Episode 108: Re-Setting Expectations To Achieve Your Goals SOLO EPISODE
Episode 108: Re-Setting Expectations To Achieve Your Goals SOLO EPISODE
In this episode we sit down with....your host, Katelyn Parsons.
Katelyn Parsons is a Certified Intuitive Eating + Body Image Coach, Speaker, and host of the weekly podcast, Body Truth.
After years of struggling with bulimia and disordered eating, she not only found recovery but recognized a crucial missing link in the wellness industry- empowerment + individual sustainability around health. This inspired her entrepreneurial journey and life mission to shift the conversation toward healing our relationship with food and body.
For the past 4 years, Katelyn has helped countless creative leaders transform their relationship with food and body image through an integrative, evidence-based process so that they can move through each day feeling more present, empowered, and comfortable in their skin, without worrying about what to eat.
You’ll also find Katelyn snuggled up with her cat or strolling the beach in sunny San Diego with her husband and their pup Winnie.
In this conversation I talk about:
Practical tips for practicing resetting your expectations
Getting out of the all or nothing mindset
Observing the thoughts that come up around your goals and expectations
How the skill of evaluating and resetting expectations shows up in every area of your life
Connect with me...
IG: @katelyn.parsons
Website: katelynparsons.com
Ready to heal your relationship with food + body?
Book your FREE Body Trust Breakthrough Consult
Grab your FREE Intuitive Eating Workshop
Get weekly email support from me to help you heal your relationship with food + body image
TRANSCRIPTION Episode 108: Re-Setting Expectations To Achieve Your Goals SOLO EPISODE
Katelyn:
Hi, welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Katelyn Parsons. I'm also a certified health coach, I help ambitious leaders stop binge eating and create easy empowering relationships with food and themselves. I'm so excited about the topic that we are getting into today. This is something that I talk about with clients regularly, and is so important for moving forward in life in in a way that feels really empowering and confident. We're getting into expectation setting today. So for high achievers, which most of you in this community are I know that for a fact, for high achievers, this can feel incredibly challenging and frustrating, I see this all the time, if you if you feel like you are somebody who sets goals, and is in the struggle of feeling like you can't achieve those goals, or you are getting stuck on how to move forward or you give up easily, you're not alone. And one of the reasons why I love talking about expectations is because so often when we are in that cycle of not achieving goals, we don't realize that it's more of an expectation issue most of the time it, it can be related to a few other things as well, too. But what I find when this is the case for myself, or when I'm working with clients, is that when they're in the cycle of not hitting goals, or not moving forward not making progress, it is related to an expectation that is out of alignment. So I come by this very honestly, for many, many years, I was stuck in that pattern of setting super ambitious goals, not hitting them and then feeling all of this shame and guilt in usually just giving up altogether. And that never felt great. And it's something that I have to continuously check in with for myself, all of the time. This is an ongoing practice. And just like almost everything we talk about, on this show, this is just a tool, checking in with expectations, really getting good at building the skill of checking in with expectations is a constant practice. It's not something that you learn and then just put off to the side . This is a tool that you use in your relationship with yourself. I see this all the time. In terms of different areas of life, I saw this for myself, I see this in, in the community that I have for my business with clients that I work with. But the struggle to move forward can really show up in a lot of areas with careers, friendships, hobbies, your relationship with food, your relationship with your body, all of the things. expectations and goals really go hand in hand, which is important to talk about. And we'll save a goal setting conversation for another episode because that's equally important. But it's worth mentioning that they really do go hand in hand. But expectations show up in a much granular level. They show up with our relationships with ourselves how we are being or what we're doing or not doing for ourselves, our expectations for others as well too, which is why boundaries are really important to consider here. And just making sure that you are checking in with your boundaries, if they need to be set if they need to be readjusted if they are being crossed and also control really understanding what your role is in the expectation of a relationship versus trying to control the other person to meet your expectations. Which is directly linked to boundaries. Do you see how this is all it's like the web of life all of this is directly related to to each other? Which is why I love learning about all this and coaching on this because when you understand this and how it all works together and really get clear on how to build the skills and set the expectation for the skill building, then that's really where life just starts to feel like it flows more easily.
