#1581 - What Do Your Expectations Say About You?

We had a meetup recently which many of you attended Thank you so much for coming and we were talking about setting goals for 2024 . Anytime we talk about setting goals , we talk about self-belief and self-worth , because it's really hard to set goals effectively if you don't know where you are on the drive to five .

And somebody said how do you determine where you actually are ? How do you figure out if you're a one out of 10 for confidence , or a five out of 10 or a six out of 10 ? How do you figure it out ? And Alan had a couple answers . And then I said to Alan live .

I said I don't know if this is gonna land , I don't know if there'll be any truth to this , but it might be something worth exploring . I have noticed that let's just use me . If we were just gonna use me as a case study , I probably should believe in myself more than I do . That was definitely the case . In the beginning .

I was low on the drive to five . I had very low self-worth and I had very low self-belief . But one commonality that would happen for me is I would go do something I didn't believe I could do and then I would say these six words to Alan after . That went better than I expected , Alan , I counted them . That's why I had a positive for you .

You probably are lower than you should be on the drive to five , so you probably believe in

yourself at a level two and it should be higher . If you do something and say , wow , that went way worse than I thought , you might have a delusional level of self-belief , not delusional from a negative perspective . Maybe you're just over . I think we're all delusional , I really do .

I think delusional-ly high or delusional-ly low , 100% , and all I mean by delusional is it's just not serving us as accurately as it could . I'm not making that wrong at all , because I was definitely low . So that's my thesis for this episode . I wanna have a conversation about it . Well , let's do this . So when I first met , you .

Emilia and I have something we're playing called the Distortion Game , where anytime I think she's inaccurate I'm allowed to call it out , and vice versa , when our families say something that's inaccurate , we call it out for each other , because we're so in love with our families that sometimes they can . Their narratives will get on us .

So remember the story you tell yourself and the truth are not always the same . That's what this is . If the story I've told myself is I can do a marathon without training , then I'm delusional , I'm distorted until I do it . It's just theory versus practice . In theory I believed I could do a marathon . In practice it was way harder than I expected .

But the half marathon was easier than I expected . So it's just expectations meets reality . That's all this is . And expectations are based on a script . I was thinking about this earlier because I never bring up I don't wanna say never , I don't bring up the computer engineering thing that often , but I think there's something really cool in there .

When I was in computer engineering school we

would code and there's something called machine language and essentially the computer that you're on or the phone that you're on , there's a narrative . There's a script , and it's code that you compile , to do these actions . So when I hit the K button , the K button does a certain action . So if K button is hit , then pop open the screen .

The point is , human beings are the same way . We all have these scripts . So , kevin , if hungry , call Domino's , it's playful and it's joking , but it's true . That's your wiring , that's a belief system .

So all we're really talking about here is and to this person , a client of mine , bonnie , she reached out and had this question in the monthly meetup and she wouldn't mind me sharing that publicly . But she basically said how do you know ? And the answer is you check it up against reality , you theorize , you hypothesize , you hippopotamize and then you go practice .

So I believe that I'm a capable speaker . Okay , go give a speech . Ooh , not as good as I thought , kev , I don't believe I'm a capable speaker . Go give a speech . Oh , all right , I can do this . Better than expected , that's better than expected and that's all it is .

So the best way to figure out where you are on the drive to five , whether you're over or under , and everyone is over or under and it swings too . There are times when I went from over to all the way under . You know , the post marathon for me was hard because it was wait a minute . Am I less capable ? Where else am I less capable than I think ?

You know that self-doubt gets you and it's like okay , just because you couldn't do that doesn't mean you're delusional anywhere else . So the whole goal , I think , is to think as accurately as possible . That's not a sexy thing , but I think it's really important because you're probably more capable than you think in most things .

But I think that all of us are a little arrogant in some areas . So if you think your relationship is gonna flourish no matter what you do , you are in serious trouble and you need humility . If you think your career is gonna flourish , no matter what , you need humility .

If you think you're incapable of having a great relationship , you probably need confidence because you probably can . You know it's possible , it's doable , you got this and so the right . And this is why coaching is so difficult , because if you believe in yourself too much , I'm gonna have to seemingly take wind out of your sales .

If you believe in yourself too little , I love coaching those people because it's easy for me to help people believe in themselves more . It's very hard for me to get someone to realize they're arrogant or delusional , at least over over the draft of five .

So the question for everybody is do things typically go better than you expect when you have the courage to try them , or do they typically go worse than you expect ? On one end , you build confidence , you go holy crap , what else can I do ? On the other end , you get humble pie and you go .

Hmm , I think I need to work on my speaking abilities , or I need to maybe train some cardio , add some cardio into my regimen , and both are useful . That's the cool part about taking action is , whether

you're over or under , it always undistorts your reality , and hopefully it doesn't do it so devastatingly that it actually crushes your self-esteem and self-worth and your self-belief rather than build it up . And I think that's probably the the place we could go now .

Often , every book you read changes you , but if you don't go out and test where you are , it's really hard . Remember in was this middle school or high school ? Remember the Pacer test ?

The beeps get faster and faster and faster and if you don't make it to the end

before the beep , you get kicked out . And you know whoever makes it the most rounds , whatever it was , it was never me . I never made it the most rounds . But if you did that for the first time and you said , my goodness , that went better than expected , then you went and said you know what ? That went better than expected , let me , let me try running .

