Intending to Let Go of Expectation

Many words in English can be interpreted in many ways.

A client I’ll call Jasmine had been working on her Instagram content for a while. Living nomadically as a chef, Instagram worked perfectly for her lifestyle. Her goal was to attract followers and engagement and then eventually monetize her work with brands to earn a living doing what she was passionate about.

As with any business, at times, Jasmine felt discouraged and lost. When things were not moving, money was not there. She started questioning what she was doing and whether she should continue. But before she quit, she had this idea to talk with a hypnotherapist, to get validation about whether quitting was a good idea.

I did not validate her idea, although I did not invalidate her idea either. Hypnotherapy is not about validation or doing the right or wrong thing. Rather it is about helping someone discover what works for them in a specific context. We looked into the cause of her discouragement and fatigue and found that her expectations were not met. The reason for disappointment is not circumstances, not other people, but always the expectations.

How do we handle expectations? They can certainly introduce fear into what we do and disappointment at the end. Also, potentially, they can limit us, as things beyond our expectations can become our reality. When we focus on our expectations, we may miss those greater opportunities. However, having no expectations can also be confusing, because then there seems to be no direction, no quantifiable measurements. Why would someone even start something if they have no expectations? To the mind, it’s not natural to have no expectations.

Interestingly, the word expectation starts with the prefix ex-. It implies an external or outward focus. When we do so, our mind projects a desired result, and our attention goes out to try to achieve the result. From the external point of view, we end up looking back and judging ourselves. It can become almost impossible to have the focus and devotion to do what we are meant to do when we are doing other people’s jobs: Judging ourselves.

To truly walk our own path and do what needs doing, we need to be grounded in our inner life, the driver’s seat of our life. Any moment we are focusing outside of ourselves, we are losing that grounding, we are not in the driver’s seat. We are either out of the vehicle, or in the passenger seat.

So, to get Jasmine back to content creation and the enjoyment of doing it, I introduced the idea of intention. It’s a word similar to expectation, but it makes a world of difference, if truly put into practice. The differences between huge success and huge failure may simply lie in the subtle difference between those seeming synonymous words. We all have dreams, and we all work hard, at least at the beginning of our business. How we manage our energies and allow them to either sustain us or work against us is what makes the difference. Intention has the prefix of in-. It puts us inside ourselves, focusing on the only business that matters to us: our own creativity and decisions. It inspires us and motivates us. We are guided by curiosity rather than fear. We are okay that we don’t know. We let the future unfold and show us when it’s time to show us. Our energy is together in the very moment that our energy needs to be: here and now. We can move mountains without much effort when we stay grounded in our intentions. It makes us kinder to ourselves and releases our need to manage the unmanageable – the future.

Jasmine got excited about focusing on her intentions and staying focused there. I told her that her homework was to constantly, every day, draw her expectations back to her intention.

Three weeks later, we met again online. Jasmine told me she had done exactly that, and her daily videos now had a couple more ingredients as she let a sense of light-hearted fun, her signature vibration, shine through. And to her surprise, she gained many more followers. And her followers were still growing when we met after that. Jasmine felt a little overwhelmed, “Oh my God, it’s real. It’s becoming big. With this growth will come responsibility. I’ve never done this before… What if…”

I called her out, “That’s how you delayed your success to start with. You didn’t think you could handle the bigness, so you had to go back to your small little comfort zone, which was a struggle. Now, you can either struggle and dream or face what’s coming, take one step at a time, and deal with what you need to deal with when you need to deal with it. I’m okay either way, for I know either choice; you are masterful in your manifestation.”

“How so?” Jasmine asked.

“You have effortlessly manifested delay of success and struggle as a pattern over and over, or now you can manifest saying yes to what’s coming. You don’t have to do anything for it, as followers are coming anyway. You can simply realize they are coming and be okay with it.”

Indeed, it’s time to intend again on this new level of success and let go of expectations. The journey is never-ending. Similar patterns of challenges exist. Only this time, Jasmine is meeting her challenges on a different level. On that, I’m very glad for her.