This is Why You’re Not Happy – Eye Opening

Summary

• Expectations can either destroy or make your life; happiness can be achieved by wanting less and appreciating what you have.
• Expectations around education are pivotal, where viewing each skill learned as a brick on a bridge towards your goal helps manage disappointment and foster progress.
• People often have a binary view of success or failure, while in reality, progress and skills exist on a continuum, and understanding this can reduce frustration.
• It's important to recognize that education is a series of building blocks, where no single course or mentorship will take you from start to finish, but each contributes to your journey.
• Criticizing previous mentors or courses is counterproductive, as each has likely contributed to your subsequent success, even if you didn't recognize it at the time.
• Spending significant money on education, like $50,000 for a mentoring session or $120,000 for time with Grant Cardone, can still provide value if it brings you closer to your goal, even if the outcome isn't as expected.
• It's common to attribute success to the most recent help received, but it's often an accumulation of past learnings that sets the stage for current triumphs.
• Rather than expecting a completion of goals from each educational investment, consider whether it brings you closer to your goals.
• Shifting expectations to focus on actions and efforts rather than outcomes is a formula for business success, much like prioritizing 'haves' over 'wants' for personal happiness.
• Asking whether expectations are reasonable and if there's room to lower them helps in setting achievable goals without diminishing the drive for excellence.
• Acknowledging that setbacks are often just perceived and that progress is a matter of identifying missing skills can lead to a happier and more productive entrepreneurial journey.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest starting by changing your mindset about success and education. Remember, learning is like adding bricks to a bridge towards your goals. Don't expect one course or mentor to get you all the way there. Instead, ask yourself if you're closer to your goal after each step.

Here's a simple plan to manage your expectations and make progress:

1. Appreciate What You Have: Write down things you're grateful for every day. This can make you happier by focusing on what you have, not what you want.
2. Learn in Increments: When you learn a new skill, like copywriting, look at it as one more brick on your bridge. Even if you aren't a millionaire yet, you're closer to your goal.
3. Avoid Binary Thinking: Stop thinking about success as 'all or nothing.' Instead, consider how far along you are on your bridge. Are you halfway across, or do you need more bricks?
4. Value Each Educational Experience: Don't criticize past mentors or courses. They likely gave you some bricks for your bridge. Honor what each one has taught you.
5. Shift Focus to Actions: Put your energy into your actions and efforts, not just the outcomes. This mindset can bring you closer to business success.
6. Set Achievable Goals: Look at your expectations and see if you can lower them a bit. This doesn't mean you stop striving for greatness, but you set goals that are within reach.
7. View Setbacks as Learning Opportunities: If you face a setback, try to see which skills you're missing. This is progress, not failure.

Remember, being happy and achieving your goals is about building that bridge one brick at a time. Keep learning, keep progressing, and give yourself the grace to see that each step, no matter how small, gets you closer to where you want to be. Keep your expectations in check and focus on the journey, not just the destination.

Quotes by Alex Hormozi

"The secret to happiness is haves over wants"

– Alex Hormozi

"You can simply change how happy you are by expecting less"

– Alex Hormozi

"Each skill is a brick on the way to where you're trying to go"

– Alex Hormozi

"Am I closer or further away from my goal"

– Alex Hormozi

"Increase expectations on activity and actions, decrease expectations on outcomes"

