The Fine Line Between Confidence and Expectation - Ep. 3

Hello, welcome to another No Trade Secrets Debrief Session. A solo reflection where I unpack the lessons, the patterns, and the ideas that have stayed with me from recent conversations and from my own journey. Today, I want to talk about the idea of this fine line between confidence and expectation. Specifically, how do you deeply believe in yourself without becoming emotionally attached to a specific outcome? Ask yourself this question. At what point does confidence quietly become expectation? Now, the distinction between these two is so confidence says I trust myself regardless of the outcome. Expectation says I need a certain outcome in order to feel okay or to feel validated. Expectation opens the door to disappointment. Internally, the dialogue that goes through our head can be if I prepare well, if I work hard, if I do everything right, then this should happen. But reality doesn't work transactionally. We've all been there countless times where you can execute perfectly well and still lose. Sometimes it's timing, sometimes your growth is just gonna take longer, and sometimes you just get rejected anyway. You could you could give the most perfect sales pitch, but your prospect's timing is not right. You could hit a golf ball perfectly flush right online, but it hits a bad bounce and shoots off sideways out of bounds. Expectations has have been something that I've thought a lot about recently on my journey to try and uh become become better at golf. And a common theme across a lot of these reflections are gonna be contrasts and parallels that I draw from golf to business because I've just I'm I see so many. And I've noticed that expectations create pressure, emotional tension, the opportunity for disappointment. Expectations create frustration, and they also create identity attachment, which the consequences performance-wise, can be tighter execution, can be you trying to force outcomes to happen rather than focusing on your process and being loose, can create emotional volatility and can create a huge loss of presence. Now, confidence and expectations, they they can seem like they're almost one in the same sometimes. But removing expectations doesn't mean lowering standards, it doesn't mean caring less, it doesn't mean becoming passive or losing ambition. It simply means releasing your emotional attachment, staying grounded regardless of what outcome happens. And most importantly, I think, is trusting yourself without demanding life to give you this certainty or this thing that you are wanting to happen. In golf, it is very clear that you have to be confident with whatever swing you bring to the golf course that day. And I think golf is really helping me to work on this very thing because I have high ambitions and high hopes, and I expect myself to be better, which is has led to disappointment after a round of golf where I've just had an absolute disaster, and especially when you get up to the ball confident and then you hit a ball out of bounds. That is a really difficult thing to then put the ball down to hit another one or to go to your next shot and be confident again. Now, in business, I I've the parallels that I was able to see from this is things like expecting a client to say yes, expecting a product launch to succeed, expecting recognition when you over-deliver on a project for a client, expecting loyalty from customers or clients. Or the big one is, and something that I've dealt with, and I know that a lot of you ambitious founders out there have probably dealt with too, is expecting growth on a certain timeline. Because when expectations harden, frustration increases, your objectivity decreases, and emotional decision making increases. I think the healthiest confidence should come from your preparation, discipline, your self-trust, and your internal resilience, not from certainty. I think confidence is trusting yourself fully while being able to accept that life owes you nothing because expectation will turn possibility into entitlement. Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't have big goals and we shouldn't pursue excellence because that's just not in our nature, it's not in our DNA. But you can still pursue excellence without emotionally demanding any guarantees. And then I reflected on, I looked at the best leaders or the best performers in different realms and things that I've noticed about them. And I think the best leaders are deeply committed and confident, but surprisingly unattached to outcomes. They care deeply, no doubt about that, but they don't cling to outcomes. So my takeaway from this is finding that balance of not detaching from your goals, but detaching from needing your goals to be met to validate your identity. So the goal is not to care less, the goal is to stop needing things to unfold in a certain way in order to feel like you're succeeding. So let's go and be confident in our process, in our direction, in ourselves, and know that by being prepared and by doing the work that we do every single day in pursuing whatever you are pursuing out there, but not being attached to the outcome or the timeline.