If you recall, we last discussed the first step to igniting your potential, which was to let go of your old stories and experiences. Today we’ll discuss the second step, evaluating your expectations.
We all have expectations. We expect how Mondays will feel, how a meeting is going to go with a particular person, how the season will affect our business, we even begin to expect certain illnesses around certain times of the year.
We do this because this is how the subconscious mind is programmed to work. Your subconscious mind is programmed to keep you safe (comfortable) so it looks for the familiar. What we look for we tend to find. But when we look for and find the familiar, we can’t see anything new, including opportunities.
This works against us because even though the familiar circumstances we are unconsciously seeking keep us comfortable, they also keep us stuck in those circumstances. This affects our relationships negatively as we can get stuck seeing only the negative aspects about a person because it’s familiar. We miss the opportunity to see the positive in them and then commend them for it.
It has a negative effect on your self-concept as you continue to focus only on the aspects about yourself that you may not like. As you move into your fullest potential and begin to Lead from Power you must begin to look for your strengths and cultivate them. This feels threatening to your subconscious mind and it will attempt, relentlessly, to scare you out of taking risks, taking new actions, and stretching yourself, simply because it’s uncomfortable.
Living larger and being more empowered requires us to become someone we have never been before…more of who we are meant to be. And in order to do that, we must see and experience ourselves differently, rather than the way we always have. This creates fear in our subconscious because we don’t know what to expect, so we expect the worst.
The Expectation Challenge:
In order to shift your expectations you must become aware of them. So over the next 7 days or more keep a notebook with you to discover what your expectations are and write them down as they appear to you. This may be somewhat of a challenge, because we think our expectations are based on truth. In actuality our expectations are based on limiting beliefs…and beliefs can be changed. To discover some of your expectations, self awareness is key, so ask yourself these two questions:
What do I dread (doing, being, having)? What puts me into a bad mood just thinking about it?
The answers to these question will shed some light on what you are expecting.
The reason why we dread anything is because we don’t expect it to be a good experience. But what if you could begin to change the experience by changing your expectations of it? You can! Just by being open to the possibility of a different kind of experience. What if Monday’s could be your most productive day? Expect it. What if you could plan for an easier, friendlier meeting with that person you dread? You can. Setting up positive expectations shifts your energy. The same energy that everyone is unconsciously reacting to. By having positive expectations you have positive energy that affect others more positively.
This week become aware of your expectations and then shift them by visualizing something better.
The truth is that: We don’t get what we want, we get what we expect.
Blessings,
Michelle