Never Expect More Than What Is Possible
Never Expect More Than What Is Possible
On right-sized expectations, psychological freedom, and the quiet art of wanting what is real.
By: Sean Maloney, LCSW
(estimated read time: 7-8 minutes)
We've all been there.
You've made plans with a close friend, something you've been looking forward to. Then, an hour before, the text comes: "Something came up; [they] can't make it." Fine, these things happen. Except this is the third time in a row. And suddenly you're furious, the internal monologue running hot, wondering what kind of friend does this.
Here's the thing, though. If you're honest with yourself, this friend has never pretended to be otherwise. They grew up in a culture with a casual relationship to time and commitments. They've shown you, more than once, that spontaneous plans are their natural habitat, and when they do show up, fully and warmly, the time together is genuinely wonderful. They have been, from the beginning, exactly who they are.
So who is actually at fault here? Not your friend. They demonstrated their pattern clearly and consistently. What failed you wasn't their behavior - it was your expectation that this time would be different. The expectation was the nefarious actor; it cost you your mood, your evening, and probably some goodwill toward someone who, in the ways that matter, genuinely shows up for you.
This is the principle I keep returning to, both in my own life and in the clinical work I do with clients: never expect more than what is possible. It sounds almost too simple. Yet a remarkable amount of human suffering - the kind that walks through therapy doors, strains relationships, and produces that particular hollow feeling on Sunday evenings - traces its roots not to what has actually happened, but to the gap between what we expected and what turned out to be real.
The science of the expectation gap
Anyone who knows me knows there are a few thinkers I'm bound to bring up when given the chance. Daniel Kahneman is near the top of that list. His work on how the human mind actually processes experience, rather than how we assume it does, has been so transformative that he won the Nobel Prize in economics, a field entirely outside his own, psychology. That kind of cross-disciplinary recognition doesn't happen by accident. It happens when someone's ideas are too important for any single field to contain.
Kahneman and his longtime collaborator, Amos Tversky, gave us prospect theory, which established something that sounds complex but, in its simplicity, changes everything: we don't experience outcomes in absolute terms. We experience them relative to a reference point: almost always, our expectations. Losses feel larger than equivalent gains. A good outcome that merely confirms what we hoped for can feel flat. A modest outcome that exceeds our expectations can feel like a genuine gift. The expectation is the invisible standard against which all of lived experience is subconsciously measured.
More recently, Robb Rutledge and colleagues at University College London ran a large-scale study tracking moment-to-moment happiness in real time. Their finding was striking: happiness was better predicted by whether outcomes exceeded expectations than by the outcomes themselves. Which means that two people can have the exact same experience and walk away with entirely different emotional lives, depending entirely on what they were expecting going in.
The clinical implication is direct. When we carry expectations that consistently outpace reality (about our relationships, our careers, our own capacity for growth), we are structurally set up to feel worse than our circumstances actually warrant. The problem isn't always the circumstances; sometimes it's the standard we've set without ever consciously choosing it.
Why we get this wrong: the brain's optimism machinery
If miscalibrated expectations cause so much distress, why don't we simply correct them? The answer, as neuroscience is increasingly clarifying, is that optimistic expectation bias is not a thinking error we can reason our way out of. It is a feature of the human brain.
Tali Sharot's research on optimism bias demonstrates that most people regularly overestimate the likelihood of positive future events and underestimate the likelihood of negative ones. This bias isn't naive; it actually has evolutionary logic. Organisms that anticipated reward were motivated to pursue it. In modern life, where the gap between imagination and reality is often wide, this same optimism becomes a reliable engine of disappointment. In other words, the very mechanism that generates drive within us is the same one that sets us up for disappointment.
If we were in session, this is where I would look at you and say, “Isn’t our brain so cool and so f**ked up at the same time?!”
Two additional mechanisms compound the problem. The first is what Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson have called affective forecasting errors. We are consistently poor at predicting how future events will actually make us feel. We overestimate how good the good things will feel and how bad the bad things will be. Both errors produce misaligned expectations and, consequently, misaligned emotional responses when reality arrives.
The second is hedonic adaptation. Even when we get what we wanted, the emotional payoff fades faster than we predicted. The promotion, the new relationship, the finished project; they all feel meaningful, and then they feel normal. Our expectations often don't account for this adaptation, so we continue expecting the next thing to finally deliver the sustained satisfaction the last thing didn't. This also ultimately impacts our ability to feel fulfilled.
Understanding these mechanisms isn't an argument for pessimism. It's an argument for honesty. Honesty about the machinery driving our expectations, and what it costs us when we let it run unchecked.
The cost of expecting too much
The psychological toll of chronically inflated expectations is well-documented across several domains of research.
