Subtitle: The Expectation Gap
Introduction
Posted on October 9th, 2025
By Olivia Baker
In psychology, the expectation gap is simply the space between one's expectation of a given outcome and the reality of that outcome. In rare instances, this gap can be a positive space where we are pleasantly surprised by an outcome that was better than what we expected from ourselves. However, most of the time what lies in that gap is disappointment, stress, and unrealized goals. Set expectations too high, and you may feel like a failure when you fall short of them. Set them too low, and you may be protected from the disappointment of failure but experience the different yet equally dissatisfying feeling of unrealized potential.
Ultimately, we are at our happiest and best when our expectations for life match our reality, though making this happen amid a constantly changing outside world and circumstances beyond our control is easier said than done. Nonetheless, we give ourselves the best opportunity to do so when we are able to modulate the one piece that we can control—our internal environments.
This is why I chose Win the Inside Game by Steve Magness for the 25th installment of Runners Who Read! In this book, Magness offers readers an evidence-backed framework to master this mental game and perform best when it matters most in sports and in life. Using a Do-Be-Belong method, Magness encourages us to develop clarity on who we are, what our goals are for our pursuits, and where/how we fit into the bigger picture of life to unlock our greatest performances. As a favorite author of this book club when we read Do Hard Things back in 2022, we will be familiar with his matter-of-fact writing style. It only felt right to bring him back when this book came out just a few months ago. In this age of distraction, anxiety, and perpetual pressure to seek external validation, learning to look inwards and take control of our internal environments will reap immeasurable benefits in performance and in life.
Discussion Questions:
In what areas of life have you experienced an expectation gap? How have you gone about closing that gap?
What are you most looking forward to learning about from this book?
Subtitle: The American Dream Today
Chapters 1 & 2
Posted on October 24, 2025
By Olivia Baker
When you think of the American Dream, what image comes to mind? Is
it the traditional image of a family of four standing behind a white picket
fence in front of a house in the suburbs? Maybe the family has a dog and a nice
car parked in the driveway (and another one in the garage). Perhaps there is an
American flag hanging above the door. If some version of this image comes to
mind, that's not uncommon. Many popular artist depictions of the American
Dream, a term coined by James Truslow Adams near the height of the Great
Depression in 1931, were portrayed in this way as the United States recovered
from the Depression in the 1940s and 50s. However, lost in these images is that
Adams didn't intend for the American Dream to surround around materialistic
things at all. It was never about the house, the car or even the family. As
Magness quotes from historian Sarah Churchwell, "The original 'American Dream'
was not a dream of individual wealth; it was a dream of equality, justice and
democracy for the nation." (pg# 33). Our co-opting of the American Dream is one
way we've gone too far in the direction of basing success purely on
externally visible outcomes.
In many ways across the board in life, we've oriented ourselves
toward outcomes above all else and it has been much to our detriment. A study
titled "A Meta-Analysis of the Dark Side of the American Dream" (by
psychologists Emma Bradshaw, Richard Ryan, and colleagues) that Magness
references in Chapter 2 (pg# 34) found that when individuals' extrinsic aspirations
dominated their intrinsic ones, it was "universally detrimental" to their
well-being. In sports, it has been observed that though kids who associate
success only with external outcomes tend to find such success early on in
sport, but are far more likely to experience burnout later on. In the
workplace, such focus solely on external outputs has been shown to lead to
increased feelings of stress and burnout. In schools, performance orientation
has put pressure on students to pass entrance exams rather than genuinely learn
the material which results in recurring generations of sadder and more anxious
children. When we treat external success as the thing that brings value to our
life, we find ourselves caught in the hamster wheel of striving for external validation
and never feeling like we've got enough.
However, we can remedy this dissonance by decoupling our character
from our results. The outcomes cannot define us. Who we are must be rooted in
something deeper than what we produce. This isn't to suggest that outcomes do
not matter, but they cannot be the end-all-be-all. We have to learn how to
strive for a goal while also being content with what we have on the way. We
must learn to find value in the outcome AND the process. As Magness writes
"What I'm arguing for isn't a complete flip to the other side of winning not
mattering. It's going back to the original definition of the American dream,
one founded on the process of holistically improving…To realize that success is
only as powerful as what you become on the journey toward it." (pg# 44)
Discussion Questions:
- What internal or process goals
do you have as you train for your next competition?
- In which pursuits have you found the journey to be just as valuable as the outcome?
Subtitle: Embracing Life's Complexity
Chapters 3 & 4
Posted on November 7, 2025
By Olivia Baker
Life is messy and we are complex humans. Most of you know me as a talented runner, occasional blogger and avid reader, but I am also a devout Christian, hobby walker, Navy-level swimmer, Formula 1 racing enthusiast, loyal friend, reliable teammate and very many more things to many people depending on who you ask. Everyone reading this carries such complexity as well. However, rather than embrace the complexity in our beings, we tend to either categorize (choose one identity over another) or compartmentalize (keep our identities completely separate based on our situational context) to achieve internal coherence in a given setting.
