The power of low expectations part 2: Simple tips for less stress and more fun

Owning a business has many benefits. It gives you more control over your time. It gives you certain freedoms that employees will never have. It gives you the potential to make a LOT more money. And you get to make all the decisions.

The possibilities are limitless.

However, those benefits have a cost, which is often higher than what you’re led to believe on social media.

Am I saying it’s not worth it to grow a business?

Hell no! It’s worth it. Even if you don’t achieve your ideal lifestyle, building a business challenges you, forces you to learn valuable skills, and builds character like nothing else.

However, if your expectations are too high, you’ll either burn out or give up trying to reach them.

As I’ve said many times before, business is a mental game. If you can win that game, you can win at business. If you lose that game, it doesn’t matter how much money you make; you will lose.

In this episode, I discuss a critical part of winning that game—managing your expectations. In the last episode, I discussed why high expectations are a recipe for constant stress and dissatisfaction and why intentionally lowering your expectations will reduce stress and help you be more effective and joyful.

In this episode, I talk about how.

Podcast Transcript

I’d hate to lower your expectations, but that is the episode’s goal. Welcome to another episode of the Handyman Startup podcast. My name is Dan Perry, and today, I’m going to talk about managing your expectations. In the last podcast, we talked about why and the power of low expectations. Today, I want to talk a little bit about how to do that.

So back in 2010, way back in 2010, this is 14, almost 15 years ago, after another boring day at work, my friend recommended a book called The 4-Hour Work Week. At the time, I was living in a three-bedroom home that I had purchased a year or two earlier. I lived about two blocks from my office, and I hated my job. I was so disappointed with what a 9:00 to 5:00 turned out to be. I mostly sat at a desk all day in a big open room with five other desks and five other engineers working, and then my boss was right across the room from me. And there were some good things about my job. I mean, I got to do some cool stuff with engineering, and it leveraged my skills.

I was pretty good at it, but I just felt stifled. So, I read that book my friend recommended to me, and I remember being unable to put it down. Right after that first chapter, it hit a nerve. I sat on the couch and read it until my eyes turned red. Once I couldn’t read anymore, I put it down, picked it up again the next day, and I think it took me about two days to read that entire book. And this was a pretty big turning point in my life. I didn’t know that at the time, but it was because ever since that moment, I couldn’t be satisfied living an ordinary, boring nine-to-five lifestyle. I knew something else was possible. I had a clear definition of success, and I wanted it now. I didn’t quit my job right away because I needed the money and didn’t know what to do, but that book amplified my distaste for my job. It was like sticking a salty knife into an already festering wound. It made the experience of working my job worse. And as a result, I eventually quit my job.

After a while, I started getting worked up and depressed and had some health issues. I started a handyman business a few months after I quit my job. Since then, I’ve grown that handyman business and done well there. I created a YouTube channel, this podcast, my blog, online courses, and all these wonderful things that bring me income and give me more freedom than most people have. I’ve also helped many people in the process, which is awesome. I regularly get emails from people thanking me, which is awesome.

And on the one hand, I’m thankful for that. On the other hand, I think that content, specifically the four-hour workweek and a lot of the content you find on YouTube or Facebook about growing a business, I think it can be toxic. The reason is that it anchors your expectations so high, as I discussed in the last episode. If you haven’t listened to that, I recommend listening to that first before listening to this episode. Now, for some people like me, I couldn’t sleep at night living a mediocre life after realizing what was possible because I fell for the arrival fallacy that once I got that, then I would be happy.

The need it created to reach a certain level quickly caused me a lot of stress and disappointment. I beat myself up when I didn’t achieve amazing things. I lost sleep over silly things that don’t matter. I was imprisoned by the idea that it was impossible to be happy without passive income, and I sacrificed a lot of time to get there. I eventually succeeded. I’ve done some cool stuff, made great money, helped a lot of people, as I mentioned. If I had to do it all again, I might not change what I did, but I would definitely like to adjust my expectations in the process. And my perspective and my mindset. I could have enjoyed the journey much more, had less stress, and who knows, I maybe would have done even better.

So with this episode, I want to share a few ways that you can manage your own expectations. So hopefully, you can enjoy the process of growing your business more and not get so caught up beating yourself up if you’re not making progress as fast as you’d like or if things aren’t happening as quickly as you’d like.

Before we do that, let’s just briefly cover what I covered in the last episode. I talked about the power of low expectations. I talked about why high expectations are the perfect recipe for disappointment, stress, giving up, and really failing to enjoy the wins along the journey.

