What Do You Expect From Yourself?

How to become more by increasing what you expect from yourself each day.

On today’s episode Russell tells a story about a guy from some Tony Robbins’ events and why he expected more from himself and how that made his story is so inspiring. He also talks about how wresting helped Russell expect more from himself.

Here are 3 cool things to listen for in this episode:

• People expect a lot of you, but what do you expect from yourself?
• Why the more you expect out of yourself, the more successful you will be.
• Why letting yourself off the hook is not always a good idea.

So listen below to find out why you should expect more out of yourself in order to be successful.

---Transcript---

Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and welcome to a snowy marketing in your car. All right, all right, so we’ve got snow out here in Boise Idaho and it’s beautiful. It’s supposed to snow for the next three days, so I’m hoping we just get dumped on because it would be really fun to take a day or two off with the kids and just do snowball fights, and snow forts, and all of that fun stuff. Cross your fingers that we get dumped on for a little bit here. I just wanted to jump in real quick because I just listened to a podcast and someone said something and it sparked something and I wanted to jump in here. It has to do with what you expect from yourself. We have all sorts of people in our lives that have expectations on us, right? Our wives expect us to do things, our kids, our co-workers, our employees, our parents, our friends, our brothers and sisters, everyone expects things out of us, right? That’s one thing.

I’m curious, what do you expect out of yourself? We were at a Tony Robins event and if you’ve ever been to UPW there’s this little, not little. There’s this guy, he’s a little shorter, but like a stocky, bald dude, who’s always on Toby Robins security, and at every UPW. If you ever go you’ll see him, he’s usually one of front guys in the front. He’s always standing there flexing, making sure nobody gets to Tony. Anyway, the last day when Tony sells Business Mastery, usually this guy will get up and tell the story, and how basically when he was growing up … I can’t remember how bad his life was but he went to a Tony Robins event, it changed him. He started just going to every Tony Robins event and just trying to just be there all the time, and be around it, and talked about how it changed his life from being this homeless kid to being a multi millionaire, and all of these things, it was just a really inspiring story.

Afterwards we pulled him aside and we were just talking to him, me and four or five of our friends, we were just talking to him and the dude was like oh, so motivational, I just wanted to hire him just to come yell at me once a week. He was talking, and one thing he said that was interesting is we asked like, “What made the difference. Why do you come and work for Tony for free five times a year, and why do you do all of this stuff?” He said, “Where I grew up from nobody expected much from me, so I didn’t do much. When I came here,” he’s like, “Everybody expected a lot out of me.” He’s like, “The reason why I’m so successful now, I expect more out of myself than anyone can imagine.” I remember thinking about that like, that’s the driving force. What do you expect out of yourself? You think about why we get depressed in life, or why we have issues, or whatever it might be, I think it’s usually because we expect something out of ourselves and we don’t do it.

I look at the things in my life that I really struggle with and that cause me pain, and almost all of them are associated with this is what I expect from myself, and this is what I’m doing. It’s like when you were a kid and your dad is … you do something really, really bad and you’re expecting him to beat you and you’re preparing for a whooping, and then he comes in and he just looks at you and shakes his head and says, “I expected a lot more out of you,” and walks away. You’re like, “Oh, daggers in the heart. That was way worse, why didn’t you just beat me? I could have handled that.” I think that’s a big thing, and I’m curious for you right now, and everyone listening is in different parts of their life, different times, different seasons, and different parts of their business as well. I’m curious, what do you expect out of yourself?

People always ask, “Russell how do you get so much stuff done? How do you blah, blah, blah,” all of these things. I don’t feel like I do that much but I feel like I expect a lot out of myself, because of that I don’t sleep in, in the morning, I don’t go to bed early at night, when I’m at the office I don’t goof off, I’m not surfing Facebook and if it’s not making me money, if I’m not helping someone, I expect so much out of myself that I don’t, I just keep working, I keep moving forward because I expect it out of myself. I look at one of my favorite coaching clients from the last year and a half is Liz Benny, you guys have heard me talk a lot about her. People ask me, “What was different about Liz? How come she was able to grow so fast?”