So, bring it back to expectations in the conversation today. rather than considering a big, lofty life goal, I actually want to set the expectations for our conversation a little bit lower. And we can do this by looking at what are the changes that you want to make, and the goals that you want to set for yourself on a daily basis. Like I said before, we'll do another episode on goal setting. But just keeping that in mind where we're just bringing that down to a day to day flow, for the purposes of this conversation. And this requires really getting honest with yourself. Where is the current expectation that you have for yourself? And what would it look like to lower the expectation? A few steps below that. I will give you some examples. And one thing to mention is it's always important to check with your intention, just really getting clear on why are you prioritizing this? Why is setting the expectation important to you? What's your expectation for achieving this? Why? Why does it matter. And really making sure that it is in alignment with how you are moving forward in your life, the person that you are becoming. So let's look at one example of this. So perhaps the expectation is that you want to create a mindful eating practice. And this is something that I see a lot, this is something that I help clients create when we work together. Because there are so many benefits of really establishing a mindful eating practice that works with your lifestyle. And this is individual. This is highly personable and how this is created. But if that is the goal that you want to create a mindful eating practice, really checking in with why that's important for you. What, what you hope to achieve by doing that, what other possible benefits there are in creating this so that you have a more intentional why behind making this a consistent practice. And then looking at the current expectations. So let's start with where you might be setting these, this is what I see for a lot of people. For example, perhaps you say, Okay, I want to start a mindful eating practice. And the current expectation is I will eat all of my meals without any distractions, breakfast, lunch, dinner snacks, all of them without any distractions. That's great. And that's something that is highly aspirational. Really, that's a beautiful, that's a beautiful goal to have. It's also a really high expectation, if your current reality is that almost none of your meals, or perhaps none of them altogether, or without X or are without distraction. Maybe you're just in the rhythm of always checking your phone or always watching the TV or always reading a book, working being on your computer, whatever, whatever it might be. And that's not let me just say most people are in that pattern right now. So there's no judgment around that it's really just looking at, well, where am I right now? Where am I starting? What's my goal? And what's the expectation that I'm setting myself for that. So let me give you an example of what it would look like to reset the expectation, rather than saying, my goal is to have a mindful eating practice. And my expectation for achieving this is I'm going to just start eating all of my meals without distraction. Even though I'm not currently doing that right now. resetting this expectation could look like I will eat all of my lunches without distraction. Because that's the easiest meal that I can make this happen with in my day right now. So do you see how it's when you reset the expectation? It's looking at what's going to make this possible? What's the path of least resistance here?
So if you look for the purposes of a mindful eating practice, if you look at your day, and realize that lunch is probably the easiest to start creating this but you are focused on really making this happen for dinner when all these other things are happening at the same time. Just getting curious, well, what with yourself around? Why is that? Why is that the expectation that you're having, and is there an easier way to just get this habit started. So then we get to reset that expectation. So rather than saying, I will eat all of my lunches without distraction, perhaps you just start with, I will eat my lunch on Wednesday without distraction. Again, getting really clear on how to make this work for you. Perhaps Wednesday is the day where there just isn't a lot of meetings, you have more flexibility to make this happen. You decide which is an important part of expectations and goal setting and all the things decision making just deciding this is going to be the day that I prioritize this, because it's the easiest. So do you see how it's attached to all of these things. So by achieving the resetting of the expectations, rather than saying, non distracted eating every single day, every meal of the day to non distracted eating on Wednesdays at lunch, by resetting that expectation, you're able to build a sustainable, new habits. And more importantly, you're able to create trust with yourself. And really teach yourself that this is your new normal, which is amazing. Because when you get comfortable with this, it gives you the confidence to expand this habit. So for example, maybe you decide that this is easier and feels better than you had expected. Making this mindful eating practice happen on Wednesdays at lunch. So you decide to have lunch without distraction on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, because you like it so much, you decide that you're going to prioritize that and make it happen. And really get clear about what else needs to shift to make that happen to make that a priority in your decision making. And, and really look at the expectations around that as well too. And then maybe from there, you decide that you want to prioritize breakfast on Tuesdays without distraction, and you just continue building from there. So just zooming out on the example that I just gave, we started with this really lofty expectation of going from zero to 10. Or on I don't have any mindful eating practice right now to I'm going to have a completely consistent, perfect mindful eating practice all the time. And really looking at how can I get there by lowering my expectation to build my confidence around just creating this habit and making it flow. And in my mind, from a visual perspective, I like to look at this as building a staircase. So what's the first step that you need to build on that staircase to get to the goal. And when you start building the goal, the expectation would be like at the top of the staircase with maybe this like, beautiful setup with a cup of tea and a cozy couch and like friends and all the things. And at the bottom of the staircase, looking upwards, and just being clear on what is the next step that I can take, and then the next step, and then the next step. So that we build this competence in this consistency that is sustainable for the habit that you're creating. And this all goes back to looking at those expectations. It's really important to note also that a part of expectation setting is loosening your grip, loosening your grip, understanding that life happens. And that if you don't follow through, it doesn't mean that you're failing, it doesn't mean that you're taking a step back, or that you're at square one, or that the entire goal has to be scrubbed all together and that you just can't do it.
