86. Get Your Hopes Up | Stop Bracing for Disappointment in Midlife

Why We Say “Don’t Get Hopes Up”

Cheryl Fischer 0:00

Have you ever thought about how often you say or maybe even think the phrase, don't get your hopes up. Maybe you even say it out loud to people in your life, well, don't get your hopes up, or I won't get my hopes up when someone wonders if you're too excited. It's a lot. We say it a lot. And this is one of my least favorite phrases in all of mindset consulting. And that's partly because I had to deal with this in my own head quite a bit as well. So today we're going to talk about this, and I'm going to pull you out because it's time to get our hopes up. Here we go. Welcome to Mind Your Midlife, your go-to resource for confidence and success, one thought at a time. Unlike most advice out there, we believe that simply telling you to believe in yourself or change your habits isn't enough to wake up excited about life or feel truly confident in your body. Each week, you'll gain actionable strategies and, oh my goodness, powerful insights to stop feeling stuck and start loving your midlife. This is the Mind Your Midlife podcast.

A Midlife Crisis Or Identity Shift

Cheryl Fischer 1:19

At the very time that I'm recording this, I just came back from meeting my longtime college friend and her friend for a drink. And it was so cool to meet in person. We'd each heard about each other for many, many years. I mean, how many years has it been since college, right? It's been a long time. And it was cool to meet in person. And when she found out that I had a podcast about mindset in midlife, she said, Maybe you can help me with my midlife crisis. And my answer to that, and this would be my answer to any of you who asked me that as well. My answer to that was, what type of crisis? Explain to me what's going on. Because we could be dealing with a whole host of things at this time of life, right? And she said something that fit so nicely into what I wanted to talk about today. I couldn't believe how it worked out. She said, I feel so down because I know I'm past the middle of life and I have less time left now than what I've already lived. And how do I not be upset about that? How do I not be just frustrated and sad and down? And if you're feeling like that, give yourself some grace. Because the last thing that I want to do, and that any coach or therapist worth their salt should do, is just say, nope, you're wrong. Think about it some other way. Those are your real feelings. These were her real feelings. And I asked her some questions about her job and her family and what she was going to be doing over the next year. And what came out was she has a job. She is going to be leaving that job within the year. And that's where the crisis is probably coming from because that's an identity change. Now, I have been thinking about not having a job for a long time. And it has been enough thinking that I'm now quite excited about that prospect. Now, it's a few years down the road for me. Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere, but I'm excited about it. And I'm adding in hobbies and things that I'm looking forward to being able to do even more when I don't have day-to-day things that I have to do. But she didn't feel that way. And if you're in her shoes, it is okay to feel like what if I lose my identity? What if I feel sad about what's coming next? And it feeds into this don't get your hopes up idea. Now, the way that I would love for you to think about retirement or your 50s and 60s and 70s would be oh my gosh, now I have so much time to do whatever I want. And thank goodness I'm still here and I'm still pretty healthy and I can move myself around as best I can, maybe with some creaking knees, and I can go where I want and do what I want. And I am smart and I can figure it out. That's how I want all of us to be thinking about midlife. And that might be a big switch and it might take some time. That's how I'm coming at this topic, though. And here's why this whole don't get your hopes up idea has been really weighing on me, because I suspect that you've been hearing this through your entire life. I suspect that from the time you were, I don't know, on a sports team when you were maybe in little league or in middle school or in high school, somewhere in there when you were a child, I imagine someone said to you some variation of don't get your hopes up. Am I going to win the game? Am I going to get on the all-star team? Am I going to be the captain of the whatever or in charge, the editor of the yearbook? That's what I wanted in middle school. Whatever it is, some well-meaning person or maybe multiple well-meaning people along the way have said to you, well, don't get your hopes up. And you probably said some version of, you're right, I know, I'm thinking about it, and I know it might not happen. And that's okay. And that's how that conversation plays out over and over and over again. And what I want to say to you and to myself, so to all of us today on this episode, is now it's time to get your hopes up. Because just like my new friend that I just met, after years of hearing about each other, there's not as much time left. If we're not going to get our freaking hopes up now, then when are we going to do it? All right. So

