Value of High Expectations – Earl Nightingale – Change Your Life

One time when I was in New York City, my plane was canceled because of mechanical difficulties. More than a hundred of us, I suppose, were now left to scramble for another flight to our destinations, on a busy, crowded afternoon. I went back to the counter, and a woman told me there was another flight in just an hour. Won t that be filled? I asked.

Well, maybe not, she said.

I thought of all the people on my canceled flight fighting for seats on the next one, which was already probably completely booked, and I toyed with the idea of staying overnight and making a new reservation for the following morning.

Why don t you try it? she said.

The thought of standing around the airport for another hour only to be turned away from a full flight was very unappealing. Do you think there s any hope at all?”

Try it, she said.

So I tried it. I wound up with a window seat up front and was only an hour late arriving at my destination. If I hadn t tried it, I would have had to taxi all the way back into the city, register at a hotel, spend the night and repeat the whole process the next day. I d been saved all that by a woman who suggested that I try it. And I resolved to stop giving up so easily to keep my expectations alive, to expect more.

This is a small example, but we should never lose sight of the undeniable fact that there is a very thin line, if any at all, between what we expect from life and what we get.

If we re not getting what we d like, maybe it s because our expectations are too low; maybe we re suffering from the poverty of expectation.

Your life will come pretty close to matching your expectations. It can easily exceed them. Higher expectations keep us trying; they keep us pressing upon ourselves; they keep us from giving up.

When I was a kid, I remember hearing the words, If you don t expect much, you won t be disappointed when you don t get much. But that s just the problem: If you don t expect much, you re ruling out the chance of winning.

The world is full of people who don t have much because they don t expect much. They re not trying for more, so how in the world are they going to get more?

We should never be concerned about the opportunities we ve missed in the past. There s no way on earth to make the most of every opportunity. It s almost never too late, and there will be just as many good opportunities in the future as there have been in the past.

No one is without hope. Every person has expectations of some kind. But just as we tend to underestimate ourselves, we therefore expect too little. We have expectations, but are they high enough? As Goethe put it, In all things it is better to hope than to despair.”

It might be a good idea to take inventory of our expectations. Maybe we could use a new shipment.

We become what we habitually think about!

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