Positive Expectations!

Despite my warning the past couple of days about expectations for OTHERS, and unrealistic expectations because we don’t have enough information and think it through, expectations may be the number one factor in our success.  What kind of expectations?

Positive expectations of the only thing we can control – our own performance.  We must have high expectations for ourselves, because we will never outperform our own expectations.  If we say things like – “I can’t”, or “I’ll get by”, or “I’m a middle of the pack kind of guy, and I’ll never be a high performer”, then that is all we will be.  

If we say to ourselves, “I will find way to win (accomplish X, be X, etc.)”, or “I’ll do what is necessary to win”, or “Despite what they say and my apparent limitations, I will stay with this and make adjustments until I win”, then it will happen.

Self expectation is what you believe about yourself, and what you believe is what will come true.

What do you expect from yourself?

False Expectations

Expecting something that is overly optimistic or unrealistic is also a recipe for disappointment and sorrow.

How do we avoid having unrealistic expectations?  Learn as much as we can about the factors, people, history, possibilities and probabilities. Then think it through objectively. An expectation is a guess about what we think will happen in the future coupled with hope for what we want to happen.  If we have too much hope and not enough information for an informed guess, we can pin our future on an unrealistic expectation.

Do you know enough to make a reasonable expectation?

My final thoughts on expectations tomorrow.

Expectations of others

I want to start this week talking about expectations.  They are very important in our lives.  

Human beings are the only animals that can envision a future, and from this we create hope, and optimism, and plans for our lives.

Positive expectation is very important to be a high performance person.  But expecting a lot from others is a recipe for disappointment and resentment.

Have you been expecting much from others only to be let down?  Of course.  We all have.  This is not to say that we should never expect much from others.  But if our success depends on the high performance of others, eventually we’ll find it was mistake for us to have relied on it.  We must expect that some people will let us down no matter what they say at the outset, and factor this into our plans.

More on expectations tomorrow…

The weaknesses you need to fix

If a weakness prevents your strengths from advancing you forward, you need to fix it.  

If it doesn’t, you don’t have to fix it.

Does that make sense?

Going for it!

Why not?  Why not now, and why not you?

You can.

Time to tell the world you’re coming for it!

Born to be Great

You weren’t put here to just be good.  You were made to be great!

What are you or can you be great at?

Reasons for NOT succeeding

It’s easy to come up with reasons to succeed at something.  We all have reasons we’d like to do better.  So why don’t we?

It’s because of…wait for it….US!  You have reasons NOT to succeed.  Likely you just don’t see yourself as “the kind of person who succeeds”.  You say “I don’t deserve it”, “I’m not smart enough, good enough, talented enough, or deserving enough”.  Or maybe you say to yourself “This happened to me so I can’t”, as if you are damaged goods.

The bad news is you are stopping you.  The good news is, you are the answer.

Isn’t that right?

Cheese is milk's great leap toward immortality

What will you leave behind when you are gone?

Conflict cannot continue without your participation

Think about it.  What continual debate, feud, or controversy persist in your life?

What if you just let it go?

Who is your competition?

If we compare ourselves to others, we’ll never be happy because someone will always be smarter than us, better looking than us, thinner than us, and have more money than us.

If we aren’t competitive at all, we won’t try, and that will keep us at the bottom.

Instead, let us be our own competition.  All we have to do is commit to being a better version of who we were yesterday.  If we can continually improve and feel forward motion in our lives, we feel we are making progress.

Just beat yesterday.