Last week, you made a list and did a little personal check-in. Hopefully you assessed your progress year-to-date to find out how you stack up with where you thought you’d be.
Now, onward and upward as we March forward and take action on your highest value priorities in order to continue making progress.
I remind you quite often that “what you focus on you get more of” and it’s so true. Which is why I directed your attention back to the commitments you made at the start of the year.
This week, we’ll shift to another powerful statement that is “inspect what you expect” and that means the more you review something, the more likely it is to happen.
Now, you might jump to an example of someone who is supposed to do something (checking on your children’s homework or a team member’s task). But, there’s one person we can’t forget… YOU. Of course, the most important person to “inspect what you expect” is from yourself.
It’s the hardest to take time to do but the easiest to have control over the outcome. Most people tend to look outward at all the other things not being done well or being critical of situations outside their responsibility. However, they forget to check in and see how they are doing themselves.
Here’s the good news: this should be a positive habit that you find rewarding.
So, to know what to inspect you first have to ask yourself what do you expect.
I’d hope top on the list is a positive attitude, feelings of gratitude, general happiness, and good energy. You could even have a board with emoji faces to rate your mood each night.
It’s important to expect yourself to remain calm and composed under pressure even when you might be running late or feeling stressed. If you are present and in the moment, you can take a breath and remind yourself it’s all going to be okay.
Far too many people let themselves become a domino of emotion and when something doesn’t go well it tumbles into everything else, turning a small error into a larger catastrophe.
This happens with stress too. It all compounds. And that’s the worst thing to let happen. You are running late so you move faster then you get sloppy then you make mistakes then you get stressed again then you get frustrated which leads to more mistakes and on and on. Remind yourself, it’s all going to be fine.
Here’s the lesson: get clear on what you expect from yourself.
You want to practice healthy living, do you expect that? If you do, you’ll think twice about what you eat or when you eat it, about going for a walk instead of watching TV, or reading a book instead of scrolling facebook.
You’ve got to have success guidelines for yourself to help you win and improve. Start by setting more explicit expectations and then check on them routinely.
The reality is most people don’t underperform their own expectations – it’s that their expectations were too low in the first place.
Most people give themselves way too much room to be lazy, be unhappy, be slow, be less diligent than they know they should. They make it ‘okay’ to be mediocre because they don’t want the pressure of having expectations that are too high.
You want a better life – start by expecting more out of it – and therefore out of you.
How can you raise the bar right now? In what ways can you expect more out of yourself?
And, conversely, in what areas might you be too hard on yourself?
Part of this setting expectations is knowing where you need to dial it up and where you should give yourself more room. Focus less on that which you can’t control so you have more energy to focus on what you can control.
Prioritize yourself, define your expectations, and check-in on your progress – that’s how you keep the momentum building all year long.
We’ve got big topics to tackle next week, including one of my favorites. Stay tuned.
