Working Towards Our Purpose

Welcome back to Working towards our Purpose. This is episode

48, and in today's episode, we're going to talk about

overcoming the expectations of others. But before that,

I'm going to get into the intro and kind of

what I have been doing in the past in these episodes is

starting the podcast with something positive that's been happening

to me in my week, in my life. Um, and

today I kind of feel like switching that up and

not really doing the starting with a positive thing anymore and kind of

replacing it with more of like a check in. Um.

Cause what I've noticed is that, you know, especially as I've been kind of doing

two of these, recording two podcasts a week now, that it's been

putting a little bit of sort of unnecessary

pressure on me to come up with a positive thing, which

I've noticed has kind of led to like,

ignoring maybe sort of negative things. And

although I do think that you can find a positive thing

in any situation, I don't think it's always

the right thing to do or the necessary thing to do. And sometimes,

you know, feeling negative things is good. And so,

yeah, I think instead of just like, you know, trying

to force a positive thing that's happened, I'm

rather. Instead I'm going to just sort of like have a check in with

myself and, you know, maybe great time for. For you to

check in too with yourself and to see how you feel, how you're feeling, where

you're at. For me, this week has been

both good and bad. Had some ups, but also had some downs and some

things that I'm struggling. Um, one of which is going to be

today's topic. So that's. That's going to be helpful for me, I think,

hopefully for you as well. But yeah, I think

just kind of also allowing this to

be a space to have acceptance

in, in any form, any format, any form.

So I think really I want to, like, have this podcast be

rooted in, like, worthiness and, you know,

it doesn't always have to be a positive thing. You're worthy if you're feeling good

or if you're feeling bad. So I think practicing that

for myself is a great way to, you know, have as an

example, to also, you know, accept you all as.

As you are too. And yeah, hopefully that makes

sense still. You know, I just thought of it kind of this morning, so

I think I'm going to go with that going forward until it doesn't feel good

anymore. But. But yeah, struggling a little bit this week.

And one of the things I've been strugg and we'll

get in. Today's episode is overcoming the expectations of others.

And you know, I'm not quite sure what I'm going to

like title this episode yet. Either overcoming expectations

or also kind of the same

side of the coin or however that term goes. I don't.

I guess I really don't know what that phrase means. Another way of saying

overcoming expectations, I think is like being yourself

and being like, you know, confident to be yourself.

I think that's something I've always struggled with, you know, from as far back as

I can remember, and especially

when I sort of decided that I wanted to leave my

corporate job, having to kind of explain

why, what I wanted to do to others and that sort of thing.

But I think when you're kind of

choosing maybe a different lifestyle or

maybe choosing something that others don't really approve of

you, you can out you kind of go through

these like stages of expectation. We'll just go with

expectations for now. Overcoming the expectations of others.

I've noticed that I'm kind of at least myself have gone through

these three stages of expectations.

And yeah, I think I just kind of want to

like, talk through those, Expect those stages, talk through those stages

and, and yeah, which will lead

me to the last one, which is the stage that I think I'm at and

still working on. So, you know, whether you're like leaving a

corporate job or maybe you're, you know, deciding to

pursue music or maybe a sport or something,

something that like, maybe somebody won't approve of, maybe it's your

friends, maybe it's your family, maybe it's

bettering yourself and maybe others around you look

that as like. Look at that as like a threat, whether it's going to college

or, you know, wanting to move up in

a job and maybe your co workers are sort of like envious of you and

they're like, why do you want to be manager? You know, you know, something like

that. I think you kind of always have to deal with the

expectations of others and sometimes it's people that are close to you and people

that you care about. And it can be challenging

to sort of have

to try to keep a

relationship and then also do what you believe is true to yourself.

So the first stage, I think for me anyways, in the

context of me leaving my corporate job, I think the first thing that I did

and also by no means is this like, you

know, the only. This is more so like my experience. So

I just want to put that disclaimer out there, but yeah.

So when I went to leave my corporate job and I was having these dreams

of working for myself, I noticed quickly that,

like, depending on who you told, some people would be, like, really

encouraging, and then some people would. Would be really discouraging and they'd

be kind of instilling all of their fear into you.

So the first thing that I did to protect myself was I sort of

secluded myself and I wouldn't really speak aloud. The things

that I wanted to be doing, the dreams that I had, the aspirations.

I think I did that, like I said, in a way to protect myself

because I didn't want to have to justify what I

wanted to do to people who are challenging me. And that

served me really well in that part of my life. And I really only

opened up to a few people who are around me and

supportive. And in that

way, I think it allowed me to

sort of keep listening to myself and my own intuition

and therefore, like,

kind of keep allowing myself to do it.

