How Your Expectations Are Preventing You from Changing Your Lifestyle

Everyone dreams of a great physique, everyone wants to be productive, to cultivate a healthy lifestyle, yet the sad reality is that most people won’t have that.

Because the truth is that they aren’t ready to make the change in their lives. They aren’t ready to pay the price associated to it.

And maybe you’ve tried self-improvement, you’ve read Atomic Habits, tested productivity hacks, or made efforts and tried to go to the gym,

but it feels like everything is costing you so much time and energy.

Over hundreds of coaching hours, I’ve seen a pattern: there's a clear difference between those who end up making the change and those who talk but wait passively, often wasting months or years.

The key difference lies in your ability to recalibrate your expectations.

You see, there’s a way to become that person— The one who quietly works on themselves and shows up a year later, leaving everyone shocked by their transformation.

And today, instead of offering you random fitness hacks, I’m going to share the 4 actual steps that you will have to face if you want to change your lifestyle.

The Reality Behind the Process

You start with a burst of motivation.

It’s manageable the first time

You encounter frustration.

You try to resist it.

But you lose the motivation.

You end up feeling unprepared.

And then you stop.

You tell yourself it’s not the right time, that it doesn’t feel right, or that you just don’t have enough time for it.

But this scenario is exactly what is supposed to happen. It’s part of how you build any habit and achieve any results.

Most people start out optimistic, “today is the day”. You’re going to be that person who overhauls their lifestyle and eats well, exercises daily, shows up on time, whatever it might be…

Then reality hits, and you’re faced with the cost associated to change. Your ego takes a punch, and you realize you have to reevaluate the effort and resources that the change you’re seeking, requires.

People love to inspire you and fuel your motivation, but few will tell you the truth: to change for the better, you have to pay a certain price.

You see at first, the game is to keep engaging without seeing any results, you just have to keep pushing through and be hopeful.

Most people don’t get to this point. They keep replaying the first step relying on their motivation, encountering the frustration and then feeling stuck, unlucky, and unable to break free.

The problem is the very thing they’re relying on in order to change : motivation

Motivation can help, but it’s not enough.

Think about it, if you’re out of shape, how long has it been since you had an active lifestyle?

Years? Decades, maybe? …

The greater the change, the bigger the price. Your brain won’t change overnight. Therefore, the transformation has to be gradual and slow.

You’ll get out of it the same way you got in and it’s definitely not the motivation that will drive you there.

1. You’ll hope for the best

It’s easy to start something new. Even if some people struggle at an early stage, taking that first step is usually straightforward.

Getting a gym membership, enrolling in a class, or starting to build a new skill, it’s all within reach.

From what I’ve seen as a coach, the main problem is rarely not knowing what to do.

If you’re out of shape, you already know you need to eat better and exercise more.

If you’re behind at school, you know you should study more.

If your relationship isn’t fulfilling, you know you need to work on communication.

99% of the time, the real issue isn’t a lack of knowledge regarding the solution, it’s an expectation problem.

When you start doing what’s needed, you expect quick improvements and rapid results, thinking that’s how it’s supposed to work.

That is step one, you will hope for the best thinking that it’s not that hard, not that demanding and if other people can do it, why not you ?

Unfortunately we, as humans, are subject to psychological biases, one of which is the “planning fallacy.”

This bias makes you overestimate your resources and underestimate the effort required to take on a challenge.

Your brain is convinced that if you just do this one thing, you’ll see results quickly. Even though, realistically, the odds are against you.

You tend to trust what you feel you can do, rather than the actual numbers.

In reality, you need to prepare yourself mentally for what’s ahead. You’re probably underestimating how much effort the change you seek truly requires.

This is how your brain works, it wants to protect you from struggle because it sees it as a threat to your psychological well-being.

So, you take that step first step , telling yourself the hardest part is over since you’ve already been to the gym for the first time or you showed up to your new class.

But within days or weeks, you start to scrape the perfect window and notice that you’re not seeing the results you wanted. Worse yet, your motivation begins to fade.

Your optimistic expectations crumble, leaving you frustrated, unmotivated, and questioning the process.

At this point, your ego takes a hit, and you find yourself lost in the dark.

2. Get Lost in the Dark

After the optimistic part, comes the pessimistic one. If you keep engaging, then you’ll find yourself in a phase where it feels like you’re not making any progress—like change is draining you without giving you anything in return.

A typical example: you’ve been going to the gym for two weeks. You’re sore, struggling to find the time, your brain is reminding you how much the membership costs.

And on top of all that, you’re not seeing the results you expected.

