Get Your Hopes Up
We have a tendency to tell ourselves to not get our hopes up about something that we really want or something that we’re excited about that involves a level of uncertainty.
And we tend to tamp down our excitement through the words we use by adding qualifying statements - something like “This would be perfect for me, but it’s a long shot” - and we do that because if we don’t get our hopes up, then we don’t have to feel the perceived judgment of others or our own disappointment if it doesn’t work out.
In this episode, we talk about why you absolutely must get your hopes up - even when there’s uncertainty - and how you can simultaneously get your hopes up and hold space for how you might feel if things don’t turn out the way you want.
Episode Transcription
Intro:
We have a tendency to tell ourselves to not get our hopes up about something that we really want or something that we’re excited about that involves a level of uncertainty.
And we tend to tamp down our excitement through the words we use by adding qualifying statements - something like “This would be perfect for me, but it’s a long shot” - and we do that because if we don’t get our hopes up, then we don’t have to feel the perceived judgment of others or our own disappointment if it doesn’t work out.
In this episode, we’ll talk about why you absolutely must get your hopes up - even when there’s uncertainty - and how you can simultaneously get your hopes up and hold space for how you might feel if things don’t turn out the way you want.
Here we go.
Main:
The idea of getting our hopes up is interesting, because when we talk about things that we want or something that we’re excited about that has a component of uncertainty to it, we often feel the need to qualify our expectations. We have a natural tendency to tamp down our emotions around it or think to ourselves “I really want this but I don’t want to get excited about it because I’m not sure if it will actually work out.
And the way we try to put ourselves in check, particularly around other people, is through the words we use, and what we do is we add these qualifying statements when we talk about things that we’re excited about so that we don’t have to deal with what happens if they don’t work out.
In other words, we essentially apply a filter to a thought we’re having about ourselves, a belief, or an experience that we’re expressing through our words.
How often do you say things or hear other people saying things like:
“I just started doing X and I love it, but I’m not that good at it yet.”
“I want X to happen, but I’m not sure if it’ll workout.”
“This would be perfect for me, but it’s a long shot.”
And it’s so interesting that we do this because what we end up doing is tacking these kinds of qualifying statements onto visions and desires and excitement that we experience. And it seems subtle, but this idea of needing to add this qualifying statement is actually a very powerful and potentially very limiting habit that we have.
It’s particularly true when it comes to the words we use, because words are one of the primary ways we express our intentions. They’re an outward manifestation of who we are internally, and who we’re becoming, and who we are energetically. They represent our desires and our beliefs and our state of mind.
And I think if we look closely at why we tend to add these qualifying statements, we do it for two reasons:
First, it helps us set other people’s expectations so that later we don’t have to feel the perceived judgment or disappointment of others if the thing that we wanted doesn’t materialize or come to fruition, or if it doesn’t turn out the way we hoped it would, or if we don’t meet someone else’s expectations.
And I have a good example of this for you, one that’s pretty near and dear to me right now. A few months ago I started to learn how to DJ. I’m a huge fan of house music and deep house music, and a very good friend of mine named Mike bought a mixing table, and he started to learn how to DJ. And one night he showed me how to do it and I was absolutely shaken by how amazing and fun it was to do this.
We sat there for hours just playing music, learning how to mix it, and just having the most fun string of nights I’ve had in years.
Now I have no background in music, I can’t read music, don’t know how to play an instrument, but learning how to dj just had this incredible hold on me. And as an adult, i don’t think I’ve ever done something like this that was just fun for fun’s sake. I can’t even describe how exciting learning how to do this was for me.
So fast forward a few weeks, and I’m practicing and loving it, and I start to tell people around me that I’m doing this. And I was SO excited about it, but in telling people about my experience, I started to notice that I was doing that thing I just mentioned where I’m tacking these qualifications onto the end of my statements about it.
So i was saying things like: “I really love doing this but I’m not that good at it yet,” or “I’ve been practicing but I have a long way to go before I”m good,” or “Yeah we have fun with it but we’re definitely not that good at it.”
And pretty soon I noticed that every time I interjected something like that into the discussion, I was dampening the pure excitement I was feeling around learning how to do this. I was putting my excitement into a box.
And I think the reason I was doing it was because I wanted to set other people’s expectations. Like if they heard me doing it and it didn’t sound that great, then I could hide behind the fact that I already told them I wasn’t that good. So it was a way for me to I guess not be embarrassed if they heard me doing it.
So in addition to setting other people’s expectations, the second reason I think we do this is because it also helps prevent us from feeling a sense of disappointment if the thing we want doesn’t unfold the way we envisioned, or if we don’t immediately transform into the person we want to become.
It helps us tamp down the excitement around it because if we leave open the possibility that this thing that we want might fail, or that it might not turn out the way we want it to, then we don’t have to feel the full emotional effect of rejection or disappointment.
So for example, if I tell everyone that I love learning how to dj but that i’m not that good at it, then if I don’t get that good at it, I won’t have to feel disappointed. So even if I feel this welling up of excitement inside of me when I’m having fun and learning, if I tell myself “meh, you’re not that good”, then I always have an out.
So what we end up doing is changing the language we use to shade and dampen and round the corners off of our excitement and our true intentions. And when we shade our language and hide behind qualifying statements, we push everything we do to this middle ground where it’s nice and safe.