Categorizing often leads us to overvalue our most likeable or successful identities. As mentioned in the previous blog (The American Dream Today posted on 10/24/2025), idolizing achievement or any narrow identity leads to an emphasis on outcomes and lessened ability to cope with failures. Compartmentalization minimizes us by preventing us from being fully known and loved by those in our circles. It causes us to hide the parts of ourselves that we feel don't fit into a given context in the name of avoiding conflict or keeping peace. In Part 1 of Win the Inside Game, Steve Magness suggests that we can resolve the incoherence brought by the messiness within us by choosing integration.
Integration is about acknowledging the many different identities we hold and seeing how they may complement and enhance each other so we can show up fully and authentically in any setting. It's seeing the power in complexity (pg#100). The sense-making process of figuring it out and sorting through the messiness inside of us can be hard, grueling and look different for each of us.
For me, faith has always played a large role in that process. Something my mom always said to me while growing up is that I know who I am because I know whose I am—the "whose" being God. In my opinion (not Steve's), to take things even deeper, all earthly identities run the risk of failing to meet expectations at some point if what you see as your truth is not rooted in an absolute truth. That being said, though it may be easier to avoid the mess in the short term, research (pg#100) shows that those who take the time to integrate experience higher levels of well-being and resilience in the long term.
Furthermore, once we have sorted ourselves and become comfortable in our own skin, we are then free to create opportunities for others to do the same. When we create safe spaces, there is no need to compartmentalize parts of ourselves. When we are secure enough in ourselves to walk humbly instead of trying to one-up each other with our achievements, the pressure to categorize disappears. The word "sonder" coined by John Koenig in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows describes the profound feeling of realising that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as our own. What if we all walked around with a little more sonder as we all try to figure ourselves out in this life? I think we'd have a lot more grace for one another in the process.
Discussion Questions:
What are some parts of who you are that you feel tempted to categorize? Which parts do you feel the need to compartmentalize in different settings?
How have you learned to embrace your complexity and integrate those things?
Subtitle: How to Lose Well
Chapters 5 & 6
Posted on November 21, 2025
By Olivia Baker
Everyone remembers Michael Jordan as one of, if not the best player in the history of basketball for his run leading the Chicago Bulls to six NBA Championships.But people often forget that he played seven seasons in the NBA with the Bulls before that first title in the 1990-91 season. Muhammed Ali is considered the original Greatest of all Time (G.O.A.T), yet his career record was still 56-5. Serena Williams has 23 grand slams to her name over one of the most dominant careers by a tennis player ever, but still came up one win shy of completing the calendar slam. Many of whom we remember as the biggest winners in all sports faced crushing losses at some point in their careers. What set them apart is that rather than letting loss destroy them, they handled losing in ways that only made them stronger. In part 2 of Win the Inside Game, Steve Magness lays out several steps for how we can process a loss in productive ways.
Allow space to feel sadness after a loss, but don't linger there too long. The immediate aftermath of a loss can be a very sensitive period. Physiologically, adrenaline has a half-life of less than five minutes and tends to leave our bodies quickly. Cortisol has a half-life closer to 90 minutes and stays present in our bodies for much longer (pg#134). The result of this mentally is that the emotions associated with the loss tend to stick around for some time afterwards. If we choose to beat ourselves up, overanalyze the result and dwell in the doom and gloom loop running through our heads, cortisol levels remain high, and we stay in stress-and-protect mode. Instead, the first step to losing well is learning how to let our body release the cortisol and shift over to repair-and-recover mode. Everyone processes differently, but taking the time to decompress is a key to moving forward productively.
Treat failure as feedback, not judgement. Once the emotions fade and the time comes to evaluate our performance, it's important to remember that a loss can give us insight into the preparations, strategy and conditions of a given competition, but cannot dictate who we are or our value as human beings. When we view losing as an indictment of our character, winning becomes a way of maintaining our sense of self (pg# 150). The feedback we receive can no longer be viewed as informative, but is now personal. However, when we can keep a healthy distance between who we are and what we do, failure remains informational and we are free to introspect and learn from what occurred.
Reframe in the context of your story. We are so used to seeing success as a binary—win or lose—but performance can be evaluated in a number of ways. How was your effort? Did you nab a personal best? How did you respond in the hardest moments? To simply throw a performance into a box of wins or loses ignores the nuance in evaluation and sends us back towards stress-and-protect mode. However, if we choose to soberly process and move forward, failure can free us up to own, edit and rewrite our story within the backdrop of the larger journeys we are on (pg#146). We then move from the threat-prevention feedback loop to a mode of learning and growth.
Michael Jordan said at his 2009 Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame induction, "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." Losing, unfortunately is a part of sports and life, but when we learn how to bear defeat without being defeated we can turn those losses into the steps to our next success.
Discussion Questions:
What are your strategies for coping during the sensitive period shortly after a loss?
What lesson have you learned from a loss that directly contributed to some success that you are seeing today?