Good. This step is necessary. Your expectations have been crushed, and your brain is trying to convince you to stop because it sees the effort as too costly with too little payoff.

This is exactly where most people quit. They realize it’s much harder than they thought it would be, and the immediate rewards they were hoping for aren’t there.

But again, this is supposed to happen and you can find a lot of comfort in knowing that feeling frustrated and handling negative emotions is just part of the process.

No matter what you’re working towards, could be a skill, your fitness, a job, or a relationship. The more meaningful the challenge, the tougher it will feel to make progress.

This is especially true for young adults who don’t yet have many experiences to compare the struggle to.

Because change is less about what you do and more about what you believe you can do.

It’s about reshaping long-held beliefs, which is why change feels so difficult.

You’ll have to adjust things you’ve thought were true and unchangeable your entire life.

If you want to get in shape, for instance, you’ll have to work on changing your beliefs about food and gratification, bit by bit.

And when you find yourself in that pessimistic phase, a few days into trying to change, you’ll face a decision.

You can choose to follow your brain’s lead and look for a way out that won’t threaten your ego.

That’s when you stop—stop going to the gym, stop eating well, stop staying in on Friday nights—and go back to the old pattern of acting.

Or, you can take the hit, decide to pay the price and accept that the journey will be longer than you expected, and keep moving forward anyway.

3. Ego Recalibration

So at that point, you’ve been through the first high of change and your first reality check. If you are still engaging at this point, now this means you’re somewhat serious about this change.

In my case, the most recent example of this process has been writing. It took me several months to turn it into a habit that didn’t drain every bit of mental energy and focus I had.

Here I’m not even talking about making good progress and just talking about being able to sit and write for 1-2 hours because before, that was unimaginable.

That said, reaching this point is already like hitting the jackpot—not because you’ve achieved something great and you’re making millions of dollars, but because you’ve managed to make the practice itself a habit.

So now, you can potentially make really good progress. And again, whether it’s getting in shape or building a skill, your very first goal should be to make the activity part of your daily routine.

But doing so requires Ego Recalibration. You’ll need to drastically adjust your expectations about what it takes and how long it will take you.

You’ll have to reevaluate the resources you’re willing to commit to truly make the change you seek, your reality.

From experience, I know that most people who want to get in shape give up after two or three weeks when they realize that their expectations have been crushed and that the 20 pounds that they wanted to loose in 4 weeks could actually take 4 months.

The truth is, you’ll have to confront your lack of competence. You’ll need to accept being the newbie, the beginner. That’s why this hits your ego.

You’ll have to face the fact that others who have been doing this longer are better than you.

When you start going to the gym, this becomes obvious because you can literally see people training and it reflects how much you don’t know how to, and that’s ok.

Shame and frustration are your biggest opponents when it comes to change, as you’ll feel out of place and unsure about what to do.

This confrontation with reality can be pretty brutal, and it’s to be expected.

That’s why I call it an ego recalibration—because you have to sit down with yourself and admit, “Okay, I’m more out of shape than I thought, and I don’t know where to start but I want to make the change.”

If you feel that way, you should check out Fitness Autonomy because that’s why I’ve designed that program for. Link here.

4. Making Real Progress

If you make it through this stage, you’ll start to see real progress.

The key is to rethink your expectations and shift your focus away from immediate results.

Instead, aim to make this new behavior a consistent part of your life. That’s when you start to win. When you’re practicing a habit on a daily basis.

This is why most people don’t change unless it’s a life-or-death situation. They struggle to stay committed to something that doesn’t bring instant gratification.

It’s hard to bear the idea of putting in effort every day without seeing obvious progress. Yet, at first, this is exactly what you should be doing.

But if your goal is to get in great shape, and you’ve been hitting the gym consistently for a few weeks—focusing on just showing up—you’re already on the right path. You’re winning, even if the results aren’t substantial yet.

If it’s very hard to make a behaviour a habit, it’s very easy to optimize a habit for results when it’s already a habit.

Over time, you’ll start to internalize this mindset, and your time horizon will expand to match the actual difficulty of mastering the skill.

By shifting your attention from immediate results to steady improvement, you’ll eventually achieve the outcomes you’re aiming for.

But that’s only if you stick with it long enough.

Because we live in a world where quick fixes are promised, in a world where you can become the Rock if you just go to the sauna and do red light therapy two times per week.

You need to anchor in your mind that real progress comes from months and years of dedication.

Cultivating the idea that you can make rapid progress will only lower your chances of truly succeeding.

At the end of the day, what matters most is your commitment. Give it your full and unconditional effort, and the rest will just follow.

Trust the process.