I actually enjoyed running . I feel like I could get some pleasure out of this . Then you go run for a year but you don't go do the Pacer test again . You don't really know where you stand yeah you probably got better .

So if you were to say , well , I'm gonna , hopefully I can get the same level I got last year , you're probably gonna be pleasantly surprised because you're probably gonna do better . But if you don't take that action , you don't actually get to level set yourself repeatedly .

I think that's a huge , a huge reason why we have to remind ourselves that action is important regardless of outcome , because it creates lessons that we can then shift outcomes with in the future the problem is good . I was gonna say where did you want to go ? You said you wanted to .

Yeah , 2024 , so 2023 was boundaries . 2024 , I think , is accuracy , setting goals in an accurate manner , with the understanding that I can grow into these goals . I would rather grow into a goal than have a goal that seems too big , that crushes me , I think that's so . That is more clear to me now than it's ever been , than it's ever , ever , ever been .

lately on this because I used to be in the camp of Aim for the Moonland amongst the stars way back , and now I've been understanding the self-worth detriment of that and we talked recently on an episode about how to build self-worth . So I won't reiterate .

But people I think that do have really high self-belief , they end up setting higher goals and unfortunately they end up with a lot more humble pie and failure , so it kinda can hurt their self-worth . And so I'm experimenting this year with setting more achievable goals and I'll give you an example . So I was gonna talk about this later .

But we have something called the Dreamliner that you can see on camera . Dreamliner , shout out to the products team . Lizzie is the leader of the products team shout out and we created it's achieved your dreams 90 days at a time . It's a physical . There's a hardcover , one on Amazon , and there's a softcover .

I recommend the softcover because the hardcover has a three-week lead time . We'll put the link in the show notes . But really , what the Dreamliner is , rather than what it sounds like , which is a cruise , it's this idea of breaking down huge goals into simple daily habits and it takes you through a whole process .

So I won't go in depth with that , but you can click the link in the show notes to get your Dreamliner and it explains exactly how to use it . Achieve your dreams 90 days at a time very cool .

So when I was doing this earlier because I got this last night and I wanna use this every single day from now on I was setting my goals and one of my goals it's health goal , wealth goal , love goal , and my wealth goal is I have this metric called leaderboard and it's just a number that represents all my clients and all my team members , so everyone on the

ILO team and everyone on my client roster . I'm considering myself a leader and I'm leading those people towards their goals and dreams . And my goal for the end of 2024 , I put for 80 , and right now I'm at 41, . So that means I need 39 more team members and or clients . And then , when I broke it into quarterly goals , I divided it by four .

40 divided by four is 10 , and I was like , listen , it's January 12th , am I gonna get 10 new team members ? Slash clients ? And then there was this really cool moment for me Kev , do I even want

that ? Is that even what's best ? And I had this moment of you know what . Nope , I went back , I set it to 60 , which means 19 more , and I divide that by four , and now that means five . I could get five new clients slash team members in Q1 , but the old me would have shot for 10 , and then maybe even gotten it or not .

Either you don't get it and it crushes my self-worth , or you do get it and then you can't handle it , which crushes my self-worth . And by can't handle it I mean can't handle it without burning down several times and disappointing everyone and hurting people's feelings and that kind of stuff .

So I'm now understanding that self-belief can be detrimental to self-worth and they're super connected . So and the last piece I'll share is I think all of us .

There's no more important thing in the world than self-belief and self-worth , in my honest opinion , and I think leadership , in a nutshell , really just comes down to helping other people build self-belief and build self-worth , and you can't do that unless you set the right size goals and take action , to the point of this episode , and then obviously , we already talked

about how to build self-worth . So , but at the end of the day , if you're delusional on either end of the drive to five , you're gonna have a really hard time building self-belief and self-worth and not constantly self-sabotaging .

I said , yeah , I saw an ad for something , or I saw a post that was supposed to be inspirational and motivational , and it said something along the lines of making $100,000 a year is not hard . All you need to do is make $273.90 per day . So let's say you have a course that's $27.39 , just gotta sell 10 of them a day .

That sounds very empowering like 10 a day . Okay , I mean , you know that's reasonable 10 a day . But then when you 10 a month is hard you internalize that all you have to do

or it's easy to sell no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no , no .

So that would be my next level . Nugget , be very careful with the adjectives you choose to internalize , because they're probably affecting you more than you realize .

He said we have helped hundreds of thousands of people , but we also haven't helped everybody , so it just doesn't work for everybody . Some people are upset , they want the money back , and I gained a new respect for that person because yeah , it's truthful . It's truthful . So that's a little tangent .

If you are looking for other human beings who are into growth , who want to talk about ego , who want to talk about vulnerability , you just want to find your community . You want to find the place where you feel like you fit in . Please join our private Facebook group . Next Elvenation Link will be in the show notes , as always .

That is how this was designed . That is why this was designed that way because I was sick and tired of watching people's self-belief and self-worth get crushed , in large part because on social media , everyone's making everything look easier than it really is , and in the real world it actually takes consistency and improvement and Dreamlining .

It takes Dreamlining essentially , and no , it is not a cruise that we are taking you on .

As always , we love you , we appreciate you , grateful for each and every one of you , and at NLU , we do not have fans , we have family . We will talk to you all tomorrow .