Hey, welcome to the live at full podcast. I am Richard. I am in the studio today, hanging out episode one Oh two. If you've listened to us before, go share us with your friends and family. Leave us a five star review on Apple, Spotify, Google, Amazon music, wherever you're listening to us, cause we would appreciate it. We'll love you forever. We'll help you live it full today. I want to talk about expectations. I shared something on Facebook the other day and often the podcast correlates with what I share on social media. Um, mainly because it helps draw people to the podcast, but also it's because it's what's on my mind for that week. And I think it's important to share the things that are going on. Um, because I think everybody relates and if you don't share your story, like I always say, no one else will. But so it was last week, we had one of those beautiful crisp spring mornings in Texas, cause you never know if it's going to be a hundred degrees or 60 in West Texas in spring. Um, we've had both already, but it was one of those nice kind of crisp. do on the ground spring mornings. And we're driving down our road. We have a long driveway to our house. It's, I don't know, thousand feet with a circle drive back to the highway. And so it's a little bit of ways. It's a caliche tan beige, you know, you can imagine a dirt road. And in the distance, I saw something that didn't belong there, right? It was something that was out of the ordinary, something I would have, I'm pretty aware. Of my surroundings, I try to be what you would consider situationally aware. I'm a hunter. I notice things. I may not be able to find the ketchup bottle in the fridge, but I can spot a deer at three or 400 yards in a field and try to show people that'll never see it. It was out of the ordinary. It was black, maybe tannish brown. My first thought was it's a tarantula. We see those, especially after rains, um, early in the morning, you will see them pretty frequently crossing the roads around here, but it's still something that's not super, super seen. Most people probably don't in town. Um, you see them at the golf course some, but me being the science nerd that I am. For those of you that don't know me, I'm my background, although business-wise I don't use it, is in biology and chemistry. I love those type of things, snakes, frogs, birds. I'm, you know, took it all in college and I still love wildlife. And so I tell Mac who is also with me in that, you know, he's had pet lizards and he's got a ball python right now and he wants a tarantula and a scorpion and that's where mama draws the line. Although she's very awesome. Not drawing it on snakes. So I appreciate that because that is something that as a child I was not able to have because my mother would not have allowed it But so I think it's a tarantula and we're driving closer I tell mac to Get ready because I want to show him something and surprise him And so he gets a little amped up as little boys do and I drive pretty slow Sometimes it's my morning. It's how I reflect on the way out of the drive, even though it's not always tranquil taking kids to school because Well, they don't always want to go to school and they want to watch Peppa Pig on the way and they're kind of fighting with each other and you know, that's life. But when I leave my gate, the day starts. And so I use that, you know, 700 foot outside of our circle drive, thousand feet in there to reflect on what I'm going to do in the day sometimes. But so I'm driving slow Mac jumps out of a seat because that's what he's going to do. He unbuckles and gets up there and he's like in my lap almost because he's excited. We get a little bit closer and I still can't quite make it out and I've got pretty good eyesight. It's LASIK enhanced. Um, last I checked, I was still like 2015 in both eyes. I see pretty well. We get a little bit closer, a little bit closer. I opened my door to look because it's just a black blob in the road. It hadn't moved, which I've seen tarantulas hold their ground, stand their ground rear up as a defense mechanism. You know, when encountering something larger than them. I've also seen them run away. So I thought, well, it wouldn't be abnormal for either to happen. Get a little bit closer, we get up there, open the door, look out. It's a pile of dog shit. It's not a way to put it. Mac was disappointed. And so I started thinking about that. I didn't in the moment because in the moment I'm just like, sorry, Bob, it's it's dog poop. He was disappointed, but why was he disappointed? Because I set an expectation that something good was going to happen. Had I not said anything, there would have been no expectation of any surprise, anything exciting, anything out of the ordinary. Right. But I set an expectation for him that was not met. So I wanted to talk today about expectations. When I posted this on Facebook, one of our followers, friends, FOTOG extraordinaire commented on there. something that I found very profound. And she said, and I hadn't heard this before, so I think it's, it's, it makes total sense though. She said, expectations are like premeditated resentments. Now this is somebody who may have gone through some, I'm just assuming, may have gone through some life training, some counseling training on some different things, um, through church, just guessing. I know she's done some of it, but that right there sounds like clinical psychology to me. But it's so true. When we have expectations, whether they are real, whether they are rational or not, when things don't happen the way we think they should, we get upset. So how often are we setting ourselves up for failure by having expectations that aren't realistic? Now, some of you were going to come at me and be like, Richard, you always say to set goals high because if you set goals higher than everybody else and you still don't get there. you're still better off than the people who'd never tried. And I agree with that. However, we have to understand the expectations we put on ourselves. They probably do play a role in our mental health when we don't hit them in being disappointed in being upset. And so sometimes our expectations aren't real. We, we think something and I, and I want to go into the premeditated resentment because I was listening to a pastor the other day talk about that. He said, do you already have resentment with a spouse for something they haven't even done yet? Because you just assume they're going to do it or they're going to not do something. Think about that for a second. Have you ever held a grudge against a spouse or a friend or a brother or sister or parent for something they haven't done yet because you had expectations that they even didn't have a chance to fulfill. premeditated resentments based on past experience. Someone let me down so my expectations are they're gonna let me down again. But is it valid? I talk a lot on the podcast about being proactive versus reacting, setting expectations versus not setting expectations for other people. And I think that in business and in life, setting expectations is a huge thing. We have to tell employees, what do we expect of you? Because if they don't do something and they didn't have the same expectations or the same understanding of those expectations, then they can never meet them for you, right? We put expectations on others and on ourselves. