The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 249 You're Not Behind. You're Overloaded. How Unrealistic Expectations Hijack Your Brain and What to Do Instead

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

In this episode, we unpack how unrealistic expectations quietly overload your brain, tighten your body, and slow your progress. And more importantly, how to reset them so they actually work for you. You'll learn: • Why high standards are not the problem but misaligned expectations are • How pressure and perfectionism interfere with learning • A simple expectation audit you can use before practice or performance • How to shift from "I should" to "What can I do today?" • A powerful on stage reframe that turns anxiety into expression If you've been pushing hard but not feeling better, this one will help you breathe, refocus, and move forward with clarity.   If you're ready to step on stage with confidence, perform at your best, and finally feel secure in your playing, let's talk! Book a free discovery call and let's create a plan to get you there. Are you ready to take your playing and career to the next level and create a life that feels purposeful and joyful? Let's connect and explore how personalized coaching can support your journey. Click here to schedule your free consultation, and let's start turning your goals into reality.   Book your FREE Music Mastery Experience Discovery call with Renée HERE Book your free consultation with Renée HERE Download the transcript from this episode HERE   Mind Over Finger Click www.mindoverfinger.com/coaching to book your free consultation with me. Visit MindOverFinger.com for my online courses as well as free resources on peak performance. Grab my free workshops and PDF downloads by going to www.mindoverfinger.com/resources. Connect: https://www.youtube.com/@MindOverFinger https://www.facebook.com/mindoverfinger/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/mindoverfinger https://www.instagram.com/mindoverfinger/     THANK YOU: Most sincere thank you to composer Jim Stephenson who graciously provided the show's musical theme:  Concerto #1 for Trumpet and Chamber Orchestra – Movement 2: Allegro con Brio, performed by Jeffrey Work, trumpet, and the Lake Forest Symphony, conducted by Jim Stephenson.

You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast. This is episode 249. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, where we dive into the world of mindful music making, peak performance, and crafting a purpose-driven life and career. I'm your host, violinist, certified performance and life coach for musicians, and your guide to unlocking your full potential, Dr. René-Paul Gaultier. Today, I want to talk about something that quietly shapes every part of our musical lives, whether we realize it or not, and it's expectations. How we set them, how we relate to them, and how they can either support our progress or completely sabotage it. Because expectations don't just influence what we plan. They shape how we

practice, how we experience pressure, how we interpret progress, and how we feel about ourselves along the way. And I want to say this very clearly from the start. You are allowed to dream big. You are allowed to have ambitious goal. You're allowed to want extraordinary things for you're playing and your career and your life. In fact, some of the most meaningful and great work in the world is created by people who dream far beyond what feels reasonable. And I genuinely encourage you to do that. But here's the part that often gets missed. Extraordinary things are not built by dreaming alone. They are built by people who dream big and deeply respect where they are. They respect their

current skills. They respect their current capacity. They respect what is actually possible in a day or in a session or this minute. And that balance is everything. So you're capable of great things. You can push yourself. You can even push yourself hard. I push myself hard all the time, and I mostly love it. But when expectations lose contact with reality, progress slows, motivation drops, and pressure takes over. And that is why expectations sit right at the center of our growth, our long-term goals, and our mental health as musicians. It also impacts our relationships with other people, but that is a topic for a completely

different show. And before I go any further, I want to say this. From the amount of notes I have, what I'm looking at right now, I can tell it's going to be a pretty long episode. So I want to give you the gist of it now. This episode is about how expectations shape everything, how they affect your motivation, your progress, your confidence, and your nervous system, especially under pressure. We're going to talk about expectations in daily practice, in long-term planning,

and right in the middle of a performance. And I'm going to share some science, some real client stories, and very concrete tools you can use to make expectations work for you instead of against you. So I think there's a lot of great stuff ahead for you. And I think it's going to be a very practical episode. So I encourage you to stay with me and keep going. Let's begin by me giving you a very simple example from my own life. That's going to show exactly what I mean about expectations in general. One of my long term goals is to be able to do pull ups one day, not today, but one day, and several pull ups. Based on my current strength, that's a

pretty lofty goal. I'm in good shape, but I am not pull up shape. And that's okay. I'm setting that goal for the long run. I know it's going to take time. And I know it's doable because other people have done it. Now, if I walk into the gym and I expect pull-ups to come easily and quickly, I'm going to walk to the bar and be able to lift myself up. Well, I'm going to set myself up for failure. I try. It feels impossible because it is. And of course it does because I don't have what it takes. So the work is not to lower the dream. The work is to adjust the expectations.

