I was watching Celebrity SAS: Who dares wins where some celebs are taken through some SAS training to see how they do.
When talking to one of the celebs (Olympic gold medalist Victoria Pendleton) they were asking about why she’s so hard on herself.
She replied “Because I have such high expectations of myself”.
The SAS trainer Foxy said “When you set your expectations too high you’ve got to be ready for a fall. And when you fall, you can’t beat yourself up. It’s about going again.”
This really stuck with me. Because I have high expectations of myself. And I fall short of them on a regular basis, leading to despondency and discouragement and feeling like I’ve failed.
I always get over it eventually, and I keep going. But it’s always been a source of stress to me that I’ve been unable to meet my (often impossibly) high expectations.
And with that one sentence from the SAS instructor, my perspective shifted 180 degrees. Because there’s nothing wrong with high expectations – as long as you don’t use the almost inevitable fall to weaken yourself.
I have high expectations because I know I am capable of more, I like a challenge, I like to push myself.
However, I also then give myself a hard time if I don’t meet the expectations.
But if I just accepted that when you have high expectations, you have to be ready for a fall, and prepared to get up and go again, maybe I could do the falling without the added commentary of ‘you suck’?
Maybe it could be ok to fall? Maybe it could just be part of the process – to challenge myself, fall, get up again. No self-criticism necessary.
I wonder what that will be like? I’m going to give it a try for the rest of the year. I have a feeling it will take away a lot of the pressure.
If you have high expectations of yourself, and a tendency to be hard on yourself, why don’t you join me?
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