systems, or habits, is incredibly difficult. I fall short here as well. I can’t be consistent, and therefore, the habits don’t stick or are overrun by the less useful habits that already exist. And so things go.
I am not an unhappy person. Not anymore. I haven’t been for years now. There was a time when I hated my day-to-day existence. I never got overly dramatic about it other than to frequently rant to my mom about how sucky life is. I never sank too low, thank goodness and it never managed to overtake me completely. It boiled down to a disappointment in the way things were turning out. I’m not back to that point, mostly because I’ve let go of certain things that were plaguing me then which enhanced that disappointment. In fact, life is pretty good now. I don’t have much to complain about other than I have an insatiable need for it to continually get better.
I want things now that I five years ago I never would have thought would be important to me. I have new goals and dreams that I’m working toward. That in and of itself shows growth and change, which is a good thing. The things I want now are completely possible. In the grand scope of things, the stuff I need to do isn’t particularly overwhelming or difficult. I get some of it done, but not enough… never enough.
It’s interesting to me that I can have so much organization and clarity and follow through with the things that others expect of me (a.k.a. my day job) and yet so lacking in the things I expect of myself (a.k.a. my writing, publishing, and personal care). I suck at the whole self-regulation thing. Things like writing 500 words a day (which is the absolute lowest word count I will expect of myself, and a total that for me is not hard to reach once I sit down and actually write) or posting to my website once a week (which I’ve managed to not do for the last six weeks).
To all the expectations I’ve had of myself over the years, I must say, I am greatly disappointed to have not reached many of you. For all the plans and lists and schedules and goals and hopes and dreams, I have failed much more often that not. Not because I gave it my best and couldn’t deliver, but because I couldn’t bring myself to even give it a good college try as they say. And how devastating is that? How sad. What a waste of this one wild and precious life of mine as Mary Oliver called it in her poem “The Summer Day,” which I highly recommend reading if you haven’t before.
If I don’t frequently stop and look back to see how far I have managed to come in the last five years, I get frustrated and disappointed in myself. I must remember that though right now I am struggling badly to make much progress at all, at least I am still moving forward, as glacial as the pace may be. I can take some comfort in that, but it doesn’t stop the guilt I feel whenever I am not working on something. And even when I do accomplish something, no matter how great or small, it never feels like enough. There is always more I could be doing. On my more productive days when the guilt hits, I try to remind myself that we humans need breaks to do well and to go easy on myself. On my less productive (or nil) days, I have a much harder time being so forgiving.
I will keep trudging forward, slowly as I am, mostly because I don’t know any other way to go. I can only hope that the productive days will eventually outweigh the disappointing ones. We can never know what the next day will bring in this uncertain world. Until then, guilt is a constant companion, which is exhausting and only exacerbates the issue. But I can’t throw it off until I stop disappointing myself. Letting oneself down is the worst feeling in the world. And doing it repeatedly… well, we know what Aristotle has to say about that. It certainly doesn’t make the next day easier.
There is a ray of sunshine peaking through the clouds right now though. Just writing this is helping me today. I will break the six-week hiatus in posting and for one day assuage the guilt a bit. Just getting this out felt crucial for me today. Its funny how sometimes we stumble upon the exact thing we need. I sat down to attempt to write my normal check in, but this is what came out instead. It restored some of my trust in myself and maybe there are those among you who needed to read this today, if only to know that you aren’t the only one.
Of all I don’t understand and struggle with, there is something I know with certainty.
As Martin Luther put it, “Everything that is done in the world, is done by hope.” And my one wild and precious life is full to the brim with it. Where do you think all those dreams and goals came from? And as long I know they were fueled by hope, I’ll keep going. And I will (last quote, I promise) “Never, never, never give up.” Winston Churchill.
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