If I work out for a week and I expect major progress and I don't see it, disappointment is going to kick in and my motivation is going to drop. And that's how people quit. A healthier approach is this. You dream big, very big, then you get informed. You look at your current circumstances, you look at what you need to do, then you base your plan on reality and solid science. And then you do the work day after day.

Now, here's where expectations really matter on a daily basis. Let's say I walk into the gym and I start with lat pull downs. If I expect myself to pull 100 pounds on day one, I'm hurting myself. And I'm hurting myself in two ways. First, I might actually injure my body. And second, I'm definitely injuring my motivation and my confidence with this evidence, quote unquote, that I can't do it. What is much healthier is to decide to meet the date honestly. What did I do last time?

What is available today? Maybe I did 60 pounds last time. That's a great place to start. If that feels good, I might get curious. Can I add a few reps? Can I go heavier? Now that curiosity is exciting. That push is healthy.

But here's the key part. Even if I pulled 75 pounds a few days ago, Today might feel different. And I need the mental flexibility to accept that. It's capability versus capacity. So if 75 pounds is not there today, I don't panic. I ask a different question. What can I do today? and then I do that and anything that I do will make a difference anything that I do will keep me in the process everything that I do we will reinforce my capabilities everything that I do is going to build my self-trust and when I show up that way with respect for variability this is how progress actually accumulates. Not by setting impossible bars but by constantly adjusting expectations with honesty and care. Now I've talked about expectations before especially

in episode 245 when I talked about long-term growth versus short-term pressure. But the more I work with musicians, the more I see how much unnecessary suffering comes from unexamined expectations. And that's going to be the goal today is to get you to examine your own expectations. Because as I said, expectations don't just affect how we plan. They also have an impact on how our brain functions, how our nervous system responds. They have an impact on how we learn and how we perform under pressure. And so often, the stress, the frustration, and the self-doubt that musicians experience is not about lack of discipline or talent. Hear me when I say this. It might be coming from expectations that are unclear, unrealistic, or never questioned. So let's

unpack this today. And let's begin by grounding this in science for a moment, because this is not just my opinion, this is neuroscience and psychology. There's a large body of research on something called expectancy effects. The psychologist Robert Rosenthal's work showed that expectations, they don't just influence how we feel, they actually change how we behave and how we allocate our attention, how we interpret feedback. In other words, what you expect shapes what you do. When a musician expects, this has to be perfect. I always fall apart under pressure. This is not ready. It should be better. Well, the nervous system prepares for threat, not expression. What kind of concert do you give in these circumstances?

Or let me give you a simple rehearsal example. Imagine you're running a passage in rehearsal and you walk in with the expectation, this has to be perfect today. Well, what happens? You start playing and the moment something feels even slightly off, your attention snaps to it. Your body tightens. You stop breathing freely. You start monitoring instead of listening. So instead of being with the sound or being with the shape of the phrases, you're scanning for mistakes. Your brain is not asking, how can I express this? It's asking, where's the danger?

