To live free means you are not under the mental, physical, or emotional control of anyone or anything. You live according to the expectations you choose. – DeVon Franklin
Expectations are like fine pottery. The harder you hold them, the more likely they are to crack. – Brandon Sanderson
Expectations. We all have them…for ourselves…for others. We expect to be loved. We expect to have a great career. We expect success in life. We expect. We expect. We expect. Expectations shape much of the life we live. Our personal expectations. The expectations of others. Expectations color the way we view the world. And, if we’re not careful, they can become weights. They can be weights affecting us emotionally, mentally, and physically. Expectations can redirect our energy and our focus and “can actually push our goals further away.” In Live Free: Exceed Your Highest Expectations, producer and author DeVon Franklin helps the reader understand the nature of expectations and their origins.
We each have expectations that have arisen out of our past and have an immense impact on our approach to life. Ben Silman of the University of Wyoming has identified three primary sources for our personal expectations: family, society, and personal experiences and backgrounds. Franklin has also added our career or professional life as an additional source of expectations. The challenge is that most of us do not merely hold expectations as goals to move towards but rather standards that produce failures for which we are judged.
Readers will be challenged by Franklin to go beyond having expectations to doing the work of setting expectations. If we examine our expectations and their origins, we can take control of them and begin to live the life we always wanted.
We have to give ourselves permission to be free—letting go of any and all expectations that we did not set for ourselves and do not agree with and instead allowing ourselves to think and live how we choose, not how others have chosen for us to live. – DeVon Franklin