Tag: dating

High Hopes, No Expectations

Rocky Balboa.  The “Miracle on Ice.”  300 Spartans versus the Persian Army.  The Bad News Bears.  John McClane at Nakatomi Plaza.  Most of us love an underdog story.  Do you know who doesn’t love an underdog story?  The people who were expected to come out on top.  As an athlete, and a very competitive guy, there are few things worse than going into a competition as the heavy favorite and losing.  In some ways, it is better to be the underdog, because if you win, you are a David who overcame Goliath.  If you lose, it is no big deal because nobody expected you to win in the first place.  The pressure is all on the favorite.  If they lose, they are chokers.  If they win, they are just doing what everyone already thought would happen. 

As a player, and especially as a coach, you need to deal with this problem, and I have come up with a mantra to help.  “Have high hopes, but no expectations.”  I can hear some coaches out there saying, “If you don’t have confidence that you are going to win, you will lose.”  Confidence is different than expectation, though.  Confidence is knowing that you are prepared and can win.  Expectation is more of an assumption that you will triumph.  If you expect things to go your way, when they don’t, you will be crushed with disappointment and a feeling of failure. 

I came to realize that this mantra is true outside of sports, too.  Last Sunday at church, the pastor preached a great sermon with the same theme.  He was teaching about how people can make the best of life in a fallen world, and pointed out that life will hurt more if we set the wrong expectations.  He noted that many people expect pleasure and are surprised when bad things happen, making it feel worse.  That is actually the opposite of reality.  Instead, he said that suffering is the norm and blessings are a gift from God.  This adjustment in expectations will greatly improve your life.  If you do not expect anything, you are more grateful for all of the good things that do occur. 

Be careful with what I am saying.  Some people might think I am saying to have low expectations or to expect the worst.  I am not.  That would cause a ton of anxiety and a pretty miserable existence.  For example, I could walk outside and get stabbed by a bum.  This is, after all, California.  I don’t expect that to happen, though.  That would turn me into quite a stressed-out, paranoid person.  Instead, just eliminate expectations, both bad and good.

People realize that this is wise when we talk about things that are very unlikely.  Very few people buy lottery tickets and expect to win the jackpot.  We all can see the folly in that.  Almost everyone goes their entire life without winning the lottery, so you are almost guaranteed to be constantly disappointed if you expect to win.  It is harder to see on other things with better odds, or even things where the odds are in your favor.  As a poker player, there are obvious examples.  When most people are dealt pocket aces, the best possible starting hand in poker, they expect to win.  The problem is, even if the other person has 7-2 off suit, the worst hand in poker, there is still about a 12% chance that the pocket aces are going to lose.  Anybody who has been at a poker table when this happens knows the disappointment and frustration that it causes.  It is often accompanied by colorful language or nasty comments to the other player or the dealer.  The high expectations are what cause this reaction. 

This is where the hope part of the equation comes in.  Some people overcompensate and give up when their expectations are not met.  I have heard many poker players say, “Next time I see aces I’m just going to fold them face up.”  That is, of course, ridiculous, because you are going to win most of the time.  You have to remain hopeful.  Hope is what keeps us going.  Without hope, we give up and see no point in trying.  If we don’t try, we will never succeed.

This is true in all areas of life.  In the past, I would go on a few promising dates with a girl and start to think, “This is the girl for me!”  Then, when those expectations were not met, it was awful and heartbreaking.  I had allowed myself to get high expectations.  Thankfully, I remained hopeful.  Had I lost hope and given up, I would never have met my wife.  Hope keeps us going.  As the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky put it, “To live without hope is to cease to live.”

There is an exception to my rule.  I expect effort.  Everyone fears failure.  Get over it.  Try your best.  If a player I am coaching drops a ball, it is not ideal, but I will not yell or get angry.  If, on the other hand, they are worried they will drop a ball, so they slow down and don’t try their best to get to it, I will get mad and call them out for their lack of effort.  You cannot control results, but you can control your effort.