So same notes, same player, but completely different nervous system state. That is the power of expectation at work. And I think you can easily see the difference in performance this is going to create for you. Another important piece is something called cognitive load theory that talks about how our brains can only handle a limited amount of information at once. When expectations are unrealistic, like trying to fix your sound, your rhythm, intonation, articulation, phrasing, expression, all at the same time, the brain becomes overloaded. This is why it's so difficult to execute a great phrasing in a piece that you are still

deciphering, where you can play the notes. And there's research that shows that excessive cognitive load reduces learning. It reduces motor coordination, and it definitely slows down your working memory. So learning slows down, coordination suffers, frustration increases. Translated to music, if you expect yourself to fix tone, rhythm, intonation, articulation, phrasing, confidence, emotion all at once, your brain literally cannot do that efficiently. And that is not weakness. It's biology. Trying to master everything at once does not make you efficient. It makes you overwhelm. And as you know, there's science behind how fast we learn. Great book by Molly

Gebrion on the topic, who was also a guest on the podcast. Highly recommend it. Learning follows a biological timeline, not the timeline that you're wishing for. new skills are going to require repetition and recovery and consolidation in the brain all three and this process happens over days and weeks sometimes months and it's definitely not happening instantly and no amount of pressure or frustration or anger can force it to happen faster. So when your expectation is, I should have this by now, but your nervous system and brain are still in the middle of wiring the skill, you're not failing, you're learning. So then the question becomes, are your expectations aligned with how learning actually works?

Or are they fighting your biology? let's talk about emotional regulation neuroscience also shows that one of the fastest ways to trigger stress response is when reality does not match expectation one of my favorite quote Byron Katie says when you fight reality you lose but only every time and boy is she right so when you are thinking this should be easier. I should not feel this nervous. This should be better by now. Your brain flags danger. You're not anxious because something is wrong. You're not anxious because something's wrong with you. You're anxious because expectation and reality are fighting each other. And the way that you solve that is by intentionally setting expectations that serve

you. And I'm going to have some tips on that coming up. So here's the key distinction I want to make very clearly. Serving expectations that serve you does not mean lowering the bar. It means setting expectations that set you up for success today. You decide on an expectation you can actually meet. And when you meet it, you get curious. Can I go a little further? Do I have a bit more in me today? Can I try faster? Can I memorize it? What happens if I gently stretch instead of forcing? And if you do exceed it, if you do exceed your expectation, it feels incredible. And then you build pride and you build self-confidence and you strengthen your belief in yourself because that confidence is built on evidence.

You're setting yourself up to experience micro-wins again and again and again. And I really want to be clear about this part. I'm going to say it again. I'm not talking about low expectations. And I'm definitely not talking about playing it safe. Safe expectations are actually possibly dangerous, because on some level, you know you're setting for less than what you're capable of, and that creates frustration and quiet self-distrust. So what we're aiming for instead are healthy expectations. Expectations that are ambitious, expectations that stretch you, yes, but expectations that respect reality and your capacity at this moment. And that balance is what keeps you engaged, motivated, and moving forward.

Let's talk about practice expectations. I see this constantly in my coaching work. I so often hear things like I should have this excerpt learned by now It shouldn't take me this long to master the rep for this concert I should feel more confident by now I should be further ahead in my career by now And as a musician I have said and thought all of these things

It's very normal But I want to pause you right here You're not behind You are where you are and the story that you should be somewhere else creates pressure that does not help you move forward it actually overwhelms and paralyzes you so hear me when i say this should is not a strategy it's just pressure and pressure without direction shuts us down ask me how i know here's a simple reframe i often use with clients drop the shoulds ask yourself what is actually

true today then ask what is one thing i can do right now that aligns with who i am becoming What am I capable of today? What do I have the capacity for today? When you ask yourself these questions and answer them, that's how expectations start working for you instead of against you. Here's a real life story about practice expectations. I had a client who was telling me how they just cannot practice consistently. When we look closer through conversation, we found that the issue was not discipline. It was their expectations about what a practice session should look like. Their expectation was that a practice session only counted if it was

long, focused, productive, and meaningful. That's a pretty big task. So on days when they felt tired or distracted, or if they were short on time, they often skip practicing entirely. Because if they could not meet their expectations of what a practice session should be like, they felt they shouldn't do it at all. But they also judged themselves for being tired or distracted or frustrated by how little time they had. So what happened? Less time in the practice room, less progress. And with that, there is a whole package of negative emotions. And with the lack of consistency came stress, low self-esteem, disappointment, ongoing frustration, hopelessness, the whole package. So we reframed that.