Choosing Hope In A Hard Season

Cheryl Fischer 6:29

let me downshift a little bit and let's see where this comes from, what's going on, why are we doing this to ourselves? So the reality of midlife, and of course you've heard me say this before, and you know this without me telling you, is that there are so many changes going on at one time, and probably a pretty good portion of those changes involve hard things. And it could be your parents, your parents' health, your parents' care. It could be your kids growing up in some way, changes with your kids. It could be suddenly being without your kids and being an empty nest. It could be your relationship changing. It could be your body changing. It could be your physical abilities changing. It could be your job changing. And it probably is multiple of those things at the same time. That's midlife. That's what it is. Career pivot, change in the family, health issues, aging parents, all the stuff. It's all happening at the same time. You probably know someone who is older than you, let's say, just for a frame of reference, 70s, 80s, who always comes across as quite bitter or just negative, pessimistic, just complains, just kind of always annoyed about something. Even if you were supposed to meet this person for lunch and it was a lovely day, they would find something that was wrong with the situation. I think we all know someone like that. And that has always scared me because I didn't want to become that person. And this is actually one of the reasons that I left teaching after 12 years, because I saw the burnout happening for me and I loved teaching, but I saw that I was getting burned out. And I thought if I stay another 15 or 20 years, I'm gonna be that teacher with the gray helmet head old lady hair who's yelling at everyone in the hallway. I saw myself on the path to that. And what I'm saying today is we have to make choices right now in midlife to not be that. And you're gonna have to make that choice today, and you're gonna have to make it again tomorrow, and probably again next week, and again the month after, and again the year after. Because there's a lot going on in life right now. Now, I could have made the same exact podcast and I could have said, it's mindset for teenagers, and I could have said to teenagers, there's so many changes going on with your body and your parents and your friends. And of course, that would be true. The benefit we have now in midlife when we're in this crazy change cycle is we've lived 40 or 50 years. And with that comes a lot of wisdom. And I want you to just pause for a second and appreciate that you have lived for 40 or 50 years through a lot of stuff. And you have learned from that stuff, whether you realize it on a day-to-day basis or not, you have learned from that stuff. So that wisdom is a huge benefit. And that wisdom is also how you're gonna allow yourself to get your hopes up every now and then, and realize that always choosing the negative, always choosing to assume it's not gonna work out how you thought, always choosing not to get your hopes up is just gonna keep it, it's just gonna make it worse. It's just gonna make midlife harder.

Catastrophe Thinking In Real Time

Cheryl Fischer 10:25

So let me tell you a story where I had to, I had to realize this recently and realized, wow, I could become very scared and very pessimistic really fast. So I was visiting my sister recently uh for a family event, and she has nothing to do with the story really, except that I was very tired that weekend. I had driven there, it was a long drive, we had gone to an event, I hadn't slept well, et cetera, et cetera. And so on the second day I was there, suddenly I was having trouble with my vision. And I still don't know why. I think I have to just mark it down to being tired because it hasn't happened since, spoiler alert. But I was seeing if I looked far away, not in any reasonable sort of distance that you would look at to drive a car or interact with people, but far, if I looked far, you know, into the next neighbor's yard from the house I'm in, I was having like double vision. I was looking at a dog a yard over and I was seeing two of that dog, and it freaked me out. I think legitimately, I feel legitimately that freaking out at that moment was a little bit okay. And I said to my sister, what is going on with my eyes? It's like my eyes won't focus. But I could see close up, it was just this far away thing that was happening. And she was like, Oh, I wonder. And I said to her, Do I have a brain tumor? Now let me knock on wood or something, laughing at that, that I'm not, you know, tempting fate or whatever. I can't help it. I have to do that. But what? Just because my eyes are tired and I'm having some weird vision when I'm really testing my eyes on seeing really far away, I suddenly jump to the conclusion that I have a brain tumor. I have no other symptoms of any sort of problem like that. I'm quite healthy, according to my doctors. And I've had a million tests. As you know, when you're in your mid-50s, everything's got to be tested on a fairly regular basis. So I don't think I have a brain tumor. But that's where my head went when I had an issue that I suddenly was dealing with and I didn't understand. Now, the good news is as of the next day, I woke up, I'd slept a little bit better. I was testing myself. I was looking far, looking far, closing one eye, closing the other eye, looking away, looking back. It was better. It happened to me once or twice on that day as well, but not much. And since then it hasn't happened. So I can't explain what that was. The only thing I can figure is that I was overtired. And my sister looked it up a little bit and she was like, you know what? It could be, it absolutely could be that. So I didn't have a brain tumor, at least as of this moment. But I went there immediately. And it's related, even though obviously I'm not hoping for that, it's related to this idea that we need to lower our expectations in order to avoid getting hurt. I was lowering all the way to brain tumor from wow, I need to sleep better so that my eyes work properly. And that was really far down. So, where does this even come from? And

