LLI 53 From Anxiety to Curiosity: Shifting the Ground of Expectation

00:00:00: What is your baseline of expectation?

00:00:04: Are you more inclined to expecting something bad to happen?

00:00:10: Or are you more inclined to expecting something good to happen?

00:00:14: This is iteration number 53 of the Love Louder podcast.

00:00:18: Iterations aren't becoming human. It doesn't matter.

00:00:22: Of course, we can dive into and escape into that.

00:00:27: But concepts of good and bad are human made.

00:00:31: Yet at the same time we work for it.

00:00:34: It doesn't matter how much we say that this is all like a concept.

00:00:38: And truth is there is everything equal.

00:00:43: I want to work with you where we are.

00:00:48: So let's dig deeper. Let's get our hands dirty.

00:00:55: It's very simple. Let's use some definitions here.

00:00:58: So we start at the same point.

00:01:01: When you pair expectation with something good to happen for you,

00:01:07: this is anticipation.

00:01:10: You get excited.

00:01:13: You get curious too.

00:01:16: You get activated in your body, your eyes open,

00:01:20: you're really like, agitated in a way that mostly feels pleasant to us.

00:01:27: If you pair, on the other hand, expectation with something bad happening to you,

00:01:33: well, this is called anxiety.

00:01:36: It's very, very simple.

00:01:39: So if you expect something to go wrong,

00:01:42: if you expect something to just not work out,

00:01:47: you get anxious already in the moment.

00:01:49: You're thinking of that without it happening.

00:01:52: So you get tense.

00:01:54: You close your body, you close your heart.

00:01:57: You will not be as open up for opportunities as you would be from a neutral state.

00:02:03: From an excited state even.

00:02:08: And here's the thing. Both of it.

00:02:11: Expectation, no matter what, if it's anxiety,

00:02:15: or if it's anticipation, it blurs our perception.

00:02:23: And I found that the best place I could find my decisions

00:02:31: was a neutral space.

00:02:39: Because the expectation of something good to happen,

00:02:43: let's say the excitement, it is like a wave.

00:02:47: It can flow through you and then it will ebb again.

00:02:52: Sometimes it floods you and then it will ebb again.

00:02:55: It's same as with anxiety.

00:02:58: Now, that's where our decisions very often change.

00:03:03: And sometimes it's just good to take quick action, to take the decision

00:03:06: and to not stay in the limbo of should I or should I not.

00:03:10: Because this is very often it is not the space of indecisive minutes,

00:03:15: the space of anxiety.

00:03:17: Because we're not sure we want to take the best decision.

00:03:20: We want to make it right.

00:03:22: Like from the beginning on, instead of we choose,

00:03:26: we us choosing the iterative process.

00:03:30: And I want this podcast and this here to model it,

00:03:35: to be in it together, to encourage you to spark that idea,

00:03:43: to offer to you that there is a way of not having to have the result right at hand.

00:03:51: And I realized after recording the episode of yesterday

00:03:56: where I contemplated on building from excitement,

00:04:01: getting more concrete from excitement, it can be a way.

00:04:07: And I realized because of course, just a few hours went by,

00:04:13: excitement even is not a state that we can keep for as a constant state.

00:04:21: It is not constant. It is changing.

00:04:23: We cannot bear it actually.

00:04:25: How much pleasure can we bear?

00:04:27: So it needs to change. Either we get more excited or it ebbs.

00:04:31: So for me, it was more calming down, getting to a neutral ground.

00:04:37: And then I found something else.

00:04:39: It's building from curiosity.

00:04:42: And I do not have to be excited to be curious.

00:04:46: But I got excited again by leaning into curiosity,

00:04:53: by wanting to find out what will come if I lean into the next step.

00:05:00: So here's what change is coming up

00:05:04: and what we will experience through the next iterations.

00:05:08: It's getting more concrete.

00:05:10: It's leaning more into tying relationship and business together in this podcast.

00:05:15: And how the themes that are here very present in our episodes,

00:05:26: how they translate in these areas of life.

00:05:31: I want this to be a space for you to plug in,

00:05:37: to find your own leadership again, to lead yourself.

00:05:42: It's a place of leadership, of self-leadership and of love.

00:05:48: We want to explore what it looks like in love and in business.

00:05:53: We want to explore what it looks like when we lean into love more

00:06:03: and also not denying aggression but taking this one as a power in us.

00:06:14: And aggression not in an aggressive way,

00:06:19: because not in a violent way, better to say,

00:06:24: because we do all have aggression in us.

00:06:27: Here's the thing, very often we want peace,

00:06:30: we strive for love and for happiness and for harmony,

00:06:34: yet we deny what we think it opposes, is opposed by it,

00:06:43: which is aggression, which is anger.

00:06:46: But at the same time, these are part of our power

00:06:51: because we need some kind of aggression to take a decision

00:06:56: and just to follow through and get things done.