A big part of setting expectations for achieving a goal or building a new habit is to set the expectation for life to throw you some curveballs and to still keep moving forward. This is a huge practice and getting out of the all or nothing mindset. So which makes sense because if If you're somebody who likes to go from zero to 10, with setting a goal, then that is usually coupled with a lot of all or nothing. And black and white thinking where it's, it's either or it's either passing or failing, it's good or bad. It's right or wrong, it's doing or not doing. And really, this is just the practice of allowing, allowing yourself to fuck up and learn from it and keep moving forward. And realizing that staying curious and staying open along the way is a part of the process as well to curiosity is your greatest tool in moving forward on anything. Specifically, when you are looking at expectations to I actually want to share a real life example of how I just reset an expectation in my life that I thought of before I hit record on the show. This literally just happened this past weekend. So my husband and I decided that we wanted to get bikes. And this is something that we've talked about for a really long time, we both grew up riding bikes, whenever we go home to visit our families, we ride bikes a lot. My parents have a couple of extra bikes that they keep for us. And it's just, it's so much fun, it brings us so much joy. So we've talked about this for a while. And we of course came up with a bunch of different reasons why it didn't make sense to get the bikes, where would we keep them, they don't fit in our apartment, we have to keep them inside. You know, all of the things. So rather than talking about why this wouldn't work, we started talking about why we wanted bikes, and how we could make it work. So we got really clear on why we wanted them by just laying it on the table, we want them because we want to be able to explore more. We love riding bikes, it's a really fun way for us to play outside and connect with each other. And we both really enjoy this hobby individually. And it's something that we really like to do together. And then we got clear on how we can actually make this happen. And the expectations that we were setting at the time without even realizing so we just took a step back because we realized, well, why don't we have the bikes? What do we need to adjust in our expectations, to just be able to get the frigging bikes. So we realized that our expectation was that in order to get these bikes, we have to keep them outside, we would have to keep them up outside in our neighborhood that we live in right now. We live in a very walkable neighborhood. And it's just a neighborhood that's got a lot of bike theft, and so we don't really feel comfortable keeping them outside. So we realized, well, we could keep them outside, we would run the risk that they would get stolen. Are we okay or not? Okay with that, we realized we weren't so then we decided, okay, how do we get them inside? How can we shift our thoughts to make this happen? And we realized, well, we could create a space in our second bedroom, move some things around. So we shifted some furniture around, and just started thinking about having the bikes in the second bedroom differently. Honestly, thoughts are a huge part of this, which I'll get into in just a moment. So looked at that expectation. The second expectation that we looked at was, Well, right now we're thinking we've got to do a lot of research on this and make sure that we're getting the best bike and the best quality and the best price and all of the things. And truthfully, that was just a really lofty expectation in general for wanting to achieve the goal of being able to ride bikes whenever we want. Because currently, how we ride bikes right now is by going down to the bike shop and renting them which costs like $100 a day every time we rent them. So it just doesn't really make sense. So laying all this on the table, looking at what we're doing now, what's working, what's not working, what our expectations are. So last weekend, when we were reevaluating our goal of getting the bikes, we decided to lower our expectations to not having the best bike right now. Hello perfectionism. You're constantly in my shoes. And it's important to know it's important to to look at that for both of us like what, what are the patterns to pay attention to in our lives. Like I said before, I know that about myself. That's something that I constantly have To keep a pulse on. So looking at that, and then realizing to get bikes, could we just get bikes that did the job of allowing us a bike ride? That's it. So we decided to lower that expectation, we decided on a new price. And we considered what the possibilities might be, if we don't like the bikes, what would happen? Well, we could resell them, we could give them away, we could donate them, we could just keep them in storage until we decided we wanted them. So lots of possibilities there, which are always important to consider when setting expectations. And you know, we don't ride them, we could do all of those things as well, too. And so once we decided we wanted a lower quality of bike that just worked well got us from point