I talked about two major factors that amplify this, which are social media plus human desire. We always want more, no matter how good we have it. And then social media anchors our expectations even higher than they would already at an unrealistic level. We see amazing results without the work. It creates unrealistic expectations. But low expectations are actually more effective in many ways in many areas of life. Because if you have low expectations and you exceed them, you get to delight in small wins. It makes it a little more fun. It makes it easier to accept failures and hard work. It makes setbacks not as devastating and less stressful because you’re expecting them. It makes you willing to put in effort for less, which usually leads to better outcomes. In some cases, I wouldn’t say always putting in more effort for less makes sense, especially when it comes to pricing. I want to be very clear about that. You guys know my mindset on pricing your services high enough to make a profit.

Anyway, low expectations keep you in the game for long enough for small wins to compound. A good example of this is Warren Buffett. Interesting fact: he made 99% of his wealth after the age of 65. He’s like 92 now, I think. But that’s because of compounding. Small wins compounding year after year after year. He hasn’t outperformed everybody every single year. He’s just been playing so damn long that he has amassed so much wealth that he is the sixth wealthiest person in the world. So, ultimately, low expectations can be very helpful. And it’s all about being realistic in the short term and optimistic for the long term. Working hard consistently. It’s not about throwing your hands up and giving up. It’s about embracing that work as part of life, no matter how well-off you are. So do the work and don’t expect the world. Don’t expect it to be easy. Don’t expect to get to some point where you’ll be endlessly happy all the time. As much as it is hard to do that because it’s so ingrained in human nature, let’s talk about some tips to help with that a little bit.

In this episode, I’m going to explore some ideas for managing your expectations. This is probably more of an art than a science. This probably isn’t going to apply to everybody. Some people probably need to increase their expectations. I think this podcast is more created for those who are wired similar to me, where you want it all now. You tend to be impatient. You tend to stress yourself out trying to strive for these unattainable ideal outcomes. So, hopefully, in this process, you can start appreciating more of what you have right now. You can embrace the struggle along the way. And maybe even go further than you would have otherwise.

And the way that I see this, there are two parts to this equation. First is being optimistic about the long term and realistic about your short term results. So first, you have to have a tasty enough carrot to pursue to keep you motivated enough to continue to put in the work because it’s difficult to invest effort into something if you’re not optimistic about the outcome.

Now, Warren Buffett, for example, again, I talked about him building 99 % of his wealth after the age of 65. He was still very wealthy even when he was 30. I believe that when adjusted for inflation, he had $10 million when he was 30.

However, I want to bring up Warren Buffet again because he had a plan. He didn’t just take super high-risk bets consistently and keep winning. He took very low-risk bets. He practiced value investing, which he learned from Benjamin Graham. So he would find companies that were underpriced, buy them, and then hold them for a long period of time. And then, he leveraged the psychology of the market and how it acts irrationally, how people buy when they should be selling, and how people sell when they should buy. And he stuck to that process, mostly for the last 60 or, yeah, over 60 years now. And that’s how he amassed his wealth. But He had that vision. He had that carrot that he was going after, which was very clear, and he was playing the long game. And I’m not really saying that Warren Buffet is somebody that we should really model our lives after. I don’t know how happy he was. I don’t know how balanced his life was.

I don’t know any of the details of his relationships. I’ve heard that his relationship with his wife wasn’t great for many years, but I really don’t know. But the point is that we want to have a goal that’s clear and compelling to us, so it gets us moving every day and taking those actions, something that we want and we’re willing to wait for. Even if we have to wait 5, 10, 25 years to get there, we’re willing to work consistently to do it.

When you start thinking like this, it’s usually a change in mindset when you acknowledge that getting to the goals that you want, whether it’s a really successful business or better relationships, or just a certain type of lifestyle that you’re going after, recognizing that it’s probably not going to happen overnight. It might not even happen next year. It might take 5 or 10 years to get there. When you realize that, and you acknowledge it, and you accept it, but yet you’re still willing to pursue that goal, that’s a really good sign that that’s something that you want. So just going through this exercise by itself is a really good way to filter your goals and decide how important really is this specific thing to me.

And then, how does knowing that it will take a lot longer than I expect change how I’m going to pursue it day to day and my priorities right now? And for me, it makes me immediately sit back and say, Okay, well, I might as well try to have some fun. I might as well enjoy the process as much as I can and appreciate where I’m at now because I don’t really want to white-knuckle it all the way to the goal, especially if it’s going to take a while.

