The title of this article pretty much sums the entire thing up! Expectations will kill your business and your momentum. What do I mean by expectations? When I say expectations, I am speaking of all the little thoughts you have in your mind of what might be expected of you. If you are a leader in your industry, you might be expected to perform better than all of your competition. If you hang around wealthy people you assume that you are expected to be wealthy as well.

Always trying to live up to someone’s expectations will kill your motivation, it will kill your self-confidence, and it will kill your income, because you will always feel you are not good enough, or that you don’t measure up. Now, if you are always having those feelings, what happens to your self-esteem? What happens to your motivation? It all plummets and you’re left feeling like you don’t measure up to anyone around you.

Now, I have seen this turn into, for use of an analogy, a snowball effect. Once you feel you don’t measure up to all the expectations everyone has put onto you, at least you think they have, where does it stop? Pretty soon you feel you don’t fit in with anyone and become a little disoriented and lost. It can even go to the point where you will start telling little white lies to cover your lack of measuring up to this fiction of an expectation. It will be so subtle that you won’t even realize it is happening. Believe me, I speak from personal experience. I have been there and only realized it when someone spoke these same words to me.

My advice: Care less about expectation! Who cares what others think about you and what you are doing. Who cares about what others are expecting you to do. Just do what you want to do regardless of the circumstances. Everything is your choice! To have someone’s expectation floating over your head 24/7 will drive you mad. This is a another side of being a victim of outside circumstance. Rather than physical things effecting how you operate, this is all mental. The same concept applies though, how you operate should not be effected by anything outside of your own mind. And expectation is not you or what you want to be, it was portrayed onto you.

In a way you must be a little bit of a rebel to live this principle. It is about being the leader. It is about creating your own expectations of yourself, and being true to that. Don’t worry about others, their views of you or their results in life. That doesn’t matter when it comes to you. The only thing that matters is what matters to you!

So, stop settling for and striving for what others would like to see you do. Just start living and do what you want to do!

I attribute my knowledge of this philosophy to the one and only Jim Rohn. I am sure this analogy has been around for some time now. What a visionary he truly is and what an entrepreneur. I guess it makes complete sense that in order to effectively teach people to become entrepreneur minded, you must know what you are teaching about. True knowledge comes from doing and doing creates results. What better way is there to gain a perfect knowledge than experience?

So on behalf of Entrepreneurialism, I bring you the 10 philosophies of the ant. What better way to understand, than by analogy. Some of my most respected mentors and role models have always taught by story. The relation between philosophy and real life stories embed principle and trigger memory to recall those principles because they are tied to those stories. So that sometime down the road of life, one might be going through a similar situation and remember the principle. How valuable is that?

So here are the 10 philosophies of the Ant:

1. Hard work always pays off.

2. Know your objective, or the task at hand and do just that.

3. Never quit. If an obstacle arises, find a way around, over, under or just go through it.

4. Take shelter in a storm and dodge the bullies with magnifying glasses.

5. Selfless service. When you assist others in getting what they want, you will get what you want!

6. Remain loyal and honest. True depth in any business comes from respect and a good name.

7. Prepare for Winter while it is Summer.

8. Think of Summer while it is Winter.

9. Strength comes in numbers.

10. Never say Die!

The list could probably be longer but 10 will suffice for now. I will expound on each of these philosophies in the next 10 articles and will relate each to a principle vital to the success of any entrepreneur. Now that I think of it, luck could be number 11, but I think luck has such a small part in success. Either you want it, or you don’t! That is my philosophy.

I read a story today that relates a story that applies to everything we do and become in life, and the causes for it. It starts off with a boy and his father hiking through the mountains. The father gets a little bit ahead and the boy slips and bangs his leg on a rock and yells, “Ouch!” Almost immediately he hears “Ouch” coming right back at him. A little startled he yells out to the mountains, “Who are you,” thinking it was someone mocking him. He gets the same response. He then yells, “You coward,” and just the same way it has been happening, he heard the same response! Getting more frustrated and about to burst into anger, he looks to his father and asks him, “What’s going on?” His father just smiles and says, “Son, pay attention!” He then yells back to the mountain, “I admire you, You are a Leader, You are a champion, You can do anything!” With each phrase he received the same response in return.

The boy looks and little confused so the father explains, “Son, people call this an ECHO but really this is LIFE. It gives you back everything you say or do. Life is a reflection of our actions!” If you want more love in the world, it first starts with creating more love in your heart. If you want more competence in your team or your employees, become more competent yourself. If you want more respect, give more respect. If you want all out massive success, help others to become successful.

This relationship applies to everything, in all areas of life. Your life is not a coincidence….it is a reflection of YOU!