When you're in the middle of the work, set your expectations high. It's unlikely your performance will exceed the standard you set for yourself. High expectations encourage you to keep reaching and fulfill your potential.
Once the work is done, release yourself from your expectations. The fastest way to ruin a good outcome is to tell yourself that it's not good enough. Your expectations dictate your happiness more than your results.
Expectations can be helpful as a motivator and unhelpful as a measuring stick. Now that the work is done you can rest easy knowing you tried your best. You've already won.
Most of us are experts at avoiding criticism. It doesn’t feel good to fail or to be judged publicly, so we tend to avoid situations where that might happen. And that’s the biggest reason why you slip into motion rather than taking action: you want to delay failure.
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If you want to predict where you’ll end up in life, all you have to do is follow the curve of tiny gains or tiny losses, and see how your daily choices will compound ten or twenty years down the line. Are you spending less than you earn each month? Are you making it into the gym each week? Are you reading books and learning something new each day? Tiny battles like these are the ones that will define your future self.