Now, whether it be in competition, business, love, or any other area of life, have confidence, keep the hope, and give your best effort, but eliminate your expectations.  You will be a lot happier, and probably more successful.

Voting and Online Dating Similarities

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said to my friend as we sat down to eat.  It was the early 2000’s and I was part of the first generation of online daters.  Back then there was no Tinder or Bumble.  We used AOL and talked to girls through instant messages.  I looked over at the girl behind the counter.  Her name tag matched the girl to whom I had been talking.  Her voice matched what I had heard on the phone, but it wasn’t the same girl.  I had seen a picture of her.  She was a thin brunette with large breasts and a seductive look on her face.  The girl who had given us our food was about 5 feet tall and had to be over 200 pounds.  I didn’t want to accept it, but I knew the truth.  The girl had pretended to be somebody she was not.  This phenomenon has become so common that there is even a word for it now – catfishing.  I learned an important lesson that day.  You have no idea that a person is who they claim to be until you verify it. 

I once again have that sick feeling and this time it is far more important.  President Trump finished election night with massive leads in almost all of the swing states.  Unfortunately, many states allow votes to be counted that we have less verification of who they are coming from than I had with that girl.  These mail-in ballots could have been sent in by anybody.  In fact, I pick up the mail from the mailbox at my apartment, so I easily could have taken my roommate’s ballot, filled it out, and sent it in to be counted.  I looked at the ballot.  There is no verification process that would have prevented me from doing that.  Most states have made catfishing the ballot box easier than catfishing a naïve, girl-crazed boy. 

We have to fix our voting system so that we know who we are dealing with.  I got better at it when it came to online dating, so we can use some of the same concepts.  Generally, some sort of visual proof is necessary to figure out if a person is who they say they are.  They didn’t have reverse web searches back then, and even now those do not always find the picture you’re looking for.  Some guys would just assume that if a girl sent pictures that were too attractive she was fake, but that is not always the case, and you don’t want to miss out on a girl who really is the hot girl in the pictures.  I’m looking at you, Minnesota Megan. 

The first verification method I experimented with was to get multiple pictures instead of trusting just one.  It has the benefit of preventing a girl (or maybe even a guy) from grabbing any old photo off the internet and saying it is them. It is an improvement, but you can find multiple pictures of the same girl all over the web, so it is also an easily beatable system.  What you have to do is ask the person to send you real-time, spontaneously posed pictures.  For example, you would tell the girl to send you a picture of her posing with her pinky to her mouth like Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies.  Then tell her to send a picture of her balancing a book on her head.  Generally, if she can send you those pictures immediately, she is really the girl photographed. 

We can use that method to verify voters, but it poses many logistical problems.  We need to trust the people doing the verification, so each voting precinct would have to have people supporting both candidates there for the verification process.  It would be a tedious and lengthy undertaking, as every single mail-in voter would need to be contacted, one at a time, to confirm their identity matches the name on the ballot, pose for the random pictures and text or email them in, and confirm that the vote on the ballot is the correct vote that they sent in.  As you can see, the randomly posed picture solution would be very difficult to pull off without it taking years.

Fortunately, I eventually figured out the one foolproof way to know that you are speaking to the person in the pictures.  The only way to be sure is to physically meet the girl in person and match the picture to the actual human being.  I know it’s a crazy concept, but I haven’t looked directly at a girl and been fooled into thinking she was someone else since Hayley Mills.  How can we put this approach into practice in our elections?  Easy.  All we have to do is require people to vote in person on Election Day so that we can match them to the photo identification that they provide. 

A very smart lawyer that I know basically told me that because Democrats made fraudulent votes nearly impossible to prove, those votes are legal and we shouldn’t say that they are fraudulent.  Fine.  Let’s just say that the Democrats are catfishing us.  He also implied that the only thing we can do is try to get the Democrats who are in power to change the fraudulent system that got them into power in the first place.  Good luck with that.  I say we need to fight and fight now.  If we don’t we may end up in a four-year relationship with Joe Biden, which would certainly be the end of our love affair with liberty.