living up to our expectations

This morning I've got a serious case of procrastination.  Right up to the moment I starting writing this, I was engaged in my usual distraction: news, emails., facebook posts and on it goes.  This is not my usual morning practice.
Then I realized what was going on: 

I was living up to my own expectations. 

Given that the past two weeks were very challenging, yesterday I had a discussion with Me Inc. (thanks Theresa) and came to a decision.  I was giving myself today off.   This seemed like a great idea: A day of relaxation, a bit of binge watching and other nonproductive activity.

But then I woke up early this morning, went for a run and thought I wanted to work.  Until I sat down to work and realized I just couldn't get into it.    Somewhere in my subconscious I had told myself to just chill today.  

I tend to live into my expectations in other venues too.  Something very similar happens with my running.  If my training calls for five miles, I'm mentally ready to run those 5 miles - but not much more.  Yet, if training the next day calls for 7 miles, no problem and the five miles I ran the day before seems like a breeze as I had into 6 and 7.  This plays out in other venues. 

Here's my big point:   I can't speak for you the reader but I have a hunch many of us tend to live into our expectations.  It's something we have control of.   The beautiful thing is that we always have the freedom to change our expectations: raise them, lower them or even completely redefine our expectations for ourselves.