03. The Law of Expectations

Under the Laws of Life

Whatever you expect, with confidence, becomes your own self-fulfilling prophecy.

You are always acting as a fortune-teller in your own life by the way you think and talk about how situations are going to turn out. When you confidently expect good things to happen, good things usually happen to you. If you expect negative things to happen, you are usually not disappointed.

Your expectations have an inordinate effect on the people around you as well. What you expect from people and situations determines your attitude toward them more than any other factor, and people reflect your attitude right back at you, like a mirror, whether positive or negative.

Dr. Robert Rosenthal of Harvard conducted dozens of controlled experiments over the years to test the power of the expectations of teachers on student performance. In his landmark book, Pygmalion in the Classroom, he tells of case after case where teachers were told that a student, or sometimes a whole class, was extremely bright and was predicted to make a quantum leap in academic performance in the coming year.

Even though the students were chosen from the school population at large, as long as the teachers believed that these students were exceptional, and the teachers expected them to do well, the students performed vastly better than other students in the same or similar classes and vastly better than could have been predicted by previous grades or behavior.

In your own personal life, your expectations of your staff, your boss, your customers, and even your future tend to come true. Your expectations exert a powerful influence on people and events, for good or for ill, so be careful!

How you can apply this law immediately:

1. Expect the best! Assume the very best of intentions on the part of your staff and coworkers. Assume from the start that they want to do a good job, make good decisions, and get good results. When things go wrong, as they do continually, instead of over-reacting, sit down with the other person in a spirit of friendliness and ask questions to determine exactly what happened. There is usually a good reason for everything.

2. Start at home. Tell your spouse and children on a regular basis that you believe in them, that you think they are wonderful, that you love them, and that you are proud of them. David McClelland of Harvard found that the very best and happiest families, the families that produced the highest achieving children, were characterized as "positive expectations" families.

The parents continually fed their children a stream of positive messages, reaffirming how much they loved them and believed in them. No matter what happened in the short term, the children always knew that their parents were behind them 100 percent. And they didn’t disappoint their parents.

3. Practice these same behaviors with your staff and coworkers. The very best managers, entrepreneurs, and salespeople are "positive expectations" people, with everyone and in everything they do.

4. Expect the best of yourself. Imagine that you have unlimited potential and that you can accomplish anything that you put your mind to. Imagine that your future is limited only by your own imagination and that whatever you have accomplished up to now is only a small part of what you are truly capable of achieving. Imagine that your greatest moments lie ahead and that everything that has happened to you up to now has merely been preparation for the great things that are yet to come.

Source: Brian Tracy, The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, (San Francisco, 2000).