I think it was really easy in that time when I was still kind of

unsure of myself. Whereas if I told somebody what I wanted to

do and then they kind of came down hard on me and told me, like,

well, what are you going to do about this? Or what are you going to

do about this? Or what about health insurance and blah, blah, blah, then,

you know, a lot of the. A lot of that feedback could sort of stop

me from doing what I wanted to do. So the first stage was

just really like, secluding myself, think, being with myself,

really trying to think about, like, what I wanted to do and talking to very

trusted sources about what I wanted to do. And

those sources kind of changed over time too. And, you know, the people that I

confided in changed over time as, as

relationships change and I meet new people. Um, but I

think that that was a really important

part of my journey to overcoming

expectations of others, a journey to being who I want to be,

was being able to kind of pull back and

limit my interactions with people. And,

yeah, it's just kind of, again, secluding myself. So

then the second stage that I've noticed is, like, in

doing that, in kind of only

talking with people that I trusted, being with myself, sitting with

myself, I became more confident in who I wanted to

be. I started learning who I wanted to be and what my

values are. And then I found more people that

sort of matched these values. And then I found

more people that I can confide in, and I found people

that, like, I could confide in more than I did previously

because I, we were a lot, we were aligned on values. And

so the second stage was just really me being confident in who I was.

And, and yeah, and the third stage, I think

is kind of where I'm at now, where I still

do a pretty good job of secluding myself from others. But

I'm noticing that this resistance is making

me sort of question that. And I think this week a

couple different things came up and my first reaction

was like, that nope, I don't want to put myself in that situation because,

you know, I know it's gonna happen. I know how those

opinions, I know how people will perceive me, and I

don't want to be perceived that way. I don't have to explain myself. It's easier

just to not be in that situation. But then I started questioning that and

I was like, but what if you showed up in this

situation where you knew people might judge you or ask

you questions about the way that you're living your life, but instead of

not being in that situation, what if you were in that situation and what if

it was a test of you still being

yourself in spite of what you think others might think of you? And

that was kind of an eye opening

realization for myself to. And I know

maybe it sounds simple, but for me it was really like impactful. And

it was like, wow, maybe I don't have to keep

secluding myself anymore. Maybe I've reached a point where I'm

confident enough in who I am to where I could put myself in

situations where people aren't going to like what I do and

I can still be myself in spite of that. And I think that

that's like a really powerful thing. And for me, for, you know, somebody

who's always kind of struggled to show others who I

really am, I think that that's like a really empowering

feeling to be in situation because. Because then,

sorry, I always interrupt myself to be in situations where you can be

yourself regardless of who's around you. I think that's a really

empowerful feeling to be in situations. And no

matter what the situation is, you can be yourself. So.

So yeah, I think I'm. I'm asking myself these questions now and

I, I feel like I've gotten to like this new stage of

okay, maybe you don't have to seclude yourself anymore. Maybe you can

be who you want to be, even if somebody else has an opposite feeling

or opinion of you and you could, you know, sort

of not take it to heart, not take it seriously. And know that like,

you know, people sometimes impose their opinions on

you because they, they care about you and, and they try trying to protect you.

You know, maybe they have good intentions, but it's not

necessarily helpful to you and you can

just kind of let that pass and, and try to not take it as personal.

So. So yeah, I don't know. I don't really know where, where that

takes me as far as, you know,

any sort of like action. I know

usually I'll try to like have like, here's a tip you can do to actually

do that. But I think I'm more so like living that right now. So

I don't know, maybe, maybe I'll come back to this episode idea

in six months or so or however long

and kind of check in and see maybe if I got some

real world practice in practicing being myself

in spite of thinking that others aren't going to like it.

Because I think also a lot of this is,

it's all in my head, right? Everything. The expectations that I think

people have of me are mostly in my head. Maybe there

was certain scenarios or

instances in the past where it proved

true, but I think that, you know,

it's mostly kind of these stories that we make up in

our head. So. And also we can't control what other people

perceive of us or how are the people that are going to see us. And

I think the best thing we can do is to just try to be ourselves

in spite of anything else. And

yeah, so this is a sort of a still

in progress type of episode, I guess. But, but

yeah, I was, I was once again thinking of a different topic for

this episode, but I sort of had this thought the

other day and sort of wanted to explore it a little bit more

and wanted to share it. And

yeah, I think, I think that's

well before I sign off. I think it also kind of,

I think coincides with the episode that I had earlier this week.

So, you know, hopefully maybe you can listen to them back to back and

I think that they kind of tie into each other a little bit. But yeah,

that's, that's kind of what I got for you this week.

And yeah, if there's one call to action today, if you

don't know, I do record these podcast video format

and I put them up on YouTube. So if you want to watch the this

podcast instead of listening to the podcast, you can always go to YouTube, just

type in working towards our purpose in the search bar. And you should see my

channel and if you'd like, you can subscribe for

for more videos and and podcast episodes.

So once again, thank you for listening. I appreciate it

and I will see you on another episode real soon. Take care.

It.