The Neuroscience hack I use to overachieve on my goals without running myself to exhaustion

Why is the dishwasher still full from this morning?
Why is Harlow not in her pyjamas, ready for bed?
Why is the kitchen such a mess?
And what are his shoes STILL doing in the hallway??!!!

Staring at my partner, Sam, silently fuming. And if my mouth stayed shut, my eyes were doing all the talking.

In that moment, I was convinced I was reacting to reality.
I wasn’t.

This was the world as it appeared to me in that moment, but it wasn’t the truth. Not the full picture. Lost in a whirlwind of disappointment and exasperation, I missed a few details that would only become clear later. Like the fact that Sam had been solo-parenting our daughter, like he does every Friday evening, so I can finish my work in my own time. And that he had actually done a pretty good job juggling Harlow, cooking dinner, and sorting out the laundry.

What I was experiencing was what I call the expectation comedown.

So what happened? Why couldn’t I see the full picture?

Filtering

The emotional spiral I was in had very little to do with what was actually happening. It was the result of expectations colliding with reality.

The expectation comedown happens when reality doesn’t match the picture we had in our head, and our mood drops accordingly. From there, we start seeing the world through a very specific filter, one whose only job is to scan for what’s missing, wrong, or not good enough. Once that filter is on, everything snowballs, and an argument is almost always around the corner.

This escalates so quickly because most of it happens on autopilot. Our brain fills in the gaps using past experiences and predictions, creating an image of how things should be. We then unconsciously use that image to judge the present moment.

When reality doesn’t match the picture, we have two options:
– adjust the expectation to meet reality (or reality to meet the expectation, if possible),
– or cling to the expectation and reject what’s actually happening.

That rejection tends to show up as lashing out, shutting down, or passive-aggressiveness, in other words, adult temper tantrums.

What we almost never see in those moments is that this reaction isn’t caused by the situation itself, but by our inability to either express our expectations clearly or adjust our lens and return to reality.

Of course, we don’t mean to do this. We create expectations because that’s what the mind does. it plans, predicts, fills in gaps, imagines what it wants, and prepares for what it fears.

The other side of the coin: Expecting Disappointment

There’s another, slightly more conscious version of this dynamic that often goes unnoticed.

Have you ever walked into a situation or a room already bracing for the worst, only to find yourself feeling strangely satisfied afterward? This is another way the mind creates an image it will compare reality to. Except this time, it’s done more consciously, and it’s a catastrophic one.

Here, if reality doesn’t quite match our expectation, we don’t adjust the story. We make it fit. We filter the situation to confirm the picture we created in our mind: we focus on a tone, a look, a detail, anything that justifies the conclusion we were already expecting.

This is pure self-sabotage. 

Not because our expectations were too high this time, but because they were likely never communicated, and because we set ourselves up for disappointment from the start.

The Cost of Silent Expectations

How often do we do this? Silently creating picture-perfect, or picture-hopeless, scenarios in our head and somehow expecting everything and everyone to align with them, even though we’ve never, or only partially, voiced them out loud.

How many moments have we ruined for ourselves by comparing a perfectly acceptable, or even enjoyable, reality to these unspoken expectations?

The holiday hotel that’s not quite as luxurious as we imagined.
The date that wasn’t love at first sight.
The New Year’s Eve party we pictured as fun, affordable, and somehow not that crowded… every … single … year.

More often than not, the issue isn’t the party, the date, or the hotel. It’s the expectation. And more specifically, it’s our inability to adjust our expectations to reality.

That rigidity, our refusal to bend and meet ourselves where we are, is what creates so much unnecessary suffering and ongoing disappointment.

Expectations: A Thief of Joy

I say this to my clients all the time: expectations are a thief of joy.

Imagine coming home on a Sunday evening after a weekend away for a work seminar. You left your partner alone with the kids, and somewhere along the way you’ve started expecting that the house will be tidy, the kids will have done their homework and be in clean pyjamas, and dinner will be waiting for you.

Best-case scenario: all of that happened, and you won’t be surprised (no joy). Worst-case (and far more likely) scenario: it didn’t, and you’ll feel deeply disappointed (definitely, no joy).

The problem with expectations is that they close our mind. They narrow our vision. They make us see the world we created internally rather than the world as it actually is, and from there, we miss out on joy.

Now imagine going home telling yourself: “I’m going in with minimal expectations. I’m very unlikely to walk into the scenario I made up in my head.”

You walk in, and your mind isn’t scanning for reasons to be angry. Instead, it starts noticing what is there rather than what’s missing. You notice how happy your kids are to see you. You notice how good it feels to be home. Maybe you even notice the laundry that’s been folded while you were away.

The mind sees what we instruct it to see.

Does This Mean We Should Expect Nothing?

Yes…kind of. Not in a negative or depressing way, but in a curious and open one.

Think of children. Children are often in awe of life and carry fewer worries because their expectations are naturally low. They have fewer rigid expectations because they have limited experience of the world. They don’t plan far ahead; they live much more in the moment, which is part of why they’re often so happy.

That doesn’t mean we should live like children. That would be unrealistic and inefficient. Our ability to imagine the future isn’t a flaw, it’s a necessary tool that allows us to survive, grow, and move forward.

But here is the important distinction…

Aspirations vs Expectations

Aspirations are about wanting to grow, improve, and reach a higher standard. Expectations are about what we believe is likely to happen.

In simple terms:
– Aspirations are what you want to happen.
– Expectations are what you assume will happen.

Expectations should be low because we simply cannot predict the future. There are countless variables that influence how a day, a holiday, a date, or a career unfolds, and most of them are completely outside our control.

Having high expectations is essentially assuming that you can both predict the future and control every external variable. And that assumption is our downfall 

My Neuroscience Hack: Extremely Low Expectations

Build momentum

This is where expectations stop being just a mindset and become a practical tool.

I tell all my clients to start every morning, with one simple question:

“If everything goes wrong today, what’s the one thing I’d like to have done that would make this day not feel like a complete loss?”

At first glance, it sounds like you might be selling myself short or being overly dramatic. But this is just a trick…

See, what happens is, ninety-nine percent of the time, you will end up over-achieving on that goal. One percent of the time, you simply deliver.

Here’s what this mean…

By setting the bar deliberately low, your brain registers progress as a reward. Every time you do something you didn’t expect yourself to do, motivation kicks in and momentum builds. One task leads to the next, then the next.

On top of that, finishing the day feeling like you’ve over-achieved, rather than fallen short, sets you up psychologically for the following day.

Razor sharp focus

Here is another great thing about this…

Extremely low expectations aren’t just a philosophy and it’s definitely not you “giving up”. They’re a way to trick your brain into focusing on one task only.

Most of the time, we don’t fail because we can’t do the work. We fail because we spend more time ruminating on everything we haven’t done than actually doing what matters.

This approach pulls you out of that spiral entirely.

Because if everything else is already “not happening today,” there’s nothing to worry about. You’re free to focus.

High expectations feel motivating, until they paralyse you. Low expectations do the opposite. They free up attention, trigger momentum, and turn action into its own reward.

The irony?

The moment you stop expecting so much of yourself, you start achieving more.