The glass is half-full, but I’ll probably spill it.
Truth be told, I’ve spent the majority of my life as an optimistic pessimist. Most folks would describe me as upbeat. But, when it came to expectations for the long-term success of my health goals, more often than not I bet against myself.
“Consistently inconsistent,” is how I usually described myself to others when they commented on my weight loss. The keto lifestyle had become my “home.” But, I built verbal storage sheds all around me. They were places where I planned to run and hide after this new way of eating inevitably became like all my old ways of eating: a failure.
Some may say it’s being realistic to mentally prepare yourself for potential setbacks. After all, I had tried to “get healthy” and/or “lose weight” so many times before. Wasn’t it prudent to potentially cushion the fall? I didn’t want to get too “cocky,” enjoy my fleeting success and then choke on my words when I gained the weight back…and probably even more weight. I better not draw any attention to myself, I reasoned. I needed to downplay my success and keep my future failure easily digestible. Sure, in the big picture view, it was a negative expectation. But, if I’m eating the Proper Human Diet in the right eating window, do those little, self-deprecating jabs even matter?
Well, for me it did.
In fact, my initial negative expectation for future Rachel really became an obstacle to Joe and I even starting 2KrazyKetos.
I had a pessimistic belief that weight loss was not sustainable for me. Why would I want to jeopardize the future health of others with a YouTube channel when I was a weight-loss jinx?
I began to entertain thoughts like, “I’ll be lucky if I keep this weight off for another year,” “I’m so set in my ways now, I can’t teach this old dog new tricks,” “If I’m going to die soon anyway, might as well eat what I want and enjoy the time I’ve got left.”
The longer those thoughts languished in my mind’s lobby, the more time I spent looking for justification, proof and demonstration of future failure. I was expending so much energy on seeing that nothing good would happen, I actually predisposed myself to failure both personally and with the people I wanted to reach with the message of keto.
Fortunately, a truly preposterous negative thought crossed my mind: “There isn’t anything new these keto conferences and YouTube speakers can teach me. I’ve heard it all already.”
I say, “fortunately,” I had that thought, because it was such a blatant lie it caused me to question all my other negative thoughts. And, they began to crumble. I had confused arrogance with confidence. Arrogance is fueled by a sense of self-superiority. Confidence is motivated by a belief that you can rely on someone or something. My negative expectations weren’t a threat to my arrogance, because I have never believed I am superior to anyone else. There was no danger there. My negative expectations did chip away at my confidence, though. And, that was dangerous to my future, because it held my hope hostage.
Hope, or a confident expectation of good, is the oxygen to our “purpose cells.” Once I began to cultivate positive expectations for my keto journey, I could see my plane start to right itself. I had put on my own oxygen mask and now had the confidence Joe and I could help others put on their oxygen masks as well.
It’s such an understatement to say I’m glad we’re not going to crash, I have to write it again in all caps: “I’M GLAD WE’RE NOT GOING TO CRASH.”
Getting off the negative expectations plane and boarding the positive expectations 747 has made all the difference in my keto journey. An optimistic belief that whatever I do will result in success keeps me constantly alert and aware of opportunities to aide in the realization of my health goals. The odds are greater that what I want to happen will happen because I am expending energy to see that this will be so. Just by changing the temperature of my expectations, I am predisposing myself to realize success both personally and with the people I want to see healthy like my family and friends like you.
Maybe you have yet to take the positive expectations layover. Perhaps you feel stuck at the luggage carousel, as the baggage of past weight loss failures continuously circle.
Please don’t let this way of thinking delay you another second from arriving at your health goal destination. Allow me to help you make the connection this week between your expectations and your success, because they matter: You are going to get this weight off permanently. You can change your relationship with food. You are a capable learner. You are so worth this investment in your health.
Now, tilt your seat back and enjoy the flight, you’re headed to new heights.
