Obama and Expectations: One Year Later

(high expectations) = BIG disappointment

Years back when I was a professional historian, I would track down people and read letters and reports to them that they had written decades prior. Consistently their reactions were mixed--happy with some aspects and ashamed, even laughing, at other parts in embarrassment. In most instances words don't hold up over the long haul.

I just read the post I wrote one year to the day about President Obama and expectations. I am happy to say I did not find anything to be ashamed of; the facts hold up. If we expect too much from a person (or anything else) we are setting ourselves up to be disappointed.

Read my post on Obama from 20 January 2009 and tell me if I was on the mark.

An Example from Starbucks of How to NOT Get What You Want

 (requests) + (incentives) = results

I was going through my email today and got a request from Starbucks (edited for space considerations):

Dear David,

Thank you for being a Starbucks customer. As a customer, you canprovide a unique perspective on the products we offer. We would like you to participate in a brief survey about your away-from-home preferences for coffee, espresso and tea beverages, last occasion at Starbucks and interest in select special offers from Starbucks.

We know how busy you are, and with that in mind we have structured the survey to take no more than 5 minutes of your time. When you are ready to start, please go to the survey by either clicking on the link or copying and pasting the address into your browser.

Thanks for being a Starbucks customer, and we look forward to serving you in our stores!

Warm regards,

The Beverage Team

Starbucks Coffee Company

What's wrong here? No reward, no incentive for me to comply. Why in the world would I take five minutes of my time to give one of the wealthiest multi-national companies in the world my information with no compensation? For a second I thought they were going to give me a reason (We know how busy you are....) but what was missing was the second half of that sentence (created, obviously, by moi):

and to thank-you for your time and assistance, we will give you a code for a free drink of your choice in any or our stores.

But that carrot was not there so I hit the delete button and moved on. All stick does not work for me, and doesn't for most people.

Want results? Give someone a reason to act. Otherwise, they will probably hit delete too.

Changing Your Mind About Change

Change is really hard. If someone tells you it is not, I suggest you compliment them on the color they are wearing and ask them how work is going. Don’t believe them. Change is really hard.

And happily, my job is to help people move from one state of being to another.--to move from who they are to who they want to be. And in the words of one of my mentors, that process is simple. Not easy, but simple. And accepting that real change--significant transitions--are hard to achieve is many times the first step in the journey.

By acknowledging change is hard, your feeling about the tasks at hand will begin to alter. No need to beat yourself up because you didn’t magically transform in a week, or six weeks, or a year. Recognize that change is made of many steps, pick a discrete step and see what happens. If you complete the task…congrats! Give yourself a reward. And if you don’t, analyze what kept you from following through, learn from the mistakes and do it again. The past is only valuable in that we can learn from our errors and improve our performance.

So what do you want to do? Is it reasonable? Is it measureable? If so, start today!

David Ezell is offering free introductory classes for people who want to transition their relationships, their bodies or their ability to manage depression and anxiety holistically. Just click the link and register, as space is VERY LIMITED.

Paper Work

There is a single phrase that, once I hear it, I know a relationship is doomed.

It has a variety of introductory phrases such as "I don't know what went wrong since we..." or "If you had asked my friends, they all would have said..." But the give away is the phrase itself.

"We looked good on paper."

That is it. Done. The relationship is dead.

I think the reason may be that, once we meet someone and make that initial "aha" connection, we then start thinking about the future. How will my family like him? What will my friends say? What will our kids be like? And slowly we build an imaginary blueprint of who we will be and how it will look. We create a future based on presumptions and assumptions and then build more on top of those. And all this fortune telling makes us slowly begin to think that not only can this work but that it has to work. It looks good on paper.

He has a great job. His teeth are so pretty. His parents love me so much. It looks so good on paper. And the more we say it, the more we try to force that really square peg into a perfectly rounded hole, the more we think anything other than complete happiness equals utter failure.

Don't do this with your relationships. Quit thinking twenty years down the road and imagining baby names. Be in the moment and keep your eyes open for those bright red flags that inevitably will be planted. And each time you see one ask yourself, is this a deal breaker? Is being with him worth putting up with this?

Be realistic. Enjoy yourself. And quit thinking about paper work.

David Ezell will have two speaking engagements this upcoming week! On Monday March 2nd will be No More Disappearing Dates! for Moxie in the City. And Tuesday the 3rd he will be How Can I Control Someone Else? for the Building Better Relationships Meet Up Group.

© David Ezell 2009
All Rights Reserved

Obama and Expectations

(high expectations) = BIG disappointment

I just skimmed the web with the phrase "Obama memorabilia" and was amazed at all the items I saw. Not since FDR have people been so pumped to own a piece of a man and have a stake in his vision.

Congratulations to our new president on this special day! I, like so many of us, look forward to a new positive force in the Oval Office.

I see so much excitement, so much hope in people in a way I do not think I ever have before. And that concerns me a little. I am not trying to be negative and I hope I don't sound that way. But I am concerned that people's expectations--which are very high--are so stellar that they will be impossible to achieve no matter how much good he does in the days, weeks and years to follow.

Many of us are tired. Many of us feel disenfranchised. Many of us are hungry for a new vision. I understand that. But all of us need to be realistic about what one man can do and how quickly he can do it.

Keep your expectations in check over those upcoming days, weeks, months. If expectations are too high, that means you have a long way to fall. As I mentioned in my post "Lose Your Big Stomach in 2 Days!?," what took a while to get in will take a while to get out. And quick fixes come with strings...

Congrats President Obama on this happy day!