As hooomans we put massive and unreal expectations on ourselves.

Outside pressures from our families, culture and society will subconsciously shape our ideas of how we should live our lives. We also create belief systems through our life experience which will form the lens of how we see ourselves and the world around us.

These unconscious thought systems have a major influence on our idea of success.

The pressure to live up to what it means to be a successful human – have the six figure salary, 2.5 kids and a shiny husband or wife. The pressure can be so strong that it can drive you into living a life that doesn’t fit you at all. 

Unless you bring awareness to what personally feels successful for you, you are likely to fall into someone else’s vision of what it means.   

Check out New Year New You to stop living up to others expectations

For now though, does this sound familiar? January 1st is approaching, you’ve been over eating and drinking coz….Christmas holiday whoop whoop! ..You start thinking ok, as of the 1st, well maybe the 2nd (let’s be real) I’m going to stop drinking, eat clean and workout at 5am everyday. It’s going to be my year!

Here’s where things go ary. 

Going from no workouts holiday mode to waking up at 5am every day to work out is a massive leap.…Were you even doing this before the Christmas break? If not, then this new plan is going to be a big ask. 

And this is the problem. You create a mountain that you expect yourself to climb with absolutely no preparation. You just expect yourself to rise to this new plan the day after you devise it, going from 0 – 100 overnight.

You then tell yourself to suck it up and just do it because you should just be able to!! Fastforward to 5am when you wake up, hit snooze on the alarm and tell yourself you’ll try again tomorrow. 

Insert self judgement, sense of failure and feeling shit about yourself here. Rinse and repeat. 

Why do these patterns go on and on?

• We make the mountain impossible to climb, our expectations of ourselves are too high which means our self standards will never be met. 

Generally high expectations come from feeling like you’re not good enough unless you constantly perform at an extremely high level. The problem though, is that the bar is set unobtainably high. The constant level of pressure to perform at an unsustainable level keeps your nervous system sympathetically activated leading to you feeling stressed and burned out. 

When your system is experiencing this internal stress your even less likely to achieve the things you set out to. Your inner dialogue will be harsh and self deprecating because you’re never meeting any of the expectations you have set for yourself. It becomes a self fulfilling profecay of not feeling like your enough, so you set the bar really high to prove your enough, only to never be able to reach it –  which then proves to you that you are not good enough. 

• There is never any acknowledgement of the space in between where you are now with your current habits and where you wish to be. 

Why is it that you aren’t already doing the thing you desire to be doing for yourself? If you could just decide to make a big change in your life and then do it, you would! But there is obviously some kind of road block. What is the resistance that is in the way? Those subconscious belief systems shape what we believe to be true about ourselves and the world around us are big players in why we can’t just make changes. 

The good news is, all it takes is a little bit of awareness to recognise this cycle is at play so that you can start to change your behaviour. 

Try this instead 

✨️Take a look at all of the things you are expecting of yourself and ask yourself if this is realistic? 

✨️Are you creating change from a viewpoint of believing you are enough as you are and wanting the best for yourself or from the view that you only be good enough once you are ticking all of the boxes?

✨️Measure yourself up not down. Don’t think about the end outcome of getting up at 5am daily to work out and expect yourself to just do it from Monday.

Start where you’re at and implement small steps towards the end goal. Start with getting used to waking up at 5am. When you have that sorted, add one workout at 5am per week. Then move it up to 2, then 3 and so on.

✨️Lower your expectations and increase your self standards

So, once you’ve lowered your expectations of yourself going from 0-100 in one day, then you make sure you up your self standards.

This means you hold yourself to the new standard of waking up at 5am. You can do this more easily because you have set a more realistic expectation for yourself and are coming from a loving viewpoint. You can hold yourself to this standard more easily because you have set an achievable pathway forward. It will still be a challenge but it’s a more manageable one.

✨️Get curious about the resistance you face when trying to implement new habits. What are the beliefs that arise in your mind? The voice that says, ‘you’re not a morning person, you’ll never get up at 5am”. Or the ‘you’ve never suck to anything, what makes you think you’ll be able to do this”. Bring awareness to this voice of doubt because it holds the answers to what is in your way. Once you are consciously aware of the inner critic you can choose to stop believing it. Make a conscious choice that you are in fact going to get to know yourself differently. Every time that voice pipes up you can recognise it and choose not to listen. 

✨️Finally, check in with your motivation behind a goal. Is it something you truly desire or something that you feel like you should do? Make sure that whatever goal or intention you set is coming from something you desire for yourself. This will ensure that you create a life aligned with you and not someone elses vision for you.

If you need more help with creating a life that aligns with your needs values and desires check out my course Living Intentionally. 

✨️Create from a compassionate viewpoint towards yourself

✨️Measure yourself up not down.

✨️Lower your expectations and raise your standards for yourself.

✨️Get curious about your resistance

✨️Check in with the motivation behind your intention. 

This is how you set yourself up for success. To live a life that is aligned with what you need, value and desire. A life that feels like success to you.