Negativity Bias And Foreboding Joy

Cheryl Fischer 13:44

maybe don't get your hopes up is not something that you've heard or said a lot, but I bet you there's something related to it. There's something that is like a cousin of this. Because this type of idea of not getting our hopes up, it's it's embedded in our culture. It's like a shield. I was looking at an article in psychology today, and it called this our evolutionary negativity bias. And that means our brains automatically prioritize potential threats over potential rewards to ensure physical and emotional survival. So you've heard me say this bunches and bunches of times. We are always going to want to be in our comfort zone. Go back and listen to episode 84 when I talked about the terror barrier and how what happens when we try to get out of that comfort zone, because it goes nicely with this. Our brains want us to be safe. Thank goodness. Good job, brain. We want to be safe too. And they go too far fairly regularly because even something that's not a physical threat, it's not a threat to your life, feels like a threat often to your brain. And disappointment is one of those things. I don't want to feel disappointed. You don't want to feel disappointed. Nobody wants to feel disappointed. But allowing ourselves to hope for something, to aim for something, to want something. And then if it doesn't happen the way we hoped, aimed, wanted, working through that disappointment is the way we grow, is the way we live, and avoid becoming just this small negative 80-something year old. Okay, let's talk about this a little bit farther. Let's dig in a little bit more. So you may have heard of Brene Brown. Brene Brown talks about this with the idea of foreboding joy. And what she means by that is the experience of feeling intense joy or intense hope immediately followed by a sense of dread. So I wonder if you've ever had that happen. You're super excited or you're really hopeful, and then you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, if I may use another common saying. Because something in your brain goes, well, if this amazing thing happens, then surely that other bad thing is gonna happen because I don't know why. It's not really a thing, but somehow we think it's gonna even us out. She calls that foreboding joy. And what's happening is we're experiencing the pain ahead of time. So it's really ironic. And the best thing you can do for yourself when you're dealing with a mental block or a habit of thinking that you want to move out of or switch, the best thing you can do for yourself is simply to recognize it. And this is a podcast, right? We're not coaching one-on-one right now. I'm not talking with you about your particular issue. So the amazing thing that I want you to get out of this is to recognize it. And then if you want to be talking to me in coaching one-on-one, then let's do