Another helpful thing to consider when setting these long-term goals is to ask yourself, are the odds stacked in your favor? Because if you don’t think that you have a high chance of getting there with patience and consistency, it’s going to kill your motivation. It’s going to be hard to show up continuously to do the work to get there. So you can ask yourself questions like, Am I leveraging my strengths? Even if I don’t quite reach my ideal outcome, will I be in a better situation than I am now? That I’ll be satisfied?

And the truth is, you don’t always know for sure, you don’t always know the ideal path to take in life. It’s impossible to. You’re always dealing with some level of uncertainty. But the last thing you want that uncertainty to do is stop you from taking some action and just keep you in paralysis by analysis.

So another helpful question here, if you’re not certain, is to ask yourself, Will I gain valuable assets in the process, even if I fail? So are you going to gain knowledge? Are you going to gain skills? Are you going to gain relationships that you can then lean on to move your life forward if whatever you try doesn’t work out over time and you realize that you need to change your strategy, which you often will.

So the first part is you have to have that tasty enough carrot to pursue and to be able to have that long-term vision to put in the effort and put in the work without expecting anything right away. Because we tend to prioritize fast results, so that’s the first part. Have a tasty enough carrot. Set your sights on a vision that is compelling to you, that you’re willing to work a long time toward, and that even if you fail, you’re going to gain something of value in the process.

Now, fortunately, if your goal is to start a profitable handyman business, that is a very low-risk goal. It’s one of those things that if you do apply consistent effort and focus on, it’s really hard to fail, and you can continue to grow it as big as you’d like over time.

And that leads to the second part of this equation, which is lowering your expectations. Now, really, what I’m after here isn’t for you to have low expectations or for me to have to have low expectations, but to have realistic expectations.

Unfortunately, in the environment we live in and the information that we’re exposed to because of social media and because of all the content we have access to and all these super successful people that we see all the time, lowering your expectations is usually something that requires conscious effort if you’re going to get to the point of having realistic expectations.

So how do we do that?

Okay, let’s talk about some quick methods. I’ll go through these relatively quickly.

The first one is to celebrate effort and process versus results in the short term. So, a lot of people get too focused on results immediately. How much money am I making? Oh, am I making any money? I just started this, but I’m not making any money. When am I going to make money? Really, at the beginning of anything, whether you’re starting to build muscle, or if you’re starting to lose weight, or if you’re starting to grow a business, you’re probably going to put in a significant amount of work before you notice any results at all. Or you might notice some results really quickly, and then that quickly plateaus, and now it’s like, Okay, it’s really going to take a long time before you get to the real result that you want. So that’s why it’s important to celebrate and measure effort and process versus results. So one example of this for effort. Okay, let’s say you’re focused on effort. You might measure how many focused hours you worked each week. Actually write it down every Every time you work an hour a week, celebrate that. That’s great. Maybe your goal is 10 hours a week. Awesome. If you can hit 10 hours a week toward that goal, great. And then focusing on process.

So were you doing things that move the needle? Are you avoiding something? Is there something you know you should do, but you’re not doing for some reason, and you’re not doing it because it will slow you down in the short term, but you know that if you do it, it will speed you up in the long term? Do you have any of those things?

I know it’s a complicated question there, but are you avoiding something is the bottom line. A third question you can ask yourself to make sure you’re measuring the process and following a good process that’s going to Work is asking, “if I continue this recipe for 1-10 years, will I see the progress that I want? Will I end up at the outcome that I want? Or are there shifts to how I’m doing things that I need to make in order to get there?”

And again, even with this process, don’t expect too much. Don’t expect too much of yourself. Don’t expect your process to be perfect. Don’t expect to work consistently. They have a consistent output of time every single week. That’s not realistic, either. But it’s still good to celebrate the effort, measure the effort, celebrate the process, and measure the process versus focusing on the results you’re ultimately trying to get, especially in the beginning.

Now, of course, at some point, you do need to measure your results, judge your results, and make sure that you’re doing the right things and you’re not wasting your time. You need to do things long enough to truly know if it’s the right thing before you pivot. A lot of times, people give up on something. They try it one time, and then they give up. Oh, that didn’t work. It’s like, Okay, did you truly give it enough time to get the results? And then another thing is, don’t keep doing something that isn’t working and will never work. So there’s the balance there, and it’s a little more challenging. It’s a very big challenge for a lot of people, which is why it’s good to have a mentor who can help you decide if your efforts are paying off and if they’re going to get you to your goal. And they can say, “Hey, this is normal. Yeah, just keep going.”

