181. How to Reduce Your Expectations, Stress, and Workload

Success can lead to joy and happiness and feelings of good things depending on success, needing success, expectations of success can lead to fear, stress, anxiety.

We want to be able to enjoy success for what it is. We tried to make something happen, and it worked out, and that's great. We got to experience some sense of accomplishment, a sense of being able to impact the world or other people, make money, do some sort of talent, skill, whatever it might be. When we start depending on that, though, and we need that, and even more so when we expect that and we will accept nothing less than a lot of the flavor, the joy gets taken out of it. It's that whole thing of an athlete.

If you go up against somebody who's supposed to be at a lower level than you, well, if you beat them, you were supposed to beat them. And if you lose them, well, that just is horrible. And so there's no joy even in winning, even in the excellence. If it's all about the expectation in business, if we have a success and we say, okay, well, if that happened once, we're going to kind of almost negotiate with universe. So that has to happen again.

Otherwise I'm not going to be happy. I don't throw a fit, or I'm going to throw a tantrum, and the universe is going to do what the universe is going to do. And if we're wise, we can be open to something different happening. Maybe something magical happens. Maybe something better than we planned happened, or maybe something happened that wasn't what we wanted, it wasn't what we liked, and it actually put us back a step, or at least it felt that way, but then led to us gaining some sort of insight or making some other type of step towards growth that led us into a better place.

I think of Garth Brooks'song uninsured prayers and the story of a man who runs into his high school sweetheart at a football game later in life and realizes that really she was not the person for him and that his life is better off and that that unanswered prayer was actually a blessing. It's something to consider that if you can have intentions about life, if you can say, okay, here's where I'd like to go, but if I don't get there, I'm not going to freak out. Here's how I want this relationship to work out. But if it doesn't work out the way I'm not going to freak out. I'm going to trust that things are going to be okay.

I'm going to trust the universe. I'm going to trust that there's some sort of benevolent force or karma, something beats my heart without me having to do something. And if it's done that in my case for over 50 years, okay, something's in my favor, there's something good going on. Now, if you also understand the state of the world financially and if you're watching this right now, chances are your financial situation is pretty good. From a world perspective.

It might not be where you want it to be, but there's that ability to say, you know what, things have worked out to a certain degree, maybe not everything. Let me see what's behind this next thing. Let me be curious, as Ted Lasso might say, as opposed to being so certain about something and having that certainty limit my options get to know when you can't control things. There are certain things that you just can't do anything about. And being okay with that and focusing on what you can control or at least have a chance of controlling, is far more effective than focusing on the things we cannot control.

That's why a lot of people, when people start talking about what some will call conspiracy theories or theories about what happens way up here with people that make tons and tons of money and they're playing chess with the world and raw pawns, maybe it's happening, maybe it's not, but you know what? I can't control that. So I'm not saying it's not happening, but at the end of the day, I'm going to focus on what I can control. And then just also remaining grateful, counting your blessings, seeing what's in front of you. Not to say that you should be grateful, but when you focus on what you have, it builds a confidence, it builds a sense of appreciation for what you have, but also an appreciation, an increase in value of how you see yourself and your ability to impact things.

And so when we're in this place of constant expectation, it increases our fear that things aren't going to go the way we expected, which creates stress that things aren't going to go the way we expect them, which creates anxiety about the future, things not going the way we're going to expect them. And that can lead us to overwork, to make poor decisions, to make jumpy decisions, to attack people prematurely if they've not done exactly what we thought they should do, especially in business. I know sometimes when I'm working with somebody and we're working on some sort of collaboration, I can get insecure and get so aware of all the things that I think they're doing wrong because it's not going exactly according to my plan. And yet I have to remember that I chose to partner with this person for some reason. There's something they're bringing to the table and maybe their vision is better.

Maybe what they bring to it is wiser than what I have. And again, if I can trust, not be naive, not say I'm just going to throw it up to fate and hope something happens in my direction, but I can take action, I can make the effort, do the steps that I believe are going to get me to success or whatever my outcome is. But I can be open to something better. I can be open to seeing something turn out in a different way, or even turn out in a way that I didn't want and still say, what can I take from this? How can I keep moving forward overall without getting caught up on any one particular thing?

I hope this serves you. I don't expect that this will help you, but I certainly hope it does. I hope this helps you understand that slight difference between appreciating and enjoying and celebrating things, versus being so demanding of life that nothing has joined it. As always, I look forward to helping you impact more people and make more money in less time. Do what you do best so you can better enjoy your family, your friends and your life.

I'm grateful for you being here listening. I've at times had expectations that I'd have ten bajillion downloads. Got enough downloads. I'm making an impact. I hope this has made an impact for you today.

Thanks.