“There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”  ~John F. Kennedy~

I was overly ambitious when I set out many months ago with my unplanned desire. I then became overwhelmed and depressed when nothing seemed to be working as I expected it would. I felt as though I had been lied to and bamboozled. Mine wasn’t looking like the thing I had come to expect based what other people had told me.

This is the main reason last week I mentioned letting go of our expectations.

Once we decide what we want to do and make a simple or extremely detailed plan about how we will go about accomplishing it. . .

Wait let me stop right here and ask this because it’s pretty darn important, You are making a plan? Now, nod your head up and down 3 to 4 times. Good. Okay back to it.

Once we decide what we want to do, make our plan, let the expectations go and begin doing the work, we seeing what really happens. It is then that we can pick our expectations up and check them to see if we need to reevaluate the expectations.

This is where coaching with someone who has actually mastered these steps is handy.

When we don’t do this, we are more likely to get caught up in “how things are not showing up according to the expectations we hold” as opposed to taking what is showing up and reevaluating either our expectations or our actions, sometimes both.

That’s what I’m doing, reevaluating both. And just this morning Naomi of IttyBiz.com fame said it in a way that I heard. I’m certain others have pointed it out but I was ready for it to sink in and apply it this time. She said, “ambitious stuff takes a lot of time.”

That’s worth repeating.

“Ambitious stuff takes a lot of time.”

This profound statement is doing one of a few things for and to you as you pursue a dream. It is either stopping you from making the effort, making the effort much more difficult than it need be because you’ve set your expectations wrongly or it will cause you to step back and begin a reevaluation of your plan, actions and expectations.

It is especially helpful to be able to set the right sort of expectation for the plan you have in mind. I’m not just talking optimism either.

This is especially true for a large group of us dealing with other issues popping up constantly, yet still willing to take the leap and start the doing.

It is an ambitious thing we do. It may take us more time. It may require more processing. It may require more and frequent reevaluation. It definitely requires us to be more honest with ourselves.

We are literally screwing up our courage like a tightly wound top and string, then pulling that string, even though we know it’s knotted up and tangled.

There is momentum in the pulling and it keeps us going for a while. But eventually we’ll notice a slow down and finally a stopping and then we are on our side, not spinning, not doing and our expectations are shot to hell.

I believed because it’s not ‘just like we pictured it’ that it couldn’t have counted. Because it did not reach my expectations, that made it no good. I beat myself up. I stayed stopped.

Finally, I put the expectations down and then pulled the string.

I accept that knots may appear. Then again they may not. Either way, I am creating fewer problems for myself, which leaves me more energy to deal with the reality in front of me. I am no longer being caught up in the idea of ‘missed expectation’.

It’s invigorating to be in this sort of space, where thoughts can lead to actions and actions can lead to results.  Where having released our expectations, we are free to adjust our actions or our expectations, accordingly based on actual outcomes.

There may be more about expectations from me later. Right now there is some planning that I need to do, especially since I’m taking my own advice.

If you still don’t know what you want to do, it’s time to delve into 20 Ways to $100 Dollars A Day. It’s one of the few places you’ll get all the details to making for how to do and what to do in the same e-book.

Dream big. Start small. GET CAUGHT THRiViNG!