00:06:59: It is part of our life too, so when we start denying it,

00:07:04: We start making ourselves smaller.

00:07:07: We start depriving us from our potential.

00:07:13: We start creating friction.

00:07:16: And this is what this is about, to remove the friction.

00:07:20: So we're removing friction right now.

00:07:22: We're leaning into being curious what happens when we study love in business,

00:07:28: when we study how leadership and love looks like.

00:07:34: When we look at how a business can be built

00:07:41: from a place that is not connected directly to the results,

00:07:49: not connected directly to time, and this is very unconventional.

00:07:55: Because very often we feel the pressure that builds up

00:08:01: not from outside necessarily, but inside ourselves.

00:08:05: And we try to push it away.

00:08:07: We try to attack the goal that we're having.

00:08:11: We've said in our business that we've said for revenue

00:08:15: that we've said to build to be successful.

00:08:18: Yet the truth is, or the reality is, it does take power.

00:08:25: It does take aggressive force, but not in a violent way.

00:08:30: We're saying violent because very often it means that we direct the violence against ourselves.

00:08:36: So we try to do something that we find is not aligned with us.

00:08:42: And it does not mean that you do not have to try things out.

00:08:45: We have to try things out.

00:08:47: We have to really lean into them for a while.

00:08:51: And then we can make an informed decision to say,

00:08:55: "Well, this is not for me."

00:08:57: When you start beforehand and say, "Well, this is not for me.

00:09:00: I'm not going to do this."

00:09:01: You will never find out.

00:09:02: This is where curiosity comes into play again.

00:09:05: So we're using curiosity and we're using play.

00:09:12: And while it's never, it's not always like explicitly mentioned.

00:09:16: I want this to be the baseline of this podcast.

00:09:19: I want this to be grounded in here.

00:09:21: Sometimes we have to remind ourselves, especially when we get our hands in the dirt,

00:09:30: when we get to translate what we got as insights into what we're actually creating, doing, being in the world.

00:09:45: So in this case, building a business, in this case, being a business owner,

00:09:51: in this case, being in partnership, or a single event and looking for a partnership.

00:09:57: Because as soon as it gets more concrete, sometimes we just forget it all.

00:10:03: We just forget it all.

00:10:04: We fall into the habits of our own mind, into the drama, into what is very known to us, even if we know better.

00:10:11: And that's where the drama again starts.

00:10:13: It's the metadrama.

00:10:15: So I want this place to be something to plug into, to remind ourselves that things get to be much more simpler,

00:10:28: or much more simplified than we make them.

00:10:33: It does not mean that it's always easy.

00:10:36: No, not at all.

00:10:38: This is what leadership is about to be facing the challenges that we're giving.

00:10:49: And for us right now, it's relaxing into the challenge.

00:10:56: It's relaxing our body.

00:10:58: It's finding out what it means to tie relationship and business together with leadership, with self-leadership,

00:11:05: with mastering your mind and how it translates into our life.

00:11:10: So I have offered you very much a lens here to look through.

00:11:16: Let's dive deeper into it.

00:11:19: Let's see where the lens can shine on.

00:11:23: And this is going to be a case study in itself.

00:11:30: When we go back, we will see that there are steps and leaps and loops.

00:11:39: And everything that makes us human, because we do not, very often we do not get it right from the very start, from the very beginning.

00:11:47: So to try to do it right from the very start, from the beginning, it's just creating friction.

00:11:55: It's just you refraining from diving into what is given to you.

00:12:02: It is not devoting yourself.

00:12:05: It's not surrendering.

00:12:07: It is the misconception that we can do it, that we alone are responsible for whatever comes out, which is not the case.

00:12:16: We can train our responsibility.

00:12:19: We can embrace our responsibility, not in the usual sense, but in being able to respond.

00:12:30: I want this for you to be a reminder that you are able to respond, that you do not have to stay stuck.

00:12:38: And if you forget, then try to remember that you can come back here.

00:12:45: And you will see that I get stuck too, and we will see that we're in this together, and it will not be that bad.

00:12:52: It will okay.

00:12:57: And that is where we start dissolving anxiety, where we start changing our expectations.

00:13:09: With something bad to happen, to changing to expectation that there is something to happen, and that is curiosity.

00:13:20: And sometimes we will fall into, "Wow, maybe there's something good in it for me, and it will be excitement."

00:13:29: But for us, we want to move first from expectation, plus something is going to happen.

00:13:38: Let's see what my part of the equation is.

00:13:42: Let's get curious what this is going to mean.

00:13:48: And I promise you, this too is a leap for me.

00:13:53: So let's find out together.

00:13:56: This is the Love Louder podcast, iterations on becoming human.

00:14:02: Love a little louder.

00:14:05: Here you soon, Shang.

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