Defensive Pessimism Doubles The Pain

Cheryl Fischer 17:26

that. Go to Cherylpfischer.com/slash recharge and set up a free chat with me and let's see if one-on-one coaching and the being profile will help you. And even if you don't do that, you're listening to this podcast. And what I want you to take away from it, the one thing, as I always ask the guests, is I want you to recognize if your brain is slotting you into this trap of thinking. And that is defensive pessimism, pre-experiencing the pain. So when we lower our expectations to protect ourselves, and this is the essence of don't get your hopes up. So let's say I want to have a promotion and I'm towards the end of my career, and I'm thinking to myself, this is my chance. I this is it. Like, I don't want to go change companies, I don't want to get a new job. Like, I don't know if they would even promote me after, you know, whatever age I am. Let's pretend this is it. But I don't want to get my hopes up. What if it doesn't happen, right? I don't want to be disappointed. So I'm gonna just, you know, I'm gonna apply or I'm gonna talk to my manager or whatever I need to do, but I don't want to get my hopes up. So let me just make it be okay. When we lower our expectations to protect ourselves, because that's what you're doing, you don't want to feel disappointment. We actually force ourselves to live the disappointment before it even happens. And if the bad thing does happen, then we experience that pain again for the second time. And I'm gonna say this again because I really wanted to sink in. Because I suspect you're hearing me and you're thinking, what? Why would I do that? That's insane. It's the way your brain is wired, it's not you, it's not your fault. It's the way all of our brains are wired. And I want you to recognize and catch yourself. So when we lower our expectations, we don't get our hopes up. I'm doing air quotes to protect ourselves. We are actually forcing ourselves to feel that disappointment before it even happens. I am letting go with the thing I was about to be hopeful and excited about because I'm not gonna get my hopes up. I'm gonna let go of that and I'm feeling it. I'm feeling what it feels like to let go of that because I really did want it. And now, if it does come to pass that I don't get that thing that I really did want, now I gotta feel that again. So I've now done it to myself twice where I've had to feel disappointed. So not getting your hopes up does not in any way at all prevent disappointment. You are just feeling the disappointment now, ahead of time, and then maybe even feeling it again if the thing doesn't end up happening. And maybe the thing does end up happening. So we've only had to feel it once, but you didn't have to feel it at all. Get your hopes up. Because you can handle disappointment if something doesn't happen. You can. And I say this to you as someone who has a really big thing going on in my life right now that is really hard. Well, a couple things that are really hard. I mean, one of the examples of these things I am not capable of not getting my hopes up. I must get my hopes up because I can't process that something wouldn't work out eventually. I'm not able to process that. So I am getting my hopes up. Now, if if what I want to happen doesn't happen, will I be disappointed? Yeah, tremendously. And I don't want to be disappointed right now when I don't even know what's gonna happen. It's hard enough right now. So if we constantly are kind of bracing for impact, we're keeping ourselves small. And this is why I say go back and listen to episode 84 as well. Because if we never take the risk of thinking bigger, and that's the hope's up, If we never try a bit harder, go for something a little bit bigger, we're living small. And I think I think the picture that we have in our minds of having to live so small as we pass midlife is part of what is upsetting for us. The picture that the good times have passed us by and now we're just gonna try to stay healthy and put one foot in front of the other. That's how living small looks in midlife. Getting our hopes up looks like being excited about the new hobbies. My husband is trying a totally new sport that he never, never, not at all in any capacity, did before his mid-50s. And he loves it and is excited about it. And it's a challenge. We can still do those things. If we do those things and we realize we have all the choice and we have all the wisdom of living all these years, and we have a lot more time than we used to, those are some big reasons to get our hopes up. And those are some big reasons to realize that this phase of life can be amazing. So I want you to take away, well, the first, I already said the one thing is that we need to recognize, of course, recognize if you have anything like don't get your hopes up running through your mind, you're not alone. There's nothing wrong with you. This is how our brains work. And I want you to have my voice in your head saying, get your hopes up. Don't feel bad twice, get your hopes up. If you feel bad once, okay, but maybe you won't feel bad at all. Maybe the thing will happen. Amazing. So let's go back to hope for just a second. Because I think we think of hope as this sort of touchy-feely thing. Maybe we think of it as kind of a fluffy emotion or wishful thinking, you know, it's all pie in the sky.

Hope Is A Skill You Build

Cheryl Fischer 24:12

There is a researcher, psychologist Rick Snyder, who did clinical research about hope. And he has a hope theory. And what he found is that hope is actually a very active cognitive process. Your brain is active when you are engaging in hope. And what does hope require? It requires goals. This is Rick Snyder's research. But goals, we know what that is. It just means knowing what you want. You don't have to put goals as smart goals or anything like that. Just know what you want. Just know what you want. And that's something I can help you with as a coach, too, because it's not always easy. It requires goals. It requires agency. And agency is a fancy term for you believe you can actually achieve it. You believe that you have agency in your life and you can actually do the thing that you want to do. And then it requires pathways. So goals, agency, and pathways. And pathways, what the way he described that is the ability to plan different routes to get there. You can make a path towards this goal. You believe you can do it, that's agency. That's all involved in hope. It's an active cognitive process. And guess what? Having high hopes is clinically, meaning this has been researched, linked to better stress management, lower anxiety, and a much greater ability to bounce back from adversity. And I'm going to say to bounce back from midlife adversity. We're going to have adversity. One of the two things I was mentioning that are really hard for me right now, it doesn't have a solution. One of my parents is not well. There is no solution to that. That's adversity. That's one example of midlife adversity. There could be others. So we know we're going to face that. Having high hopes about something in our lives and not stomping on it and telling ourselves not to get our hopes up is linked to being able to bounce back from that adversity, to lowering anxiety, to better stress management. And you know, I talk about the nervous system. We have talked about this a bunch of times. The stress, oh, stress. I'm not, I'm not going to go there because we're going to be a whole nother episode talking about stress. So, what can I tell you as an action item here?

