One of the hardest things we can do to ourselves, for ourselves is to be completely honest. There is a certain level of acceptance, humility and vulnerability that needs to happen for honesty to stream through our consciousness. To say to our own self, look at where I am. Why did I get here? How did I get here? And the biggest leap for people to believe in: I know I can move past this on to something better.

To make those leaps, to answer those questions, we have to let expectations go and firmly plant ourselves in the moment. When we place expectations on ourselves we lose a tremendous amount of things. Opportunities to discover, learn, grow and be able to change our perception. To know that very few things are constant, the ability to adapt with patience is key. And to quote The Rolling Stones, “You can’t always get what you want” is true.

When you go on a path to better health, it really isn’t just that. Sure you will do your push ups, squats, lunges, curls and kickbacks. You’ll sweat, possibly curse, (at least I have clients who do that), and do some cardio. That can all be part of the situation, absolutely it can be. You will also fail, falter, stumble, possibly injure yourself, hate yourself, hate everyone around you eating pizza and you can’t because you have to be “healthy”. Your expectations of doing just a little more cardio and a little less wine, a little more workout time and all will be fixed, right? And when that doesn’t happen, then what do you do? Good question. What do you do?

We label our journey of being healthy as a chance to finally feel great slipping in to that two piece bikini, (okay, not me personally), to look better in our clothes, to bring down our blood pressure, to feel our best. When the journey doesn’t go as we expected, many times we feel as though we have failed. We haven’t worked as hard as we could have. We might feel frustrated and go back to our old vices, those things comfort us, whether it’s a bottle of beer, a burrito or something else. Or do you give yourself time to feel it out, to understand where you made your mistake, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get moving again. Very rarely does life allow us to focus on ourselves to better ourselves. We do it in conjunction with work, family, friends, loved ones, fun times and not so fun times. Rarely is there ever a point where we are able to move forward on an ever upward climb, we can’t. We can expect it, but if life doesn’t meet our expectations, we can’t throw it away, we can go with it, flow with it and grow with it.

Expectations, when aren’t met, can absolutely kill our desire because we trick ourselves in to thinking that all our hard work has meant nothing when quite the opposite has happened. It has moved us to a point, now we are given the option to hit our head against the proverbial wall thinking it will continue to give us finally a chance to move forward, (which rarely it does), or it gives us the chance to turn right or climb left, perhaps do the hokey pokey, turn back and then make that left when we made a right. Or perhaps it has given us a chance to see what we are made of. To see how creative we can be, how much we can let go and how much our passion will keep us focused and moving. Expectations can make us frustrated and give up and destroy our desire. Problems can give us an opportunity to explore, understand and grow outside of the box, with in us and in the end know we can do pretty much anything we put our hearts, mind and body to doing.