Volume #9: It’s Time to Acknowledge Unrealistic Expectations

It’s 5:00 pm. 

You’re finishing up your day and getting ready for dinner time. In the ideal case scenario for an average day in your life, what do you expect in this moment?

I’ll go first 😊 

At 5:00 pm, I exit my home office and expect to find:

⭐ Towels from my sauna session the night before freshly laundered
⭐ My husband is meditating peacefully on his yoga mat
⭐ Dinner, 90% prepped and ready to eat (when I am) in the fridge
⭐ …Myself, post-8 hours staring at a screen, pumped for a workout

I’ll be the first to admit that these are impossible expectations.

The reality:

😭 Damp, dirty laundry is hanging on the chairs in my living room
😭 My husband is zoning out to his phone
😭 Dinner is leftovers that I need to dig out of the freezer
😭 I am tired. Tired: Not stoked about getting sweaty

And the weight of all those expectations about this moment in an ideal world is heavy.

So when does your own ideal case scenario actually become a burden that you have to live up to? And why are we all so vulnerable to this kind of magical thinking?

The fact that wanting to get your laundry done before dinner, for example, is not typically considered an “ambitious” expectation is part of the problem of the mental load.

And if you’re a working parent wrestling with role conflict, getting your laundry done at all is pretty darn impressive, if you ask me!

Here’s the thing: Thinking of household chores as baseline to-dos, not even deserving of place on your actual to-do list, is exactly why they get permission to live in your mind, rent-free, constantly protesting your messy reality.

Expectations are sneaky.

So this week, when you find yourself with those 5:00 pm thoughts, take a look around… and ask:

What, exactly, are you expecting?

The Latest on Noting Impossible Expectations from the Flow State Magazine