We changed only one expectation, which was to show up as we are with what we have and do what we can. And when we do that, when we show up as we are with what we have, that counts. Showing up for 30 minutes counts. 10 minutes counts. Showing up messy counts. Showing up exploring counts. And with that new expectation, their consistency double within weeks. And with that came progress and more confidence and more hope, more excitement. Nothing about who they are or their talent changed, only their expectations. Here's another example. I had another client who was stuck in comparison. They expected their career to look like their peers who had won jobs earlier. And because their path didn't match the

timeline, I should have a job by now. They stopped taking auditions for years. The expectation was if I don't win, it means I'm failing. Once we reframe expectations to auditions are data, not verdicts. And as I continued to learn and build, I increased my chances at winning. They felt completely differently. They re-entered the audition circuit and within the year they were playing better than they had in a decade. And the shift was not technical, it was psychological. Here's the thing. Expectations directly impact motivation. There's another concept, which is self-determination theory, that shows that motivation is strongest when people experience three things. Autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Unrealistic expectations undermine all three. They remove autonomy by forcing outcomes. They crush competence by hiding progress. and they isolate us through comparison. So again, expectations are not neutral. They are very subjective. Therefore, we can control them and they actively shape our motivation.

This is where I want to bring back something I shared in episode 245 and expand on it a little bit. And this is something called the fresh start effect. The term was used in a 2014 study by a team of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania to describe how meaningful dates like New Year's or your birthday or a new season motivate people to recommit to goals. So big moments in time, birthdays, start a new year, or a new job, those are called temporal landmarks. They help us mentally place past mistakes in the past, and they make us feel like we're starting a fresh chapter. And that then makes us more motivated to act differently now.

also these moments these temporal landmarks they naturally push us to zoom out to think about the direction of our life and to make choices based on our long-term goals rather than on the small day-to-day details that's the fresh start effect it's not just you it's all of us right and this is a beautiful thing can be a beautiful thing but it often creates a problem we want things to feel different immediately, and we want to be different immediately. And when that's not happening, frustration builds. Every note that's not what we want feels like a failure. Progress feels very slow, and then the motivation drops. So here's the key. You want to dream big in the long term and set realistic expectations in the short term, what you can do today.

You can learn the difficult piece. You can transform your sound. You can win the dream job, right? Ask me how I know. But for that to happen, you have to respect where you are today with your current skills, your current time and your current energy. And when you do that, something shifts, you become more patient, you become more precise, you're more focused on the process instead of the outcome. And you show up more consistently. So the long term goals, they grow through repeated attention. But the short term goals unfold through daily action. And you

need both. And they both required to be grounded in reality, not fantasy. And that comes with being mindful of your expectations. So what can you do about it? Well, here are a couple practical tools that you can try. The first one is one I call the expectation audit. Before you practice or before a performance, or a big decision, or at the beginning of your day, ask yourself three questions. Number one, what am I expecting right now? Do you check in with your current expectations? Number two, is this expectation realistic for today? What is my capability? What is my capacity? And number three, does this expectation help me engage or does this expectation shut me down? If it shuts you down, it needs adjusting.

Tool number two, I called long-term dream, short-term truth. You're going to write two lists. The first one you might have guessed is a long-term. Who do you want to become? What kind of human or musician are you building? And here you can dream big. Let your heart speak. You're going to get a lot more clarity that way.

Then you write a second list for the short term. What you can realistically do today to move the needle toward this long-term dream. And I want you to keep these lists separate. because when they get mixed, the pressure explodes. But we want to know what the goal is because when we have a powerful purpose and well-managed expectations, miracles happen. Let's now talk about expectations on stage and in performance.

And I want to share part of a recent experience from a client because it illustrates perfectly and so clearly what I'm talking about here. This client went into the final round of an audition and was hearing everyone warming up. There are a lot of young players, a lot of strong players, and their immediate thought was, I don't belong here. I should leave.

