How To Deal With Unrealistic Expectations In 4 Easy Steps. | Guest Post

This is a guest post written by Coralle, justcoralle.com.

Life has many challenges, doesn’t it? One of the main struggles is our own expectations. Ultimately, these expectations determine what we do and when we do it. So getting those expectations right is key. 

Here’s how you can start to deal with unrealistic expectations.

Figure Out Your Long-term Goal

Without a long-term goal in mind, you could feel yourself being pulled in various directions. Not only can this cause significant stress, but it can lead to unrealistic expectations. For instance, if you don’t have a career goal in mind, you might feel tempted to pursue various sectors. While it’s normal to not have a fixed career goal, you also have to be realistic with your expectations. After all, it will be very hard to pursue every career idea that you have in mind. Therefore, figuring out what your end goal is will help you in figuring out what you need to do right now. Try to narrow it down to certain aspects. What are you looking for in a job? What salary are you expecting? Do you crave a work-life balance? These are all questions that you need to ask yourself to paint a better picture. Once you’ve answered those important questions, you can work out the next steps to take in order to reach that end goal.

Start With Smaller Steps

Naturally, it makes sense to start with smaller steps, rather than trying to tackle everything all at once. Writing down those small steps that you can take daily, weekly, or even monthly, is one of the key ways to deal with unrealistic expectations. If you were trying to improve your confidence, you could work on that by setting yourself a weekly task. This task could be walking to a coffee shop and ordering something. Or it could be filling out an application for a new job role that you’ve been putting off due to lack of confidence. These ‘small steps’ can feel like huge steps and they will definitely take time. But with every small step that you make, you will become even closer to fulfilling your expectations.

Stop Saying ‘Yes’ To Everything

Many people will encourage you to say, ‘yes’ to as many opportunities that you can. But not only can this have devastating consequences on your mental health, it can also lead to burnout. In fact, taking on more than what you can handle is the key sign of burnout. And feeling burned out and tired is what often leads to anxiety, stress, and even depression. You might find yourself in the habit of saying yes to everything because you worry about letting others down. But by taking on too much you are actually sabotaging yourself and your progress. That’s why it’s important to think about things carefully before accepting or agreeing to anything. Stop and consider if you have the time and energy for it. If you are worrying about the stress this will put on you, then step away from it. It’s simply not worth it.

Discuss It With Someone Who Cares

If you feel like you’re experiencing unrealistic expectations that are making you feel stressed or anxious, then you need to talk about it. For some people this could be sitting down and having a long chat with their manager to negotiate the workload. But for others, it could be unrealistic expectations in their relationship or with other general life problems. Getting to the root cause of these feelings is key to solving them. Sometimes, it can be hard to see what the issue is by yourself. Opening up and sharing these feelings with someone close to you will help you to get to the root cause. And they may also be able to relieve you of some of these unrealistic expectations and put things into perspective. This can do wonders for your confidence and self esteem and help you to manage future expectations.