Expectations by Leslie Fieger

I'll let you in on a little secret...life delivers pretty much what you expect it will. If you want to have success in life, you must train yourself to expect success.

The English word expect is actually a contraction of 2 Latin roots "ex" and "spect" and its literal meaning is "to out-picture". When you look at the world, you do not perceive what is actually there, you see what your mind expects to see. What does your mind expect to see? What it has been trained to see. The world, as you see and experience it, is just your personal internal reality picture out-pictured or expected. Your reality is first pre-conceived or visualized inside your mind. Your mind then projects that internal image onto the world and that internal picture thus becomes your external reality. What you have in life is based on your expectations.

Your expectations are, in turn, built upon your beliefs... what you believe you could have, or what you believe you should have, or what you believe you deserve to have. Where do you get those beliefs about your possibilities, potentials, limitations and deservingness? Mostly, you inherit them. You just take them on, assume them without examining them for veracity or usefulness.

If you ask most people "why do you believe such and such?" Most will answer, "because it is true." No matter what rationalizations or intellectual convolutions are brought to bear to attempt to prove how or why something is true, in the end it is really no different than the childish refrain, "Why?" — " Because." Only when you are able to honestly answer, "I believe in such and such because it serves me to believe in such and such," will you be in control of your destiny and success.

Take a moment and check in with your self to ask these simple questions:

• Do you believe it is possible for you to achieve a large degree of success?
   
• Do you believe that you deserve to have a large degree of success?
   
• Do you believe that the world is set up to support your success?
   
• Do you believe that your success will come easily and naturally?
   
• Do you believe that success is your birthright or something to be earned?

Now ask yourself:

• Why do I hold those beliefs? How did I come by them?
   
• Do those beliefs serve me in any way? How?
   
• What personal expectations have come out of those beliefs?

From the moment we arrive in this world, we are trained to expect certain things or trained to expect for things to be a certain way. Our culture, our personal experiences, our parents, our education, our peers all serve to train us to have certain expectations in life. And, for the most part, these expectations are self-fulfilling prophecies. We expect something; it shows up; we then say, "see, it was true." We forget the fact that it is only true because we believed it to be true and then expected it to be true. We ignore the fact that if we held different beliefs and expectations, the truth would be different.

Now you might say in response to the above, "I did not expect my life to turn out this way or I did not expect for the world to be this way, it just is."

To which I will reply, "What exactly were you expecting?" I am willing to bet that you have pretty much the results that you were expecting to have; and that if you critically and honestly examine your core beliefs, you will understand why you were expecting exactly what you have.

If you desire to have a meaningful and measurable amount of success in life, you are going to have to train your mind to expect success; not hope for; not wish for; but fully expect success.

To do that training, you are going to need to provide new information to your mind so that it can be convinced to take on different beliefs. You will need to undertake a program to consciously brainwash yourself. Opt out of the culture of mediocrity and opt into the culture of success. Read success literature. Hang around successful people. Affirm your right to success. Do the things that have been proven to work. Stop doing the things that have been proven, by your own experience, to not work. Break your addiction to mediocrity or failure. Get addicted to success.