#019 – Arouse No Exaggerated Expectations
Arouse no exaggerated expectations on entering. It is the usual ill luck of all celebrities not to fulfil afterwards the expectations beforehand formed of them. The real can never equal the imagined, for it is easy to form ideals but very difficult to realise them. Imagination weds Hope and gives birth to much more than things are in themselves. However great the excellences, they never suffice to fulfil expectations, and as men find themselves disappointed with their exorbitant expectations they are more ready to be disillusionised than to admire. Hope is a great falsifier of truth; let skill guard against this by ensuring that fruition exceeds desire. A few creditable attempts at the beginning are sufficient to arouse curiosity without pledging one to the final object. It is better that reality should surpass the design and is better than was thought. This rule does not apply to the wicked, for the same exaggeration is a great aid to them; they are defeated amid general applause, and what seemed at first extreme ruin comes to be thought quite bearable.
I think this message will hit home with a lot of coaches. How often have we come into the season with high expectations, only to fall short? That puts a lot more stress on them and the teams they are involved with. They keep chasing the notion of living up to those expectations. Often, it is not the fact that they are not living up to them, it is more the fact that the expectations were out of line. I have been learning this lesson the hard way recently, and the timing of this post is not lost on me. As coaches, we tend to fall into this trap a lot more when we have an experienced team returning for us. Maybe we had very few who graduated or move on, so we set expectations based on previous results. While the team may feel the same as before, it is still a new unit. We also have to learn that there is a difference between goals and expectations. My suggested solution is to focus your expectations on processes and philosophies. For example, your expectations for the upcoming season could be to “leave it all on the court every single competition” vs your goal of “winning a league championship”. It may not seem like much of a shift in thinking and coaching, but it is and hopefully, you will find it more rewarding and less stressful. Let a few days pass at the beginning of the season before you set the goals of championships and such.
This blog series is based on the book “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” by Balthasar Gracián. This book was written for advice on how to achieve personal and professional success. This blog series aims to visit the points of wisdom and put them in the spotlight of the coaching and education lens.