– Alex Hormozi

Full Transcript

what's going on everyone i hope you're having a phenomenal weekend restful time um this podcast is dedicated to all of the uh younger entrepreneurs out there so this is a little departure from the normal business owner but i think that you'll still find value in it if you know any younger entrepreneurs or you have uh you know teenagers or kids or you know college you know college-aged people slash maybe even people in their 20s 30s right who are getting into business and so maybe you left your job and you're getting into business now whatever right this would apply to you and it's regarding expectations and i think that expectations are literally the thing that will destroy your life uh or will make your life and many of us uh i think many people in general have you know figured out and many world religions have figured this out which is you know the secret to happiness is uh haves over wants which is let's say you have you know have one thing and you want nothing you will be infinitely happy the problem is where you might have a million things but you want two million things and you will not be happy right and so you can simply change how happy you are by expecting less and so one of the things that i specifically wanted to address today was the expectations around education and the reason this is a really meaningful topic for me is that i've i think i've talked to you about my neighbor and watching him go through the the crazy expectations that he has as a young person has been really valuable for me because i've also seen a lot of those characteristics that he has in myself just add zeros to it but it's still fundamentally the same thing and that's what's been uh it's been meaningful for me and so anyways uh i have tried to frame things uh so if you are trying to learn things which is going to be the first step to any kind of entrepreneurial endeavor is i like to liken everything to a bridge because i think it's a simple visual so imagine where you are on one side of you know this this valley right is where you are and where you want to go is on the other side of this big valley right and you have a bridge that goes across the two sides now the problem is is that people will buy things they will buy courses they will buy mentorships they'll buy workshops they'll buy seminars they'll buy events they'll buy whatever right in an effort on some level to get over this bridge right of where they are to where they want to go and it could be from zero to a hundred thousand dollars a year it could be from a million dollars a month to two million dollars a month it could be from a hundred million dollars a year to a billion dollars a year whatever it is there's a bridge right and along that bridge are bricks and i like to liken um each skill as a brick on the way to where you're trying to go and the problem with the expectations of somebody who's trying to learn a skill or achieve a goal is that they have a binary outcome i either achieved it or i did not i either am making a hundred thousand dollars or i am not and the problem is it can be incredibly frustrating because if you have a binary outcome uh then it's very easy to get a zero out of one right where the reality is most things are exist on a continuum and so this is the difference between a psychological binary and a and the biological continuum which is i'll give you a couple of examples so it's not uh uh are you diabetic or you're not diabetic it's how diabetic are you right it's not uh are you smart are you dumb but it's how smart are you right and so we like to psychologically bucket things into yes knows because it's simpler for us but it it it misses actual reality right and this can be especially dangerous as we're trying to acquire new skills and so the reason i liken this and i think it's so dangerous in education uh because that's what we're doing right if we're trying to educate ourselves we're trying to acquire skills is that we think as we're trying to get across this bridge that let's say you buy a course on copywriting right and so you're on one side of the bridge you buy a course on copywriting and then you still aren't a millionaire wow right the problem is uh you may have put another brick on your bridge you may be closer to where you were to getting to the other side of the bridge you just haven't achieved it yet and so this is one of the issues that i also see um just in general like it's so funny because in the in the in the i'll say guru world um you know people will take on a coach that coach will move them forward you know to a certain degree and then they'll take another coach and that coach will move them forward to a certain degree and so forth and so on and then the thing is is that they're they're like i'm working with so so i used to work with that person they suck right but the problem and i used to do this right like and this is why i think it's so ridiculous um is that like if you were looking at your schooling right and you had a had a third grade math teacher and then later you had a calculus teacher you wouldn't be like screw that third grade you know uh math teacher the stuff that i'm learning from this guy is so much you know more advanced whatever right and i've had a lot of our clients say that about their franchises that they work with and things like that and i just it it drives me nuts because it's it's it's stupid you know it's for lack of it's stupid because a lot of times you need you need step one to get to step two right and you don't have to and p it's because people have psychological issues but like they they can't they can't say i've learned from all of these people right and it doesn't it doesn't decrease your status to say i've learned from many teachers look at all the richest people in the world they say like i've had multiple mentors i've had so many people help me out over the years and i think if you can shift that perspective it will be incredibly valuable for you but one of the other things that's so poisonous about especially in the like the quote make money world is that if we if if everyone in the world viewed college because i think about this a lot i'm like why is it that people will spend two hundred thousand dollars four years of their lives study you know aztec literature of the 1700s and get to the end and not in any way be upset about the fact that they're not making money when they graduate they can't even get a job like why is that and the only reason that i can come up with is that they didn't expect to right and so that's it like that's the difference is that people come in and part of that is because the marketing messaging and the sales and all that kind of stuff so don't be wrong like the reason that you know the big academic uh powerhouse has been able to stay there well one is because they got the government to get on board and give away free money so that's obviously one part of it but the other part of it is that when people are coming in they they expect nothing like nothing literally they're not expecting anything they expect to get a check mark next to the name that says you have a diploma congratulations right and so uh if my my my my request of everyone um and i've requested this of myself is that when i go into trying to learn something that i do not give myself a binary outcome of uh did this work or did not work but instead give myself the question am i closer or further away from my goal and i think that has been tremendously helpful i've