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing. But what I'm saying is Matt got upset over the dog poop, not because there was dog poop up in the road, but because I gave him an expectation that something else was going to happen. And it didn't. And so he's five. He's going to be irrational at times. He got a little upset over it. I'm almost 40. Sometimes I get a little upset over things and be a little irrational over things that don't really matter, but my expectations weren't met. I mean, to me, it's the same thing in business. When you tell somebody I'm going to call you back in 48 hours and you don't, guess what they're going to call you, whether you have an answer or not. They're going to call you and you're going to say, I'm sorry, I hadn't called you, you know, and you go through this spill, but you, you've, you've said expectations that weren't met. I think it's one of the biggest causes of resentment in relationships. When expectations aren't met. And are they always reasonable, rational, logical? Maybe not because we haven't talked about them. And it goes back to that clear communication thing. If we have expectations for our, in our relationships, whether it's with an employee, an employer, a son, daughter, whatever relationship that is husband, wife, if we set expectations that are not clear, then they're always going to fail. They're never going to meet those. If you don't give them a clear path to success on that. We also have to be careful about not using past results to have premeditated resentment based on expectations that weren't met previously. And I mean, it could be simple as I told you to take out the trash. You didn't take it out when I wanted you to. And so now I have an expectation that you're not going to take it out when I asked you to again. And so we go into the conversation already resentful. and that doesn't work. Not in good strong healthy relationships. Sometimes we take the wall, just do it myself, mentality, because I don't expect that you will. We will never have growth. You will not ever help other people achieve what they want to achieve. When you go in with expectations like that. So I think it's a there's some duality to this. There's there's a bunch of different sides that you can look at expectations. I think expectations are a good thing. When they're clearly communicated. If I had said Mac, I think there's something in the road. Maybe it's dog poop. Maybe it's a tarantula. I don't know. We would be excited over the trying to figure out the difference. But when I gave him something that was unknown. I let him down. And maybe that's stupid. Maybe it's silly. Maybe it's something that that's not relatable to other people. But to me, it made so much sense that I set an expectation just by what I said that wasn't met. When I could have said something slightly different that would have tempered those expectations that maybe this isn't going to happen the way I think it's going to happen, or maybe I know there's a choice or there's a chance that this isn't right. Maybe dad isn't seeing a tarantula. Maybe he's seeing dog poop, but how often in life do we as adults think that we're getting a tarantula, which may not be the exciting thing to you, but think we're getting one thing and we show up and it's dog poop. It's not the actual event. It's not the actual, I know this happened. It's the expectation of the out. When we expect something, it hurts a lot more when it doesn't happen. And so I don't know what the right answer is on this. Should we have expectations of others? Probably not everybody because people will let you down inherently. But in your relationships with your family, employees and friends. Clear expectations, clear communication on them, knowing what is expected will remove so much of your issues. I have seen bosses get mad at employees for things they didn't know they were doing wrong because nobody ever told them they were doing it wrong. They were never given the expectation that they should do X, Y, or Z. But instead of addressing it, I've seen those same bosses get mad, resentful. They start looking for the next employee because I think that one's not going to work out when all it would have taken was a conversation about clear expectations. And how we say those things are important because if I if I were to if we if we take the same analogy with the tarantula on the dog poop If I tell that employee, there's one option, I've got a surprise for you or this or that, but we don't give them the option, the potential that, well, if this doesn't happen, we find dog poop. If this does happen, we might have a surprise. If we don't set those expectations upfront, if we don't understand what is expected of us as an employee and as an employer, there's always going to be those resentment. And then the next time you're gonna be like, well, they just didn't do it right. So I'm going to do it. And you run into these premeditated resentments based on things that haven't even happened yet. So to wrap this up, clear expectations for everyone you have relationships with, just change the game. Openly communicate. You tell a kid to clean their room. they better understand that expectation has to be met and not you getting upset when it's not done. And some of that comes down to specifics too. I think what we say is so important if we say, hey, I need you to clean your room. What parameters are on that? How do I clean it? Do I throw everything under the bed? Do you just want everything on the floor? Did you want me to vacuum? Did you want me to dust baseboards? Did you want it done by seven o'clock or eight o'clock? No, a lot of times we say just go clean your room. You didn't clean your room, so now you were facing consequences of that. I can tell you right now as a parent, if I go into that situation and say clean your room, I'm gonna get varying results based on the person. My eldest probably wouldn't clean it quite as in depth as my youngest, or my second or third. They're different. But if I say you have to do this, I need you to have all of your laundry in the hamper, in the utility room by seven o'clock. That's a different conversation. That's clear expectations of what I need you to do. There's nothing ambiguous. It is what it is. And so as we have these conversations in our relationships, it's the same thing. It's, it's so important to give very clear This is what I expect and put timeframes on it. Put parameters on it. It's the same thing as setting smart goals or setting goals that have measurable, attainable things. If we don't do that in our relationships when we set expectations, people are never gonna meet them, ever. So if you liked this podcast, leave us a review, share us on social media. I hope you have a great day and I hope you continue to live it full.