Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Letting Go of All Expectations

I came to understand that unhappiness is mainly due to our expectations not being met. That's an important aspect of customer service in business: under-promise and over-deliver to keep customers happy.  If I order a book online and expect to receive it in two days and it takes four, I'm aggravated.  But if it was supposed to take ten days and I get in in only four days, I'm delighted it came so early.  It's all a matter of setting the right expectations.

One thing I learned years ago from famous motivational speaker Dr. Wayne Dyer is to let go of the results.  Do what you have to do, offer what you have to offer, be the best you can be, and detach yourself from the outcome.  In other words, let go of your ego.  Sounds simple, but it's not an easy thing to do.

We all want to feel appreciated. We all need validation.  We crave for someone to recognize and appreciate our talents, our efforts, our investment.  To keep giving the best we have without expecting anything in return is the hardest thing to do, but it's the key to happiness and living a fulfilling life.

So, should you just keep doing the same thing, even after getting no result?  Absolutely not.  It would be foolish to do so.

Sometimes it's good to stop and reassess our goals, to take an objective look at what we've done so far, and analyze why it may not have brought the results we wanted.  Time to try something different, to be creative.  Most of the time, we instinctively know what went wrong, but we're not always ready to put in the time and effort it would take to make it better.  Is your goal important enough to justify the effort?  Is it worth it?  Only you have the answer to that.  Sometimes all we have to do is readjust our expectations and be more realistic in our goals, and keep trying.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

So instead of me expecting to be a superstar, I should settle for just being a star? :)

Great post, Annie. I LOVE the Validation video :)

Anonymous said...

Great blog and very motivational Annie...:)

But Kurt, you're already a star!!!

Karen Jones Gowen said...

So much truth in this post! So is the idea of under promising and over delivering a business practice? Crazy, I never knew that, but it makes sense!

Annie McMahon said...

Kurt, just be the best you can be and everything else will take care of itself.

Thanks, Tania! :)

Karen, it's one of the main things we learned in our customer service training. It does make sense, not only in business, but in every relationship as well.

Anonymous said...

Awwww, thank you Tania <3

I will try, Annie :)

Post a Comment