Managing expectations has a tremendous impact on everyone’s life.  We may not know it, but it can elicit various responses that will shape our mood, outlook, and attitude of day-to-day events.

Recently, I played in a curling fun-spiel.  It consisted of 30 teams of various skill levels.  On our team, I was the most experienced as I had curled a couple of times before.  So we set out our expectations early; contribute as much as possible and don’t get hurt!  As we played through each game, we laughed, poked fun, and made some great shots.  Our light-hearted approach landed as runner-ups to the fun-spiel champions.  We managed our expectations early and thus had a fantastic day!  Others who expected to do better have a different view of that days events.

Managing expectations also applies in golf.  How we feel about our latest round is directly related to how we expected to play that day.  How many of us have shot 100 or 90 or 80 or 70 and felt we had a fantastic round.  We exceeded our expectations of that day and felt awesome about our golf game.  After playing well last time, we shoot the same score and walked off disappointed, frustrated and wondering what went wrong.  Most of the time, nothing went wrong, we just expected to do better!

So how can managing expectations improve our score?  I think it is important to always expect more out of our game, but as Albert Einstein defined Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  To properly manage expectations, it is important to understand your strengths and weaknesses and what we can actually achieve.  Additionally, it is important to do something by working on our putting, chipping, pitching, etc.  Then and only then can we really manage our expectations properly.  

To expect something different from your game is a good thing, but working at your game is equally important.  How do you manage your expectations?

I am a grateful golfer!  See you on the links!