Probability Thinking And Small Preparation

Cheryl Fischer 27:01

First of all, of course, I just want you to recognize. I just want you to recognize when you do this. I want you to be kind to yourself. And I want you to tell yourself, wait, get your hopes up. Get your hopes up, girl. None of this don't get your hopes up stuff. Next, let's think about probability, not possibility. So if you get stuck in the worrying, this is when the mood of anxiety. So if you've heard me talk about what I use with my clients, it's called the being profile. And there's four moods that underlie everything we do, all the ways we're being in the world. And that's vulnerability, care, anxiety, and fear. And I've talked about fear on previous episodes. Anxiety is the one that shows up. It's always there. But the anxiety is the one that we're thinking about when we're thinking about getting stuck in worry. We're focused on what could go wrong, what could go wrong, what could go wrong, all the bad things that could happen. And I'm certainly not getting my hopes up when I'm doing that, right? So what I mean by probability, not possibility, is what's likely to happen. I want you to rein yourself in as best you can and say, okay, yeah, maybe this terrible thing could happen or that terrible thing could happen. But what's likely? What's the most likely outcome? And maybe you don't love that, but maybe you do. Maybe the worrying is just clouding something that could very well happen. Maybe you think of two or three likely outcomes, making sure that one of them is the one you want. And that helps us stop making a catastrophe out of this. I also want you to think, I have a lot of P words in here. That was sort of an accident. So that was probability instead of possibility. I also want you to think about preparation versus preoccupation. So preoccupation would be I'm sitting and worrying about all the disasters that could possibly happen, right? It's the worry-anxiety thing, being in charge. We're getting stuck in that. Preparation means let's take some steps towards this thing that I want to happen. And maybe they're tiny, tiny, tiny steps. Maybe that's all you are mentally capable of doing right now because you're just sliding back into this don't get your hopes up thing. That's okay. Tiny steps are still preparation. But those steps are forward motion. And your brain is going to start to interpret that different differently versus just sitting and worrying and being preoccupied. So when I say get your hopes up, I don't mean ignore reality. I don't mean ignore that you could be disappointed. I mean allow that you can think about the good things that might happen. Allow that they could happen. Maybe they even probably could happen. Make some preparation towards that. Think about it with happiness, maybe even affirmations, maybe tapping. There's so many tools that you can learn and use, and they're so easy when we get stuck in that. But I want you to choose to get your hopes up. Know what you want, hope for that thing, and know that it takes agency and pathways. Believing that you can and figuring out ways that you can get there. And that's good for your brain and good for your heart and good for your stress and good for all the things. And if you need one little extra piece, this is one of the reasons that coaches and podcasters and therapists talk about gratitude. If you are consciously being grateful about something, whether you're writing things down or you're just thinking about it, or you're just looking for glimmers, like I would love for you to do, your brain can't hold on to this like death spiral of disappointment at the same time as it's being grateful about something. So if you actively are naming something you're grateful for and you're joyful about it, it short circuits that spiral. You recognize it, you short circuit it, you're on a different path. So

Gratitude Reset And What’s Next

Cheryl Fischer 31:39

get your hopes up. And I also want to make sure that you hit the follow button where you are listening to this podcast because next week we have a fun episode. The host of the podcast, Everyday Style School, Jennifer Mackey Mary, is joining me, and we're gonna talk about mindset and getting dressed and style. And you are gonna love it. And in the meantime, midlife is your time to take just a little bit better care of yourself, just a little bit better on the inside and on the outside, makes a big difference.