i've spent i mean recently i i spent 50 000 on uh i think eight hours with someone uh it was different than uh the the grant cardone one that i did um that's that was four hours for 120 000 if you're curious um and honestly i got enough value in the first hour that i was like i don't know what i'm going to do with the next three calls um with grant it was really good um but the point is this you know with the other one that i that i did it was actually to have assistance on a higher level project that i was working on and about halfway through i realized that um it was not a priority uh for me and so i could either say this got me you know i'm not gonna be like hey screw this guy right or anything like that it was just um for me if i can get the perspective that something is not a priority that is valuable in and of itself and so does that take me closer or further to my ultimate goal closer and so why would i be satisfied and so shifting uh our education expectations to is this another brick on the bridge to where i'm trying to go or instead of excuse me instead of am i at my destination or not and i think that this is probably one of the biggest things that you can do uh or like that it's or it's been useful for me and this is what i've tried to shift my neighbor's perspective uh for himself on which is it's kind of alignment with that kind of investor mindset which is if i were to look over a five year time horizon and i were to continue to acquire skills like this would i and i put more and more bricks on my bridge uh by the end of that period would i be better or worse off and likely it'd be better but you will be worse off if you keep trying to build a new bridge right and that's why when you jump from opportunity to opportunity a lot of times you can never get to where you're trying to go because you take two steps of progress and say oh i'm not there binary outcome therefore i will start something else and it's only after failing three four five six things then on the seventh thing you had enough acquired skills from your first six failures that you were actually able to make it all the way across the bridge and that's what's kind of interesting about this is that like there are plenty of people who uh you know have come to us and immediately start making a lot of money right and then they and then they're like oh my god gem lunch is awesome and the thing is is that like i we don't honestly deserve all the credit because you probably like some of these people may have gone through three four five courses that they believe failed them when in reality there may be 38 skill sets that they need to create their their business you know core skills and they may have acquired 24 of them from other people and we just happen to be able to get them the last 14 that gets them all the way across but because they have a binary outcome expectation they then attribute all the credit to us and i don't think that's fair um you know uh to themselves in terms of their their mental space but also to everyone else that they've worked with right and so i think thinking about it this way has been really helpful and especially and this is again i mentioned the franchisor one earlier but i'm gonna say it again i i can't tell you the amount of facilities specifically that worked with the franchisor and then said you know started working with us started making more money and we're like i hate my franchisor you got you know like screw them blah blah blah but the reality is that many times they wouldn't have even survived long enough without the the fundamental bricks that have been laid by the franchisor with their business model there's so many fundamentals that they may not even been aware of and mistakes that they would have made that were avoided because the franchisor got them 70 percent of the way across the bridge right um and we just got them the last 30 right and so um another perspective on this as well is that let's say you've got two people who all have who both have all 38 bricks on this bridge right on the on the path of your opportunity vehicle you're trying to pursue to get to the other side right now let's say both of them have all both all 38 bricks but with your learning style and their teaching style you're only able to accurate or you know absorb 25 of the first guys right it's kind of the same thing right it's like for some reason like you know i maybe the first one you worked with taught you how to sell but like you it didn't absorb or wasn't real for you and then later on in your life uh it was able to be real for you and then you attribute your success uh to the second person when in reality the first person helped you along the way and so um this has just been really valuable uh for me from a shift in perspective in my overall happiness um but also just in thinking about outcomes and what what what do i believe is reasonable and i think i've been i've been asking myself this question much more frequently which is do i believe my expectations are reasonable and is there a way that i can lower them and uh there's there's difference between lowering your expectations of the performance you want of people i believe you should be absolutely intolerant of people who do not want to be world class at something uh or you should be intolerant of any lack of effort but if you can maintain absolute intolerance to anything but excellence but then also decrease your expectations of the outcome then that is going to be a winning formula so increase expectations on activity and actions decrease expectations on outcomes and i think that that is a formula for business success just as uh haves over wants is a formula for happiness in life and so anyways i figured i would share that with you um just quick quick recap of takeaways try not to think about things at least for me this has been valuable i have shifted to going from binary is this good is this bad two how good is it and instead of thinking uh this is what needs to happen is is a first is that a reasonable expectation and b can i lower it and b and c can i raise my expectations of the activities that i would be willing to take to make my very low expectation so believably reasonable to achieve that i should hopefully surpass it and so um i think when we go into uh expectations around education and skill acquisition and thinking about things on the the continuum of am i closer or further from my goal as a result of this decision uh many times we will think much more favorably about our experience and be significantly less frustrated with what might be perceived as a momentary uh quote setback which isn't even a setback it's only a setback because we think it is rather than i am 22 of my 38 steps along the way and i just need to continue to identify which are the bricks that i am missing to get me to my goal which is ultimately the role which is why so many you know billionaires etc talk about having good mentors because they can look at your skill set they can look at your bridge and say this is what's missing this is what you need and the thing is is that when it's sometimes that last brick it's that one thing that you need that you didn't see and then all of a sudden you tribute all your success to that person when in reality it was because you spent four years building the other bricks so anyways hope that was valuable for you hope that made sense uh keeping awesome and uh having a happy and productive life all right lots of love stay real [Music] [Music] [Applause] you