A relationship research study by psychologist Sandra Murray and colleagues found that partners who held overly idealistic views of their relationships were more likely to experience dissatisfaction over time. The relationship itself wasn't the problem; the expectation was always too perfect to survive contact with reality. Genuine intimacy, it turns out, is not built on a partner who never disappoints. It's built on two people who have learned to want something real from each other. Raise your hand if you’re surprised by this.
In the clinical literature on perfectionism, researchers Paul Hewitt and Gordon Flett distinguish between high standards - which correlate with achievement and resilience - and perfectionism, defined by expectations of flawlessness that reality cannot meet. The latter is reliably associated with elevated anxiety, depression, and shame. The problem is not the aspiration. It's the expectation that anything short of the ideal is unacceptable. It is okay to hold yourself accountable to lofty goals, but it is not okay to expect you’ll nail it on the first try.
And in broader well-being work, Barry Schwartz's findings on the paradox of choice show that expanded options, which should, in theory, increase satisfaction, often decrease it. This is because more options generate higher expectations. When we believe we could have had anything, settling for something feels like failure, even when that something is genuinely good. Anyone who has swiped on a dating app should be able to relate to this point.
A note on balance
Right-sized expectations are not low expectations. This distinction is worth sitting with for a moment.
The research is clear: aim high, hold the path loosely, and you will outperform both the perfectionist and the person who has stopped trying. The problem is never just wanting too much. The problem is treating a specific, rigid version of what you want as the only acceptable outcome. Someone who expects to build something meaningful in their career, and who can absorb setbacks and course corrections along the way, is more likely to get there (and to feel better doing it) than someone who expects a precise outcome by a precise date and experiences every deviation as evidence of failure.
What we're calibrating isn't the size of the want. It's the rigidity of the expectation around it. Want big, but hold it loosely.
Five evidence-based tools for calibrating expectations
What the research supports is not passive acceptance of whatever happens. It supports an active, practiced skill of aligning expectations with reality (with enough flexibility to allow genuine surprise and aspiration). Here are five approaches grounded in clinical evidence to recalibrate your expectations.
Pre-mortem thinking
What it is
I know what you’re thinking, “What does death have to do with expectations?” This isn’t actually about death specifically, but rather a tool that is used across many disciplines and environments. Developed by psychologist Gary Klein, a pre-mortem asks you to imagine that a future event has already gone wrong, and then work backward to explain why. It is the opposite of positive visualization. Weird, right?
Why it works
Research by Deborah Mitchell and colleagues found that prospective hindsight, imagining a future event as already past, increases the ability to identify reasons for outcomes by approximately 30%. It corrects for optimism bias before it becomes disappointment.
Try this: before a significant event, conversation, or decision, ask yourself, “If this goes worse than expected, what are the most likely reasons?” This isn't catastrophizing. It's honest preparation that produces more realistic expectations and better contingency thinking. If you are anything like me, this approach is uncomfortable. I strongly prefer disgusting optimism, but experience demonstrates this actually works.
Cognitive defusion
What it is
Whenever I use phrases like this in session, I watch clients' eyes glaze over, but, wonky as they may be, they play an important role in recalibrating the way we think. Cognitive defusion is basically how we account for the role of assumptions in our thinking. A core skill from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), defusion involves learning to observe thoughts - including expectation-laden thoughts - as mental events rather than facts. In other words, we are separating our desire for an outcome from the evidence that supports what is actually happening.
Why it works
When we fuse reality with an expectation, and start treating "this should be different" as an objective fact rather than a thought we're having, we lose the psychological flexibility to respond to reality as it actually is. ACT research by Steven Hayes and colleagues documents that this fusion is a primary driver of psychological inflexibility and distress. Defusion doesn't ask you to change or suppress the expectation; it simply changes your relationship to it. By creating distance between you and the thought, you reduce its authority over your emotional state. The expectation can still exist, it just no longer gets to be in charge. We like that.
Try this: when you notice a strong expectation, try adding the prefix "I'm having the thought that..." This creates a small but meaningful distance between you and the expectation. It is enough to loosen its grip without asking you to pretend it isn't there.
Recently, I asked a client to do this while discussing his frustration with a prolonged hospital stay for a close family friend. Now, he went from thinking his friend was in critical condition because they were hospitalized for far longer than expected, to appreciating that the medical model is risk-averse, and it is often a slow, tedious process to arrive at a diagnosis. The friend isn’t in critical condition; the doctors are just being thorough. That is cognitive defusion at work.
Outcome vs. process orientation
What it is
Imagine this common life experience: you are at the beginning of a promising new romantic relationship, and you are full of hope that this will be “the one.” Notice how your hope, and subsequently your expectation, are oriented around the outcome of the dating process? This intervention is all about shifting the primary expectation from a specific outcome that involves variables outside your control (e.g., someone’s interest in you) to a process that primarily involves you (e.g., your authenticity or engagement). By doing so, you redirect your attention.
