When Winston Churchill met his cabinet on May 13, 1940, he said, “I have nothing more to offer than blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
At that moment, England was waging a war against Nazi Germany, and Churchill had become Prime Minister three days earlier.
What Churchill did with these words was to set the expectations for the next years. He did not make a bold promise or tell the people or cabinet that everything would be fine.
In stark contrast to what we are used to hear now, he told the truth and did not raise any hopes.
England together with the allies came victorious out of the war. Whatever sentiments we may have about Churchill or weather, we agree or not with his political affiliation, we can agree that his oratory was second to none.
Taking on monumental task requires concentration, focus and determination. It requires us to raise the bar and then pass it.
Often, people fail because of this four-syllable word, EX-PEC-TA-TION.
Our expectation to people and events and our perception of the same has much to do with our success and happiness. This applies to all are of our lives, private and public.
Our expectations
Ex-pec-ta-tion is a strong believe that something will happen or be the case in the future.
When our expectations are not met, we become disappointed, angry, or frustrated. When our expectations are met, we become happy or satisfied.
Therefore, the key to our happiness is to control our expectations. Do not confuse this with lowering the bar, to a accept mediocrity or not caring whether your children do well at school or not.
On the contrary, controlling our expectations means carefully setting the bar where it is challenging but achievable. This applies to all aspects of life, to ourselves and others.
When we accept the fact that a government job is not to make us millionaires but to gradually improve the life of the general public, we can adjust our expectations and more readily come to terms with political events around us.
When people start a new business, too often the expectations are to make enough money in a short time to retire and live happily ever after. This rarely happens, but on average people must work harder, longer hours, in their own business while doing a regular job for others.
Retirement is not accomplished in a day or a year. It takes your whole working life, usually over thirty years of work, to accomplish successful retirement.
These are only three examples of over expectations. Instead, we should set goals in all areas of our lives. We must write down specific goals, challenging but achievable.
Each goal must be measurable and with a clear timeline. That is when we will start and when it should be accomplished.
Then, we must attach an action plan to each goal. If we do not have a plan on how we will achieve them, we will not.
The fact is that only a small percentage of people set goals for themselves.
Many people, when asked, will answer in the affirmative, but their goals are only vague ideas since they are not in writing, without a date or an action plan.
Even though we do establish goals and write down action plans, we will confront the reality that not all our goals are achieved. People fail, and we do, too.
Perception
There are infinite reasons why we fail to meet our goals, but the question is what we do when that happens. This brings us to the second word, perception.
PER-CEP-TION is the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.
How we perceive events in our lives greatly affects how we react to those same events.
An event can enlist neutral-, negative- or positive reaction from us and therefore may have neutral-, negative-, or positive impact on our future. It is incumbent upon us to reduce or eliminate as we can any negative impact events have on us.
We all know examples where the same event was perceived very differently by different people although it impacted them in the exact same way.
Two students flunk on an examination, one sees it as an utter failure, quits school and find a manual work for the rest of his life.
The other takes it as a challenge, a sign he did not study hard enough, retakes the exam, passes, and become a doctor.
The first one might be a better student and better apt to be a doctor, but how he perceived failing the examination marks the rest of his life.
I have two friends who failed to be drafted into professional sports due to injuries they had during their last season at college.
One never accepted this, and regretted for not becoming a millionaire sport star while the other is currently running his own, successful mentoring business.
The latter took the setback from his injury as a lesson in how to adapt to a different situation and uses it in his work every day.
Psychology has shown how our emotions can change our perception.
Reacting with sadness, anger or happiness to an event may alter its impact on our lives.
For us to take control and manage our perception, we must be able to step back, leave our emotions at side and look at events in our lives with level-headed rational.
Failing an examination, breaking up in a relationship, not getting or losing a job, or having a setback in our business are all events that enlist in us negative emotions.
Being able to let our emotions subside and then take a second look at these kinds of events will allow us to change the impact they have on our lives.
One critical element is what our expectations were toward the examination, the relationship, the job, and our business. This brings us the whole circle.
What am I saying?
Expectations and perceptions are interconnected. Our expectation towards an event affects our perception of this same event.
When we internalize the perception, it will influence our expectations toward the next event, and so on.
When we set realistic goals and therefore have rational expectations toward an event or process, we are managing our future perception of the outcome of this same event or process.
To be successful we must take control of these two words. We can do it in six small steps: Set realistic goals, create sensible expectations, write an action plan to reach the goal, monitor our progress, valuate the outcome and repeat.
In my subsequent write-ups, I will talk about each of these steps in detail.
I use it in Personal Finances every day to help people take control of their finances, eliminate debts, build savings and equity, and prepare for their retirement.
But this same process applies everywhere in our lives, private and public.
Mr. Thorgeirsson, a SCHOLARMEDIA.AFRICA Columnist based in Puerto Rico-USA, is a coach in Personal Finance. He has MBA in Finance and Marketing from Inter Americana University, Puerto Rico. His contact: fflpr2019@gmail.com
