😌 Letting go of expectations
Plus how proving someone wrong can be extremely motivating!
This is issue 46 of Carved. To read the previous issue, click here.
I’m currently lying in bed sick, again, even though it feels like I'd just recovered from a cold over Christmas. Being sick is only great on the first day, when you feel like you have an excuse to rest and avoid all your responsibilities. But it gets old real fast. I'm over it. My body's all achey but I don't have the willpower to get out of bed to stretch or do anything that requires effort.
I was so pleased with myself for not being sick for an entire year. I mean my throat would get a bit sore from time to time and I felt like I might be coming down with something, but then it would just go away. It wouldn't linger. I thought I'd cracked it or something. But clearly I haven't. All this Athletics Green drinking hasn't really helped me turn into a superhuman immune against all diseases. All the Huberman podcast episodes...
Speaking of which.
Huberman did release an episode with Rick Rubin not too long ago, which I was just listening to earlier. I haven't finished it, I've really just started it in fact. But he said something that caught my attention — something along the lines of treating the projects you work on as diary entries. That often, we put too much expectations on the things we work on. That they have to be great, otherwise they wouldn't be worth working on. But they don't have to be. They can simply be reflections of where you are in life at that moment in time.
Something along those lines.
Anyway.
I think I know why I found this particularly interesting. It feels like this is the source of a lot of my angst over the past few months (and 28 years). All these projects I've ever worked on in my life, my versions of having a go at different things to make my luck, yadda yadda yadda — they all had such high expectations attached to them.
It’s also quite comforting to hear that someone of Rick Rubin’s calibre also still feels some type of discomfort when it comes to uncertainty. But he frames it in a way that almost offers a bit of an escape. That we should never worry about the outcome while we’re working on something. That should never be the focus, until whatever it is you’re working on is out there.
So getting comfortable with uncertainty is they way to go, is it? Anecdotally, some examples that come to mind where things turned out great when they didn’t come with a big baggage of expectations.
But how does it work?
High expectations vs low expectations
I think the short answer to this complicated questions is, unfortunately, that there’s no simple straightforward answer. This study suggests that having high expectations can be beneficial when you're undertaking a difficult task.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is a phenomenon known as the underdog effect, which suggests that low expectations can at times enhance performance. The desire to prove others wrong can in fact be beneficial in helping you achieve your goals. This reminds me of a Huberman Lab episode on Goal Settings, where he talks about the myth of broadcasting your goals to the entire world to increase motivation. Instead, one effective method to keep your eye on the ball is to have an accountability partner, ideally someone who has low expectations on you. He recognises that this may not be super practical for most of us, to go looking for someone who doesn't believe in us. But if you manage to find out, might be interesting to try!
…but that’s not the same as having no expectations
We still haven’t answered the question of whether having no expectations at all can be beneficial. I haven’t managed to find anything that directly addresses this, but my suspicion is not having any expectations is the perfect way to avoid disappointment arising from expectation mismatch. This study suggests that people strategically manage their expectations to avoid disappointment and increase future satisfaction. So maybe when we decide to let go of expectations, we're also freeing ourselves from having our feelings and the state of our moods be determined by the things we're working on.
How to get more comfortable with uncertainty?
One study looks at medical professionals who have to deal with uncertainty day in, day out. Uncertainty here is understood to arise from probability, ambiguity, and complexity. Randomised control trials may not completely eliminate uncertainty due to the variance of human nature, and so we can see how even the abundance of medical knowledge out there may not be enough to avoid uncertainty in the medical world.
While tolerance to uncertainty seems to be mediated by age, sex, and specialties, studies have shown that physicians who are less able to tolerate uncertainty experience higher levels of burnout, lower job satisfaction, as well as increased work-related stress.
Dealing with uncertainty will never be easy. Though one thing I am grateful for is that I don’t have to deal with medical uncertainties in my daily life, I don’t think I’m built for that. What could be beneficial here is to not ignore the uncertainty, and to try to ask for help and ask questions wherever possible. It's usually fear that gets in the way — fear of being perceived a certain way. It's not easy, but it might help remembering that the outcomes tend to be worse when we pretend they don't exist!
What I’ve been up to
Before I fell ill with this stupid cold I was getting all excited about working up to pincha, or forearm stand. I’ve been struggling with this pose for what feels like forever now. I mean, at least 2 years! Being ill for over a week means that I haven’t been able to exercise or move my body at all. And it's getting harder and harder to build up the motivation to get back into it. I don't know. I feel weak. Though sometimes I feel like they key to these things is not to think about it too hard. If I think about whether to get up and do yoga in the morning too hard, I know I'll end up not doing it most of the time. To thinking less!
One other thought. Slightly unrelated. But I’m currently listening to Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic with Tim Ferriss. They've just started talking about the concept of life tuition experiments. Tim Ferriss, unsurprisingly, puts a very logical and rational twist on experimenting with life's bigger choices. In Holiday's case, it was opening a book store. What he said was to think about it as an experiment, and that even if it ended up not working out 3 years later, then losing $70k or however much it costs would be equal to investing $20k a year to find out if this was what he really wanted to do. And when he puts it like that, it doesn't sound as intimidating anymore. I like that. It feels a bit more freeing, that things don't have to be as permanent or final as they seem to be.
What’s on my radar
The Living Room by Love + Radio
This is a story I first listened to years and years ago. Today it got rebroadcasted again by Radiolab, and I’d forgotten how good Love and Radio’s stories are, particularly this one. It transports you to a different world and will leave you feeling some type of ways! This is not your typical love story. It’s got a slight hint of Rear Window, if you’ve seen that movie (my favourite movie!). Give it a listen!
Happy Valley
I am obsessed with this show! Catherine Cawood’s voice lives rent free in my head. We binge-watched this show all weekend last week, one of the perks of being sick in bed. It’s a crime show, based in North England. It follows Catherine Cawood, a sergeant with a complicated history involving multiple run-ins with a local psychopath. Must. Watch!
As always, thank you for supporting this little side project of mine and for getting to the end of this week’s newsletter! If you’ve enjoyed this week’s issue, please share with your friends! 😊