Lower Your Expectations to

Increase Your Results

Lower your expectations to increase your results.

What?

At first this statement appears to be a contradiction. Haven’t we been told to expect more from ourselves? How are we to get to our goals if we don’t have vision, or hard work, or determination?

And there in lies the collapse.

We have collapsed Expectation with Vision.

I’m not saying lower your vision. I’m not saying you should desire less in your life. I’m not saying decrease your determination.

What I’m pointing to is a problem I see daily in my line of work as a consultant.

I get to consult visionary entrepreneurs who have big goals and even bigger expectations. Because they’re tough graders (it’s what has probably led to much of their success) they want what they want yesterday.

What they expect is that their vision should happen sooner rather than later.

And from this Expectation comes the friction. They will double down their effort and hours. They will increase their budget to get it done. They will push and push, try and try. No one can outwork these determined souls.

This was my M.O. as well. It wasn’t until the experience of my work became heavy and unsustainable… full of pressure and anxiety… frenzied and metaphorically out of breath, that I questioned why I did things they way I did them.

And somewhere near the core of the issue was my own expectations of what I thought should have happened by now but hadn’t.

And the problem with that was that it robbed me of joy and contentment. Which in turn drained my creative energies and blinded me from the vital few actions that produced the most results in my life.

It’s easier to see in other people.

Like the inappropriate parent at the child’s soccer game who yells from the sidelines at their kid because their expectations are impossible. They expect everything to be as they envision it in their head. And when the real world (what’s happen now) doesn’t match up with that expectation they try to force it by yelling and making a scene.

If you’ve ever experienced this in sports as a kid, it’s humiliating, deflating and disempowering.

It’s gross.

And yet, I believe many of us has this same internal yelling at ourselves to get there… produce the result… score the goal. And, I believe we experience the same sense of humiliation, deflating and disempowerment from our own internal parent.

So, if not Expectation, then what? What will get us to our big goals and big vision?

How about expecting progress not perfection. How about focusing on an execution of ideas rather than on winning the game? What if we nurtured our talents and the things we do best, knowing that we have a lifetime to enjoy the journey and to make a difference as we go?

This is the type of result I see many of my clients have as they lower their expectations. They spend less time at work but produce more results than when we started.

How is that possible?

Because they’re nurturing the things that actually produce results. It’s not expectation that produces results. It’s leveraged action inside the things we’re genetically coded for. And when you work inside those strengths you not only feel stronger, happier, lighter… but you also produce a better result.

So moving forward, consider lowering your Expectations while keeping your vision high. Go to work in the same energetic mode you always have, only focused on the journey and without the judgement.

#thescaleparadox

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