A to point B gave us the opportunity to ride a bike, we got clear on a price that we wanted to look at when buying the bikes, we lowered these expectations. And within two days, we each bought a bike, they were used. They were gently used, they're great bikes, they work really well. And we just went for our first bike ride yesterday, we put them in our second bedroom, we moved some things around, and it's totally fine. So I, I want to just offer that to you. Because expectations, like I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation today, these happen all the time, this is especially important in this community around where these are, where these are showing up around your relationship with food, body image, all these things, but really an extension of where are they showing up in life. And often, if they're showing up in your relationship with food and your body, then there is most likely a pattern happening in other areas of your life too. And so when you start practicing the skill of evaluating and resetting expectations, that skill just shows up naturally in in your life in general. So some other additional things to consider when resetting expectations. What are you secretly making the decision in the expectation mean about you? Or your worth? As a person? It's a question to constantly come back to when you are setting the expectation. And also, this can be around what the initial expectation is. So perhaps it's well, it has to be a higher expectation, because it's attached to my worth in some way. And really just getting curious about that. And then also when you decide to lower the expectation, how are you attaching that to your identity, your worth, and all these things, and really just getting curious about this, this is something that I I support clients with a lot because we do have these sneaky worthiness things attached to our expectations that can feel really uncomfortable when we start lowering expectations, because we do make it mean something about us that we're we're not, we're not doing things right. We're not doing things fast enough. We're not doing things like other people are and can get caught up in comparison in that way. So just looking at that and getting more curious about that. And then also, another thing to consider, what is the path of least resistance to just get started? What thoughts do you have about the expectations? Kind of tying back into what I just mentioned about your worth, and what you're making it mean about you? But what other thoughts come up when you set or reset the expectations? And how do these current thoughts make you feel? Thoughts are attached to our feelings, our thoughts create our feelings? So really looking at that and examining it more closely getting curious and what other possible thoughts are there that feel better? Another point to consider what would make this feel more fun and easy to reset the expectation to just get started. Okay, so I want to encourage you to choose one thing right now that you are going to declare as an expectation to examine over this next week, something that you have in your life that you have thought about for a really long time and just start there, you don't have to pick a brand new goal to attach to, or an expectation to look at. This is something that is already happening in your life. So pick one thing, and I want you to just go through this process of getting curious, examining why this is important to you, why the goal of achieving this is important to you? And what's working, what's not working, and how you can lower the expectation, what are the options for lowering the expectation, one step, but possibly a few steps lower than the expectation currently is right now. And then practicing, just getting started remembering that this is not about perfection, that when we reset the expectation and move forward, we are creating space for life to happen. And in those life moments, compassionately getting curious and moving forward. Okay, that's all I want to share for today, there's a lot here, there's a lot for you to digest and think about and moving forward. And if you are somebody who wants to make this a really easy, fluid skill in your life, then I do want to consider, I do want you to consider getting support for this expectations, goal setting, looking at patterns of worthiness, identity, people pleasing perfectionism, all these things are directly attached to your relationship with food and your body image. And in my coaching, that's something that we work on specifically really examining this closely, unpacking, peeling back the layers and really building new skills and habits together that are sustainable for your lifestyle. So that's what we work on in my coaching practice is that if that's something that resonates with you, and you want more information about that or want to get started, then you can click the Show Notes book a breakthrough call and we can talk about how coaching can be possible for you. Okay, I love you. I can't wait to see and hear how this is resonating with you and what you have chosen as your expectation and moving forward. Reach out to me on Instagram slide into my DMs tell me what you are choosing in your life and I will talk to you next week. Bye!