Why it works
Carol Dweck's research on growth mindset, and related work on self-determination theory by Deci and Ryan, consistently find that process-oriented goals produce more sustainable motivation and psychological well-being than outcome-only goals. Said differently, when you keep your focus on what is within your control, you are more likely to be happier and more fulfilled.
Try this: Instead of thinking, “I expect this relationship to be fulfilling,” try replacing that thought with, “I expect myself to show up honestly and attentively.” The first expectation inherently requires another person's emotional investment. The second involves only you and is therefore achievable.
Explicit expectation audits
What it is
I had a client recently lament her behavior during work happy hours she had attended over the past several months. I asked why she felt this way, and a clear pattern emerged. She was holding herself to an incredibly high standard but had never spoken it aloud. The moment she said out loud what she was thinking, she immediately exclaimed, “Well, that is ridiculous!” Explicit expectation audits are a structured practice of naming your expectations before significant events or conversations. Here, you make the implicit explicit so it can be examined rather than assumed.
Why it works
Much of the distress that follows unmet expectations involves expectations that were never consciously held. These invisible standards operate below awareness. Metacognitive awareness (an overly fancy way of saying our ability to acknowledge how we are thinking about something) reduces the automatic emotional power of our responses to invisible standards.
Try this: Before a significant event or conversation, write down three specific things you expect to happen. Then add one honest line: “What is actually within my control here?” The gap between those two lists is usually instructive … and sometimes a little humbling.
Gratitude as expectation recalibration
What it is
If you’ve read my earlier blog posts, you know I believe firmly in leading with gratitude. Here is another great example of how gratitude can help us recalibrate our thinking. Gratitude shifts our attention toward what is working, training the brain to register good as present rather than absent.
Why it works
Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough's foundational research found that weekly gratitude practice produced significantly higher well-being, optimism, and life satisfaction. Gratitude works partly by adjusting the reference point. It shifts what we register as the baseline and recalibrates what feels like enough.
I have been seeing a client for several years since his father's passing. He grew up in an incredibly pessimistic household, and only learned to view the glass as being half empty. As a result, he regularly gravitates toward negative sentiment, even when positive sentiment is present. At the beginning of sessions, I have him recount things in his daily environment that he is grateful for and that are going well. Over time, we have noticed that this practice has helped him have a more balanced perspective on situations. This has helped him adjust his expectations and adopt a positive outlook.
This is not about toxic positivity or dismissing genuine difficulty. It is about training the mind to register what is real and good, rather than defaulting to what is missing (a bias the brain already has in abundance, so we do not need to work to cultivate it).
Try this: bring deliberate attention to what is present and good. When practiced consistently, rather than only when things are going well, this will help us better appreciate what is working - even when disappointment is present. [Please see the blog post on gratitude to learn more about this technique.]
Therapists get it wrong, too
In an effort to avoid the all-too-familiar dynamic in which the therapist never gets it wrong, let me come clean about something. That example about the friend canceling is a personal one, and I recently fell victim to it again.
I have two friends who would always cancel and were labeled the “flaky friends” by the friend group. They are the original drivers for the life principle of never expecting more than what is possible in the first place. I would regularly find myself defending them to others, explaining that if you just saw them for who they are, you could appreciate their friendship so much more.
Recently, I rekindled a friendship with them after a several-year break, and I was looking forward to picking up right where we left off: a close, connected friendship that was fulfilling on multiple fronts. After several get-togethers, I was getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of connection. They almost seemed disinterested in my well-being. It wasn’t until a separate friend pointed out to me that I was violating my own principle that I realized I was holding them to a standard they knew nothing about, and they had demonstrated in the past that they weren’t going to meet.
I immediately knew I needed to recalibrate. Once I did, I was able to more fully enjoy the friendship for what it was.
A different relationship with possibility
The phrase "never expect more than what is possible" can sound defeatist. It is as though I am encouraging an argument against hope, ambition, or dreaming. It isn't. It is an argument for a more honest and therefore more durable relationship with all of those things.
Think back to the friend who canceled at the beginning of the post (the one we now know is actually two of my personal friends). The answer isn't to stop making plans with them, to write them off, or to pretend you're not disappointed. The answer is to know who they are, fully and clearly, and to love them accordingly. To plan in a way that accounts for their nature. To let the spontaneous moments be what they actually are, genuinely wonderful, precisely because you weren't holding them to a standard they never agreed to meet.
That is what right-sized expectations make possible. Not a smaller life. A more honest one. And in my experience, honesty about what is real turns out to be the only foundation sturdy enough to build anything meaningful on.
At Forge & Form Therapy
We work with individuals and couples in Arlington, Virginia, who are navigating the full complexity of life - including the distance between who they hoped they'd be and who they are becoming. If this piece resonated with you, we'd welcome a conversation.