You’re actually seeing really good results when you might think that they’re bad. So, a good mentor is extremely valuable for that process. So again, focus on measuring effort and process versus the results, especially in the short term.

All right, moving on to the second tip for lowering your expectations, which is treating social media like medicine or potentially even like a toxic substance. Because social media can either be poison or therapeutic, depending on the dose, your mindset, and what you combine it with. If you take too much of it, it’s going to be toxic. If you don’t take enough of it, you might miss too many opportunities and fall behind. So there’s this balance that you might have to strike. I don’t think you need social media, although it can be great for inspiration, getting ideas, finding information, things like that. But it’s terrible for inflating your expectations, stoking desire and dissatisfaction with your life because you’ve seen all these other people who are killing it and doing way better than you. So you get FOMO, and you have to go do something else. It takes you off of your path and onto some other path, even though that other path isn’t necessarily going to make you any happier. It just looks more compelling because of the person selling it.

So here’s how I use social media currently.

I mostly avoid it. I try to avoid it as much as possible. Every once in a while, I’ll use it for inspiration, but in small doses and on rare occasions. I’ll be very specific about my goal and about the information I’m looking for. And usually, I try to be prepared to process what I see. So I try to think of it like, Okay, that looks really compelling. This is probably only part of the story. So I think of that. Or I think of that having what they have won’t necessarily make me any happier. Or I think, Sure, I want that thing that they have, but do I want all the things that came with it? Do I want all the things that it took to get there? And a lot of times, the answer to that question is no.

So again, treat social media like either a toxic substance or like medicine, where you need to hit it in the right dose at the right frequency, otherwise it’s going to be toxic. The third tip I have for lowering your expectations is to embrace FOMO, or the fear of missing out. And how do you do this?

First, you accept that you will miss out. You will make mistakes, and you will lose money as a result, and you’ll lose time as a result. You will miss out on potentially life-changing experiences almost every day. Today, there are infinite things you will miss out on regardless of how much you try not to. But you’ll miss out on even more if you let FOMO distract you and pull you in 20 directions. Because not only are you going to miss out on things because there are simply too many things to do, but you’re also going to miss out on making progress toward any meaningful goal in your life. So by trying not to miss out, you miss out on even more. And it’s really good to acknowledge that the perfect strategy is impossible. You are guaranteed to choose a suboptimal path. There are probably a thousand different businesses that you could start that would get faster, easier, and better results than the one you will choose, even if you spend 10 years trying to find the perfect business. And then, along your journey, you’re going to see others succeeding faster than you. So the best thing you can do is try to be okay with that.

Expect it. Expect a little bit of that disappointment along the way. Expect to feel that sense of missing out or that you’re doing something wrong. Everything sucks part of the time, whether it’s working in a job or trying to go after a business. So embrace FOMO. It will always be there. It’s never going away. However, you can limit it by avoiding certain influences that I already spoke about. But do your best to accept it and just move on.

The next thing to lower expectations is when you are trying something new. As soon as you’re trying something new, what if you assume something won’t work the first few times you try it? How would you approach it differently? If you knew it wouldn’t work out the first few times you tried it, maybe that was a new pricing strategy. Maybe it was a new marketing strategy, and maybe it was just something completely different. You knew it probably wouldn’t work. You probably wouldn’t get it right the first few times you did it, but eventually, you could figure it out. How would you approach it differently if that was the case? What if you took your current timeline for accomplishing something and then doubled it? Is it still worth doing, or is there a better alternative?

Because the reality is that most things take at least twice as long as you expect them to take. That’s why one of my rules for pricing and quoting jobs is I estimate how long I think it’s going to take, and then I double it, and then I price it based on that, because that’s usually the reality. So when trying something new, assume that it’s going to take longer, assume that it’s not going to work right away, and assume that it might be more difficult than you expected. And if you can, based on those assumptions, assumptions still proceed forward, then that’s great. That means that what you’re trying to do is worth it. If it doesn’t? Okay, if that’s the case, then I shouldn’t do this, then that might be the right decision to not do something. When I look back at starting my handyman business, I had pretty low expectations. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure it could work because I was only 28. I looked like a teenager. Nobody wanted to hire me. My friends didn’t even want to hire me at first.

