Unrealistic Expectations: A Self-Compassionate Approach

Setting unrealistic expectations for yourself exists in contradiction to self-compassion.

What does this mean? If you strive to be self-compassionate, setting unrealistic expectations or demands on yourself is leading yourself towards a negative, no-win, scenario.

When I say unrealistic expectations, imagine this scenario: you are behind on a particular area of work. Like, really, really behind. Perhas this is a task that is intended to be done daily and you have put it off for six weeks. So, here you are, several weeks behind with a metaphoric ton of work weighing you down. How do you feel? First, I imagine you feel regret: “Why didn’t I do this? How did I let myself get so behind? You’re a real piece of sh*# that you let it get this out of hand.” Mixed in with that regret, you also likely feel some fear: “If my boss finds out that I’m this behind, I’m definitely not going to live this down. They must already know…how can they not know? I’m definitely getting fired. At , minimum I’m going to have to talk about it and I really don’t want to talk about it. What do I even say? Is there any good reason for getting this behind?!”

And so, it begins. At this point you likely begin to negotiate with yourself. You decide that you must fix it AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Before anyone else realizes what has happened. So you decide that you’ll get it done this week, in three days time. Of course, you still have your regular job tasks to do and you have other life demands. Is it reasonable to expect yourself to fix a six-week mistake in three days? Clearly it depends on the exact nature of your work, but I’m going to assume that it’s not. For many people, I would venture to suggest that the reason you believe it needs to be fixed so quickly is two-fold: you want to minimize being “caught”, and secondly, you believe you “deserve” this deadline as a way to atone for messing up, in other words, it’s a punishment and you deserve this punishment.

So you beat yourself up and suffer two-fold: because of the actual work that takes a lot of effort to complete and because you are self-criticizing the entire time you’re going through this process. The problem here is that we then assume that this method is the only way to get through an experience like this — which makes some sense — it worked, you got it done! The place where you’re wrong is assuming that you have to suffer through so much self-critique. You actually don’t.

Self-compassion would say: what is reasonable that I can do? It is a way to get out of the roadblocks that self-critique thrives on. It’s not lowering your standards, it’s saying: what do I need to do my best work right now? Also, let’s surmise that part of the story that you didn’t include in your self-critique above is that you’re living through a global pandemic and that factored into why you got so behind. Somehow you convinced yourself though — “it shouldn’t matter, this is just my normal job, I should be able to do it this in my sleep!”

But, as we all know by now, pandemics are hard. A situation that was unimaginable a few years ago, has become daily life. It’s our norm, yet most of us are feeling like we are in limbo: is the pandemic over or is not? This liminal space is being discussed somewhat and likely you can intellectually recognize that it’s a hard time, but you might still kick yourself around a bit for not rising about the malaise. Somehow these inner critics believe that you are the super human one to not let hard times get you down. I don’t have one cookie cutter response as for why you might be one of the lucky ones to suffer this way, except that it’s likely a mix of culture and the way you were parented. This isn’t an indictment on your mom and dad — this kind of pressure has made many of us successful in many ways, and can be quite necessary to help school-aged children understand consequences. But since this negative self-critique does indeed work, many people will overdo it and it becomes the only to accomplish anything. So while it’s true that many of you will get caught up on those six weeks of tasks via a method of self-critique — you are suffering through it. The question is: do you want to suffer, or is there a better way?

I would argue that yes, yes there is. And I’m hopeful that during a time of pandemic you might be more open to the idea that you can, actually, suffer less by practicing self-compassion.

Here is one way that you implement self-compassion immediately:

Put your hand on your heart and you say:  “Catherine t’s a really hard time. I know you want to achieve so much in your life and this is a good thing. Everyone that loves you wants that for you too. Also, it’s okay to rest when things are hard. You’re okay. And this project doesn’t need to be perfect.. Catherine, I love who you are at your very core. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed. It makes sense that you’re overwhelmed.”

If you try this, I’m curious to hear how it goes.