Goals vs Expectations

So there I was, February 2013, looking over the Masters Weightlifting website and I see it.  The American Masters Weightlifting Championships are to be held in Savannah, GA in November of that year!  Sweet, I hadn’t been able to really compete the last couple of years because of my schedule.  But this year was going to be my year.  I have months to train for one competition.  I counted the number of days; I built a training program for the time period, dusted off the blender bottle and bought the protein powder from Sam’s Club.  I wrote out goals for the competition in the snatch, clean and jerk, and back squat.  I even broke them down into quarterly numbers that I needed to reach in order to achieve these “long range goals” in November.  I really geeked out!  I stalked potential competitors and found their best lifts to see how mine might stack up.  I not only expected to compete, but I expected to be as strong as I had ever been, and expected to win.

This was faulty thinking on my part.  The goal setting was great.  The preparations that I made were right on.  I scoped out the competition, I calculated squat numbers that I needed to be strong enough to achieve the kind of numbers I needed.  My flawed thinking came in the form of having expectations.  I EXPECTED to compete, I EXPECTED to get strong, and I EXPECTED to win.  Bad idea.  You see, goals and expectations are different.  Goals are something to plan out and shoot for while expectations are arrogant assumptions about how life will turn out just by crossing the fingers.  A set of goals is a step-by-step process to reach a milestone.  An expectation is really just a hope and a prayer based on life’s current layout.

As it turns out, I was unable to compete because of a hamstring injury that I didn’t EXPECT, four days out from the competition, using relatively light weight.   I was completely bummed for a couple of weeks.  I could not believe that I had worked so hard, I had planned, I had force-fed myself, and four days out it was all gone.  I wasn’t upset about failed goals; I was upset because of failed expectations.  So the moral to the story is, goals are for planning and expectations are for dreaming.