Good morning and welcome to the Increase for Impact Podcast. I'm Justin Sua, episode 2046.

We talk a lot about expectations with the coaches that we work with. And one of the things that we

discuss often is if you manage your expectations, you're going to be able to manage your happiness.

This isn't just true for coaches, but athletes and parents and leaders of any industry. If you want to manage your happiness,

manage your expectations. An exercise I often do before a game, before a season with coaches and

athletes alike is we play the deer in the headlights activity.

Not necessarily playing an activity, but we went through that. Essentially, it's I do not want

any of the athletes that I work with or any of the coaches I work with going into a game

where they're going to experience some kind of surprise. And so I give them scenarios. What are you going to do if the

opponent starts hot? What are you going to do if you turn the ball over? What are you going to do if

you play outstanding? What are you going to do? And we just play all of these different scenarios.

And then the athlete or the coach has a chance to decide how they want to respond. And you're more

likely to respond effectively to adversity if you plan to respond effectively to adversity. And so I run

them through a lot of these different exercises, a lot of these different scenarios, best case,

worst case, out of the blue, crazy things things things that they can control things that they

have no control over things to do with the referees the officiating the weather the field and we just

go for it there's even been some moments where in the middle of a game something that the athlete

and I or the coach and I discussed before the game actually happens.

And they look at me and we look at each other and we start smiling and we'd say to each other,

we talked about this.

And that's always a refreshing experience because they know how to respond.

And so my invitation to you is to consider your expectations.

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