The words we use end up being so blah and meh because we don’t want to take a stand for ourselves, we want to hang out in a place of mediocrity, because that means we’ll go ahead and fit right in. And if things don’t work out the way we want, then being in the middle is a nice safe place to be because we haven’t put ourselves out there.
We haven’t taken a stand. We’re not on record as having told people that: We want something, we think we’re good at something, we think we deserve something, we really hope something turns out a certain way, we’re confident that X thing will happen.
And we do this because If we never utter those words, then we don’t expose ourselves, again, to whatever judgment or disappointment - from others or from ourselves - that we might experience if what we want doesn’t happen.
Let me give you two examples where not getting our hopes up comes up all the time: interviews and pursuing clients. How many times have you heard someone say “I really want this job, but I don’t want to get too excited about it.”
Or “I’m talking to this big client, but I don’t know if they’re going to sign with us or hire me.” I’ve heard that phrase hundreds of times. And everytime I hear someone say that, I can’t resist the opportunity to try to gently urge that person to take a different approach.
Here’s why I think that approach doesn’t work: Everytime you say something like “I want this job but I don’t want to get too excited about it,” or “I love DJing but I’m not that good at it,” what you do is you slowly reinforce what is ultimately a limiting belief. You take yourself to a lower energetic level.
And if you reinforce that belief enough times over and over in your head, you lock yourself into a story. And the story is that you’re actually not good enough, or that you don’t deserve the job, or that you don’t deserve the client, and we tell ourselves that if we do get our hopes up it’s going to be really painful to have to deal with not getting it.
And then you end up remaining stuck there. Instead of enjoying the process of learning how to DJ or of getting excited about the possibility of getting the job you want, or reeling in a big client, you tamp it down so you don’t get hurt.
And when that happens, you rob yourself of the excitement of that moment. You tamp down your fire and your enthusiasm, and that belief clogs the flow.
So I want to leave you with three things to think about on this.
First, you should always get your hopes up. Period.
When people tell me they’re interviewing or that a client opportunity is hanging in the balance, I tell them to get their hopes up.
When you get your hopes up, you have a better chance of positively influencing the outcome you want.
If you dampen yourself through qualifying statements or speaking limiting words, you won’t show up at your best. So if I’m excited about an interview and I keep telling myself to not get my hopes up, guess who I’m going to show up as at that interview?
I’m going to show up as an exceptionally well qualified candidate who doesn’t have their hopes up, and doesn’t believe they’ll get the job. That’s who I’ll show up as. And guess what, the person on the other side of that interview will know it.
You have to step into that feeling of getting your hopes up, you have to sit in it, you have to let whatever intention you have be the driver for how you approach that situation.
You are the best version of yourself when you’re sitting inside of that excitement, when you’re feeling it, when you’re envisioning it. That’s how you GET a job, that’s how you reel in a client, is by showing up at an energetic level that indicates that you want it, and by showing up in a place where you feel like you already have it.
So first, I want you to always get your hopes up.
Second, I want you to consider the idea that it’s possible for you to both get your hopes up AND hold space for how you might feel if it doesn’t work out the way you want it to.
In other words, this concept is not binary, it’s not either/or. Your options are not limited to either 1. getting excited and then feeling terrible when you don’t get the job OR 2. Choosing not to get excited so you don’t feel terrible if it doesn’t work out.
You can get excited about something and fully sit in that excitement, AND at the same time be prepared for how you might feel if it doesn’t go as planned. You have the ability to hold space for both of those outcomes if you’re intentional about it.
And as proof of this, I want you to search your experience for disappointment or disappointing things that have happened to you in the past. Maybe it was a job that you didn’t get, a relationship you were excited about that ended, something you thought you were good at and it turned out you weren’t that good or it didn’t go the way you wanted.
We know from experience, though, that when something doesn’t go our way, even though the sting of the come down from it not happening is harsh, we always recover. We’re resilient, we’re strong, we eventually make our way back to center.
So I want you to take notice of the fact that it’s ok to let yourself go there and to get excited, because no matter what happens you’ll always be safe on the other side. It might sting, but maybe it won’t, and even if it does you can overcome it.
And then third, I guess I would leave you with this: Are you willing to be the type of person who has the courage to get your hopes up?
Do you want to be the kind of person who lives their life not speaking out loud about the things you want?
Do you want to be the kind of person who tip-toes through life hiding behind your words because things might not turn out the way you want them to?
Or do you want to live your life as someone who’s brave enough to take the risk of getting excited?
And I say risk because it feels risky to just put ourselves out there and to open ourselves to the possibility of disappointment and failure, and maybe even public failure. But in truth the more often you DO put yourself out there and the more you do get excited - the more the things you want from life will come to fruition because you’ve allowed yourself to sit in that moment of excitement, which allows you to show up as the best version of yourself - which means you’re much more likely to get what you want.
And on the flip side, the more you get your hopes up and it DOESN”T work out, the faster you’ll learn how to adjust when it doesn’t. It becomes easier to accept and process disappointment if you have a track record of having been disappointed a lot. And we know that in addition to all the things we can learn from failure and disappointment, when we get let down enough and if we have healthy ways of processing those moments in place, it doesn’t sting in the same way, and you know how to recover from it.
Life becomes so much more rich and rewarding and fulfilling if you reject your desire to buy into hiding behind words or not getting excited, and instead have the courage to be someone who gets their hopes up.
Go have a great workday.