The reality, if you listen to the Voxer messages she sends me, I don’t know anyone that expects more out of themselves than her. She is always on herself, which is part … I’m like man, you’re doing awesome, lighten up on yourself. That’s why she’s so successful, she expects so much out of herself. She always says, “The Liz Benny that I am is not this, I am here, I need to be here, I need to get there. I expect so much out of myself.” I think that sometimes we just let ourselves off the hook. If you’re struggling, it might be because you’re letting yourself off the hook. I don’t know, it might not be, there’s life circumstances, there’s things. Even when I expect a lot of myself we still had issues and headaches, things that come up so I get that, that’s a real thing. If you’re not progressing, and not progressing your own life, your clients lives in the way that you want, I wonder if that’s the issue. I wonder if you’re not expecting as much, enough out of yourself.

I’m just going to put it out there, and I may be wrong, I don’t know. If someone was to ask me now thinking back on it like, “Russell why are you having so much success?” There’s a million external forces that have made it, there’s so many. My partners, my employees, and my friends, people that have made this happen, right? Internally for me it’s because I expect so much out of myself, that’s it. I woke up this morning excited to get to work because I expect so much, and I want to do so much, I want to help, and serve, and change, and I can’t do that without it.

Anyway I just kind of wanted to throw that out there today, again I was listening to a podcast and that just popped into my head, and thought I would share it and hopefully you get some value out of it. Yeah, it’s interesting, I think the same thing was true when I was a wrestler. My Junior year I was the state champ, and the next year there was a national tournament, you had to be a Senior and a state champ to go to so I was like, “Okay, I’m going to go,” and I expected that I would be an all American. That was what I expected out of myself. My Senior year the state tournament I lost to this punk kid who’s not very good in just a really bad match. I ended up taking third place in state that year, my Senior year. I won it my Junior year and third my Senior year and I was destroyed, it ruined my self image. Everything that I was disappeared that day and I was so mad, but I expected so much out of myself and I was like, “No, I’m an all American. I know that already, that’s not something that’s up for debate just because I lost this match.”

I was so mad and I remember we had two months before the national tournament and as like Russell right now is not an all American but I am one, I know that, that’s what I expect from myself, and that’s what I need to get. For the next two months we went crazy, I was working out on average … I remember one time when Dan Gable, when he’s training for the Olympics was working out for seven hours a day, that was the standard I set for myself. I need to work out at least seven hours a day, so I’d lift, I’d go to my high school workout, then I’d try to find another high school close to me that had guys that were also training for the national tournament. I’d travel there, so I had to do two to three wrestling practices a day.

During that time, that two month period of time, I went from being a good wrestler to being a great wrestler, I went to national tournament and because I had won the state tournament my Junior year I qualified, but I was probably one of the only dudes in the room who didn’t win the state tournament that year. Came in, and because I expected so much out of myself over that two month period of time I came in and in a tournament that I think prior I would have done alright in, I don’t think I would have placed in it, you walk in and the bracket has eighty six state champs in it. I came in and I beat almost everyone, I beat a two time state champ, I beat a three time state champ, I beat all of these people and I actually made it to the finals. The finals I lost by two points from a kid from New York.

I made the national finals, I took second place in the country, I became an all American, and it wasn’t something I was surprised about, I expected that out of myself, but I wasn’t there at the state tournament. It took that loss and that setback, which we all have in life, it took that kick in the nuts, whatever you want to call it, that took me back, for me to really step up and say, “Look, this is what I expect from myself and I need to achieve it all costs.” I did in that situation, anyway, I hope that helps. I know that again everyone’s in different times in life, you may have just lost your state tournament, figuratively speaking, or you may be on the two month process where you’re trying to become who you know you need to become, and maybe you just placed, and maybe you became an all American and now you’re kind of figuring out the next step.

Wherever you’re at, the more you expect from yourself the more you’re going to achieve. Yeah, that’s it for today, hope that helps. All right I’m at the office, it’s snowing, and actually I have to go to head shots today so I’m just grabbing my juice, we’re on the juice fast still, and I’m headed in, headed back to get my head shots then I got a webinar today. That’s my plan, appreciate you guys, have an amazing day, and we’ll talk soon.