But I really wanted to make it work, and I just kept trying because I didn’t have a better option. But my expectations were pretty low in terms of how much money I could make and what the situation was going to be like. But because of that, I worked extra hard on my marketing. I worked extra hard to try to provide great service and went above and beyond even what I needed to. But as a result, I started making progress, and then that progress was surprising. I was like, Oh, man, this is great! I’m making pretty good money. Now, had I been exposed to people who started a handyman business and five years later had a million-dollar business, I probably would have killed myself trying to accomplish that goal, thinking that it was just as possible for me to do when maybe it was. But the reality is the person who started that million-dollar business has 20 years of management experience, hiring experience, and business admin experience before they even started their business. So you can see how high and low expectations can totally change your perspective and your results.

Let’s move on to the next thing.

So let’s say when you’re looking at past wins, you look at the past wins that you had in life. One of the worst things that you can have for your mindset is to succeed on your first try with ease. That’ll just wreck you. I always feel so bad for these celebrities who were super famous when they were kids. So they reach this pinnacle of attention and admiration, and they can’t do anything wrong. Everybody loves them. And then later on in their life, nobody cares. And how sad.

Their expectations have been anchored so high based on their past experiences. And now they have to deal with this life of just being a regular person. And it probably went through a lot of emotional distress to accept that fact. So I think one of the worst things that can happen is if you succeed on the first try with ease because you’re not going to appreciate it as much. You’ll think it’s going to be easy to replicate. If it’s in business, you’re probably going to spend all your money, and then you’re going to have to do it again, and it’s not going to be as easy the second time, and it’s going to be harder.

So when you look at past wins – past things that went really well – ask yourself, how did you get lucky? How could things have gone differently or not as good? What things can you identify that if they didn’t exist or you didn’t find them, you wouldn’t have succeeded? Because usually there’s one or two of those elements that if that thing didn’t happen, if you didn’t meet that one person, or if you didn’t see this one piece of content at this right time, then you may not have succeeded, and you wouldn’t have been as lucky as you were. You might not have timed it the right way or something like that. When you look at your past wins, try to look at why maybe you got lucky and why it might have been easier than it should have been for you because of luck so that you’re not anchored to that consistent level of success.

Then, lower your expectations about lowering your expectations. Doing this is not going to make your life easy. I don’t think life is easy for anyone all the time, regardless of how they make it look on social media or how much wealth they have.

Everybody goes through challenges and struggles at times, and no amount of mental tools or anything are going to completely solve those problems, although they can help. Additionally, it’s going to take time and consistency for any of this stuff to actually work and pay off, and you won’t always remember to do it, so be okay with that. And then, even if you accomplish your goals, don’t expect to be endlessly happy or content.

Right now, I’m reminded of an email I recently read from Alex Hormozy, which, at the beginning of the email, says, “When I was 20, I wanted to be a millionaire. Now that I’m a millionaire, I want to be 20.” So, just let that sink in for a minute.

That’s such an interesting mindset. It’s like, what do you have right now that you should probably be appreciating more than you are? And why not just appreciate that now while working toward these other goals that you want?

Now, much of this stuff might sound negative or pessimistic. However, I have a different experience with it, and also my intention with it is not to be negative. Because for me, thinking of this, it gives me permission to enjoy right now instead of delaying my happiness until I achieve some goal that if I’m completely honest with myself, is non-essential.

It helps me enjoy time with my kids right now. It helps me enjoy whatever project I’m working on. It takes the pressure off for certain deadlines that I may have set for myself. And I’m sharing it on this podcast for those of you who have a pretty good situation. Of course, your life is always going to have problems. But, like me, you’re often sucked into the vortex of wanting more right now. And one of your biggest barriers to joy is thinking that you need more to get it.

And again, this isn’t for everybody. I’m not trying to tell people how to live their lives or anything like that. In some cases, if you’re going through real hardship or struggle, I definitely believe that you can improve your life in a long-lasting, meaningful way. And in some cases, making small changes right now can immediately improve your life in the short term and set you on a positive trajectory.

So, to wrap this up, let’s briefly summarize these tips.

• First, go after something you want and in a way where you can win.
• Measure and celebrate effort and process (vs outcomes).
• Treat social media like medicine or, in some cases, a toxic substance.
• Embrace the fear of missing out because it will always be there.
• And then, lower your expectations about the results you’ll get from any of this.

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