Happy Sunday Everyone:
I was meeting with a good friend of mine that I don’t get to see very often. He’s a balance of a friend and mentor. He recently retired after a successful career in commercial real estate. He shifted the conversation toward me, my work, and what I was doing. I’ll not get into all the details here but after asking a ton of questions and giving me some advice, he also suggested a book titled “the big leap”. Anyone that I respect/admire tells me to read a book, i read the book. I would say the primary focus of “the big leap” is getting through the upper limit issues of self-questioning/doubt/sabotage. As we push our personal upper limits, how we break through to the next level vs. getting in our own way and some of the tactics to allow that to happen. One part of the book talks about mindset, meditation, and a mantra. The mantra is “I expand every day in abundance, success, and love as I inspire others to do the same”. I understand some people reading this might think “soft”, I would disagree. I think for all of us, staying on track in an easy environment is one thing, staying on track in a challenging environment is another. This isn’t about a quick pep talk, it’s about a consistent reminder of keeping your head where it needs to be in order to grow outside of any comfort zone you may find yourself in.
Completely shifting gears, I mentioned what’s above because I was talking to a different friend about the mantra. This led to a conversation on kids, and she came back w/ something she had just heard (also not new) but it was “unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments”. I think I’ve heard it before but certain times/places, different messages hit you differently. For me, I’m embarrassed as to how many times I’ve had unspoken expectations of others and then resent them for not living up to them. I’m bringing this up now because a consistent theme with my coaching students is toward their teams, and not performing well when things are slower. There is a voice of resentment toward their teams and I’m now questioning how vocal we all are being in resetting expectations verbally vs. mentally with the people we work with. I will use this as our theme tomorrow in our team meeting to review and reestablish expectations (existing and new ones). I absolutely do not resent my team, I love my team, but it’s a very relevant exercise and a timely one to reset expectations and ensure everyone is on the same page with what is expected of them in a changing market. We all need to adapt.
I think we all need to have little alarm bells going off in our heads when we find ourselves resenting anyone we care about and questioning whether there is an unspoken expectation attached to the resentment. If so, either drop the expectation or address it, but don’t let it fester.
Have a great rest of your Sunday!