You Know What to Expect
Read on kevferrell.com
Welcome to REWIRE | REBOOT, a weekly newsletter where I share reflections from my ongoing personal growth journey and provide tested ideas, frameworks, tools and practices to help you create the life you want.
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In this issue:
- Rewire - Expect the Waves
- One Action - Decide Before It Happens
- Reboot - Protect Your Ability
Rewire - Idea I'm Exploring
Expect the Waves
On one side of my wrist, I have II.I tattooed.
On the other side are three words:
Strength. Courage. Wisdom.
II.I refers to Book 2, Section 1 of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations. It's a passage I want close enough to see whenever I need the reminder, which is often.
Marcus begins the passage by preparing himself for the people he expects to encounter that day. In Gregory Hays's translation, he describes them as “meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly.”
It sounds pessimistic. It’s really a form of preparation.
People will let us down. They will break commitments, misjudge us and occasionally take advantage of our trust. Some will be people we have known for years. Others will be strangers we meet once.
Why should we be surprised when people behave in ways people have always behaved?
Marcus believed people acted badly because of their mistaken ideas about what was good and bad. I don’t interpret that to mean every harmful act is innocent. People sometimes knowingly choose what serves them at someone else's expense.
The more useful point is that they are acting from their own judgment, experiences, incentives and flaws. My surprise will not change any of that.
Marcus also reminds himself that they share his human nature. People are meant to work together, even though we frequently obstruct one another. Most importantly, their conduct does not require him to behave badly in return. As Hays translates it, “No one can implicate me in ugliness.”
That doesn’t make us immune to harm. Betrayal hurts. Dishonesty can damage a relationship, career, family or future.
What another person cannot decide is who you become in response.
Expect It
My wife, Lisa, will often tell me about frustrating situations she encounters in her work. Many involve people repeating the same behaviour they have demonstrated before.
Last week, I wrote about knowing when to listen instead of immediately trying to solve the problem. I am learning that “Why would you expect anything different?” is rarely the right opening response when someone needs to feel heard.
Listen first.
Only later, when we step back and discuss the pattern, might I ask: “This keeps happening. You know by now that it probably will. Why would you expect anything different?”
That is not the same as saying the behaviour is acceptable.
Expectation is preparation, not approval.
Someone in my life has repeatedly seemed to change, only to return to the same behaviour and break my trust again.
Even when you expect it, it still hurts. You can anticipate the blow and still feel anger, disappointment and a sense of being wronged. Those feelings need to be processed, not denied.
Then you have to decide what happens next.
Sometimes the answer is to remove the person from your life. When that isn’t possible, you can limit the interaction and stop extending trust that hasn’t been earned.
Taking the high road doesn’t require leaving the door open for someone to keep taking advantage of you.
Turn the Lens Around
After thinking about the person, another question occurred to me:
What if they feel exactly the same way about me?
What if, in the story they tell themselves, I am the person who keeps doing the wrong thing?
That doesn’t mean both versions are equally accurate or that facts no longer matter. But it does require me to examine my own conduct as honestly as I examine theirs.
Am I communicating clearly and honestly?
Am I doing what I said I would do?
Am I treating them the way I want to be treated?
I may never change their perception or behaviour. I can make sure my own actions withstand the same scrutiny I apply to theirs.
When someone repeatedly wrongs us, it can be tempting to hope they eventually get what’s coming to them. Sometimes we call it Karma. Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t.
It’s not for me to decide.
Become the Rock
Elsewhere in Meditations (4.49), Marcus tells himself to become “like the rock that the waves keep crashing over.”
The waves don’t stop coming. The rock becomes less easily moved by them.
That doesn’t mean becoming emotionless or passive. Being calm and steady doesn’t mean tolerating whatever someone chooses to do. It means refusing to let each wave take you somewhere you don’t want to go.
That’s why the reminders are on my wrist.
II.I reminds me what to expect from the world.
Strength, courage and wisdom remind me how I want to meet it.
The waves will keep coming. How I meet the next one is still mine to decide.
One Action
Decide Before It Happens
Choose one person or situation whose pattern repeatedly frustrates, disappoints or catches you off guard.
While you are calm, answer three questions:
- What behaviour can I realistically expect?
- What boundary or preparation does that require?
- How do I want to act when it happens again?
The goal is not to assume the worst or excuse the behaviour. It’s to stop improvising at the height of the emotion.
Expect the pattern. Decide your response before you need it.
Reboot - Health & Longevity
Protect Your Ability
There is one person whose patterns and capacity you are responsible for changing: yours.
Three friends of mine, all slightly older than I am, used to take morning walks together. Two of them still do. The third was sidelined by an injury.
Their route includes uneven ground, and he no longer feels comfortable returning. He has also stopped playing pickleball, which he enjoyed before the injury.
His concern is understandable. An injury can change your confidence as much as your body. The fear of falling or getting hurt again can make avoidance feel like the safest choice.
But the less you ask your body to navigate uneven ground, change direction, regain balance and produce strength, the less prepared it becomes to do those things.
The ability you stop using becomes easier to lose.
Why Stability Matters
Between 20 and 30 per cent of older Canadians experience at least one fall each year. The consequences become increasingly serious with age.
In a five-year cohort of hip-fracture patients, roughly one in five died within a year.
That doesn’t mean the fracture alone caused every death. Age, frailty and underlying health all contribute. It does show how consequential a fall and the decline that can follow may be.
The encouraging part is that this risk is not entirely fixed.
A Cochrane review of 59 randomised trials involving nearly 13,000 adults over 60 found that exercise programs reduced the rate of falls by 23 per cent. The strongest evidence supported balance and functional exercises, often combined with resistance training.
Walking, cycling and strength training are all valuable, but they develop different capabilities.
A stationary bike may help rebuild tolerable movement, confidence and conditioning after an injury. It won’t, by itself, restore the ability to react to a bad step, stabilize on uneven ground or change direction quickly.
Grip strength is sometimes promoted as a longevity intervention. It is better understood as a simple marker of broader strength and function: stronger grip is associated with lower all-cause mortality, but stronger hands alone have not been shown to extend life. The practical value is easier to see. If you lose your footing on the stairs, the strength to catch the railing and support yourself may save you.
But the goal is not merely stronger hands. It is a body capable of responding when something unexpected happens.
Rebuild From Where You Are
My advice to my friend was not to go straight back to rough terrain or a pickleball court and hope for the best.
Start with what you can safely do.
That might mean a stationary bike to restore movement and conditioning, followed by controlled treadmill walking. From there, add appropriately scaled strength and balance work, then gradually return to outdoor terrain and the activities you want your body to keep doing.
The exact progression depends on the injury and should be guided by an appropriate professional when necessary. The principle is what matters:
Do not let a setback become surrender.
Your body will not preserve an ability simply because you used to have it. You preserve it by continuing to practice it at a level you can handle.
If your current level has changed, meet yourself there.
Dial it back.
But don't give it up.
Inspirational Quote
“What goes too long unchanged destroys itself. The forest is forever because it dies and dies and so lives.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin
We can stop waiting for another person to change while continuing to renew ourselves.
Readers Corner
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Until next week,
Kevin
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