Expectations

Definitions

 Scientific – An expectation is an event that one regards as likely to happen based on reason or justification.

Plain English – An expectation is a belief that you have about the occurrence of some event.  Expectations are time-centered, meaning that the occurrence of the event either will or will not take place within a “specified” amount of time.  For example, you may expect to play well in an upcoming match the next day or you may expect to go out to dinner tonight.

My Opinion – Expectations are a main ingredient in a person’s/team’s success while at the same time are a main ingredient in a person’s/team’s failure to perform at peak performance.  On one hand, it is imperative that you have high expectations to meet the goals that you have set for yourself/team.  Yet on the other hand, it is also imperative that you forget those same expectations in order to perform your best.  I have yet to meet an athlete who accomplished a truly great feat that was unexpected by the athlete.  However, I have also not met an athlete whose conscious thought during the competition about expectations was helpful to performance. 

So how is this possible?  How can expectations be something you must have, and at the same time, something you must not have?  It all has to do with timing.  As mentioned above, expectations must be positive before the match, not during the event.  Expectations before a match paint a picture of what you want to take place.  They are a way of helping you visualize what you believe and hope will happen.  However, expectations during an event often put pressure on yourself and may also cause you to “forget” to perform.  Thus, expectations must be “thrown away” once the match starts. 

Here are a couple of examples for clarification:

1. The first example is of a specific action during a game, serving.  Pretend that you are playing in a match, and it is your turn to serve with the game on the line.  As you are waiting for the referee to whistle for serve, you should be expecting to make a good tough serve.  You should be confident that you will score.  You should be visualizing the ball going over the net to the location you have chosen, resulting in an ace or a weak pass that gives you team the advantage and opportunity to score.  But once the referee whistles for serve, you should “clear your mind” of these expectations and go through your normal service routine.  If the serve is successful, it is; if not, its not.  By this point there is nothing you can do about it.  If you are still thinking about making the serve, you will likely get too focused on the results (and often the negatives associated with missing), which will cause you to perform poorly.  At some point, you just have to do it.  Quit thinking about what you want or don’t want to happen and just go.

2. The second example is of a larger event, an entire match.  Suppose there are two teams which are evenly matched on almost every variable: height, reserves, experience, coaching, skills … everything.  Well, it would be no surprise that the team that expected beforehand to win beat the team that expected beforehand to lose (for whatever reason).  But now let’s say that both teams expected to win beforehand.  And let’s say that by using some special scale (which, by the way, does not exist) we could tell their expectations of winning were identical.  Now which team would win?  The one that forgot about expectations and just went out and played as best they could, would win.  The team that was unable to “throw away their expectations” instead got frustrated when something did not go as expected.  Subconsciously they kept comparing what they expected to happen (playing well, making plays, etc.) with what was happening (missing a few shots, getting an unlucky break, etc.) and they go into a vicious cycle.  1 – bad break.  2 – compare to expectation.  3 – put pressure on themselves to meet expectations.  4 – perform poorly again.  5 – more pressure, etc. 

Over time, this leads to three primary negative consequences.

1. They become frustrated.

2. They “try harder” and often perform worse, increasing the frustration even more.

3. As the cycle continues, they actually now expect for things to get worse, thus lowering any chance of performing positively. 

On the other hand, the team which did “throw their expectations away” did not get into comparing actual performance with expected performance and was much more able to “go with the flow” of the game.  They did not let one bad play or one bad call frustrate them and thus, they were able to play like the way the way they expected.

Last modified: 02/03/10