But they had a powerful reframe on site in that moment. They reframed the expectations. They took some time to reflect, and they realized that their original expectation was to play well. Then they went deeper, and they realized something huge, which was that for them, playing well actually meant playing perfectly. And that expectation was paralyzing, anxiety-inducing. so they reframed right there in the green room instead of asking can i be perfect today they asked what can i do today how can i show up today and they focus on sound and on color on musicality on commitment they decided that even if their fingers weren't perfect

They could make something beautiful. And here's the kicker. The committee later told them that their sound, musicality, and the elegance were what set them apart. They would not have advanced themselves based on their internal expectations. And not only did they advance, they won the audition. But what if they hadn't noticed and reframed the expectation? They might have given up completely and walk out or walk in, but not play well, ridden by all of this tension. That's how dangerous unexamined expectations can be.

So on stage expectation, what can you do about it? Here is a very practical tool, in my opinion. Before performing, ask yourself, what am I expecting from myself right now? Write those expectations down if you can. And then ask, are these expectations helpful? Do they support expression or do they support control? Do they make me contract or do they make me expand? then recommit to expectations that are within your control right now things like sound like presence

like musical intention breathing communicating things like that and let go of expectations that rely on perfection or outcomes. This is a very powerful shift. And I want to highlight yet again something I talked about in episode 245 because it's so important, which is how perfectionism sneaks in when expectations get muddy. When we expect ourselves to be further along or to play perfectly right now, pressure builds. We stop seeing what's working. We miss all of the progress and oftentimes we back out of opportunities. I see musicians not taking auditions or saying no to performances or avoiding mock performances because of that. And the cost is high. They miss growth. They miss experience. They miss confidence building moments. You've heard me talk about this

in episode 245. But the biggest cost is self-esteem. Perfectionism convinces us that anything less than ideal means we're not good enough. And that is not accurate. And it's definitely not helpful. When you set the bar unrealistically high, your nervous system becomes dysregulated. So again, big dreams, but reasonable milestones and achievable daily goals. And most importantly, noticing and celebrating all the small wins. That is how motivation stays alive. One last thing I want to cover are timeline expectations. Sometimes expectations are not just about effort or results, but about timing. And timeline expectations can be especially dangerous. Skills unfold on their own timeline based on your context. Injuries heal on their own timeline. Careers unfold on their own timeline. And again, when we fight that reality, we lose. We suffer. We're frustrated. Some of us simply quit.

So the work is not to control the timeline. The work is to stay in the process and in the progress and understand that sometimes our timeline is just not the one that's going to happen. You want to stay in the process and the progress. So in closing, remember, expectations are not the problem. unexamined expectations are when expectations are aligned with your reality they create clarity focus and momentum and they will take you to your big bold dreams when they're vague or inflated they create stress avoidance and self-doubt and really hear me when I say this one more time you don't need to lower your standards

and it's definitely not about playing it safe I would actually encourage you to have very high standards and I encourage you to take risks but what you need to live up to these high standards are expectations that are placed where they actually help healthy expectations are not small expectations they're expectations that allow you to push and stay regulated at the same time so yes do your very best today Go all out today. Do everything you can and give everything you've got today. But you do that with self-respect.

Because the goal is not just to work hard. The goal is to thrive in the process. So dream big, respect where you are, and let expectations become a tool, not a weapon. All right, that's what I have for you today. Thank you so much for listening. And if you would like to revisit or reflect on these concepts, the full transcript and the summary are just a click away in the show notes. As always, take care of yourself, be kind to your process, and I will see you next time. Much love going your way.

A bientot. And there you have it. Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you'd share with your friends and colleagues. Take a screenshot, post it on social media, and tag me. I'm mind over finger everywhere. I always love hearing your favorite takeaways. And if you're ready to take your playing career to the next level, I'd love to invite you to join the Music Mastery Experience. This is my signature group coaching program where we're going to dive deep into building your confidence and mastery and set you up for success and fulfillment in your life and career. You can find all the details at mindoverfinger.com. While you're there, check out the free downloads and online courses available to support your journey even further.

And don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter so you never miss an update or a tool to help you thrive. Again, thank you for being here. Until next time, much love and à bientôt. Thank you.