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Brian talks about a quote he saw while driving around town.

Transcription

Expect nothing, appreciate everything.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I saw this quote, when I was driving down the street. There’s a local, I believe it’s an insurance company. Now I got to look it up, I apologize to them for not remembering who they are, where they have the Wendy’s marquee signs.

They switch the letters around to put up interesting sayings. And this isn’t the first one that I’ve written down, I may have even done an episode on this on these guys before because they have interesting quotes.

This is another one that is very interesting to me because I agree with the general spirit of it. But I disagree with the exact nature of it. Okay, and I’ll get into it in a second.

So the first half of this is expect nothing.

And that is the part that I have a little bit of issue with.

Here’s what I mean, in English. I’m quite certain that I’ve seen this in other languages where there are different words, for very different things. But in English, we tend to use a lot of the same words for all the same thing, but for very different things.

Expectation is one of those words that we use to explain a whole lot of different things. And I’m going to talk about two of them right now.

First, there’s very much a difference in the human psyche. When you’re talking about any emotional expectation, versus an almost factual expectation. I heard this the other day, this analogy and let me try and use it here and see if it fits, I’m thinking of it as we’re sitting here.

If you turn on a light, and you’ve been in the room a million times, you know, the electricity is on because other lights in the house are on. But you go in this particular room, you turn the switch on, you expect the light to turn on, it’s not an emotional expectation, you expect it.

If everything’s working properly, the light will turn off. And if the bulb has burned out, whether you know it or if you don’t know it, or if something if a mouse chew through the wiring or something it won’t turn on.

The expectation doesn’t do anything different because you have a very factual it’s a very straightforward expectation. It’s just direct.

When you get emotional about your expectations, I mean, even the emotional, the term emotion, and emotional have been twisted quite a lot through the years.

When I’m saying emotional, I’m talking negative, emotional. So it means you put your self-worth and you’re very being into the idea of what happens in life.

That type of emotional expectation where if something doesn’t happen the way you want, you’re crushed.

As opposed to just saying, this is the way it’s going to be this way I expect it to happen. And I’m moving forward under that expectation.

The emotional expectation and the way I’m describing that type of emotional expectation, I think is one of the most damaging things to people’s lives. Because they expect something not based on reality, but based on this false emotional reality that we create on the inside.

When you do that, you can see that happen over and over and over again with people’s lives who get their hopes up about something get all wound up about something and they build up this almost this intensity of I’m not sure if I can think of the word but its entitlement in a sense.

There’s an entitlement that comes with that type of desire, that type of expectation and that sense, expecting nothing, I think is the right thing.

That’s the right answer for that but also, all the greatest things in life come from proper expectation.

If you don’t expect the plane to go up in the air, and land properly, like it’s done 1,000 times before. It’ll most likely do every time even if you flew a plane from now until the end of your life, and you’re on a plane for every second.

More than likely statistically showing you can expect that plane to go up and land properly. But if you don’t have that factual expectation, and you get caught up in the, in the emotion, the opposite end of emotions.

If you’ll never do anything in life, if you don’t expect the right thing, if you expect that plane to crash, even though all the facts say that it probably won’t. If you expect that plane to crash, it’s going to keep you from doing the wrong thing.

So we no matter what you can’t help from having expectations, if you don’t have the right expectation, it’s more of whether you have a good expectation or a bad expectation.

Expectations are just a part of life you have to have, you have to expect that your house is still going to be there. When you open your eyes in the morning.

It’s not even something you even think about.

It’s an automatic thing, expectation is part of the process, you have to expect certain things. And the people who really have amazing things happen in their life, you’ll see that they set things up to expect it that way. And by expecting it allowed them to go beyond their comfort zone.

Beyond the normal, everyone that’s ever built a business expected it to function properly.

Now, that doesn’t mean it will, it doesn’t mean it did everything they wanted it to but they expected good results, otherwise they wouldn’t have done it. And that type of expectation is absolutely necessary.

So we use the same word for almost two completely different things. So in that sense from that quote, expect nothing I disagree. Expect everything.

It was how I would change that quote, expect anything is really what it should be expect anything. expect anything can happen. Expect World War Three can happen.

Expected a wonderful outcome for your life can happen. Expect anything is possible and can be possible expect anything and appreciate everything.

I don’t think I can come off with anything wrong with that.

I think appreciating everything is an absolute necessity to having a good life.

The book, Victor Frankel’s Man’s Search for Meaning. I think that’s kind of a huge point of that book is you appreciate is a guy that went through the concentration camps and everything and came out appreciating life more after having his wife and children killed by the Nazis and him.

A hair’s away from being killed by them but a couple of times in that story of his life. Incredible stuff so I don’t get well deeper today, a little out there.

Hopefully it’s helpful to you.

I’ve got a book, 9 ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business is not as deep but it does kind of take you outside of the realm of your business. If you own a business or if you’re an executive in a business.

It’d be helpful to you, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com or purchase it wherever books are sold.

That’s all I have for tonight. You have a good one went back tomorrow.

So get out there and let the magic to happen.