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Back to Let Go of Expectations and Attract What You Desire | Lewis Howes, with Lewis Howes.

What Is the Thief of Joy?

Lewis Howes says comparison is the thief of joy. Real progress in life, career, health, or an online following can still feel like falling behind when someone compares their own life and results with another person's life and results.

Admiration settles on one person, a few people in the same industry, or college friends a few years out who seem to be crushing it. They have the relationship, they are getting engaged or married, and they have the career, and their life becomes the path that has to be followed. They bought a house at 25 or 30, and it feels impossible. They made a hundred grand, half a million dollars, or a million dollars a few years after launching a business, while the other person has been trying to build a business for five to 10 years and feels like failure keeps repeating. They might be married with kids while the other person is still single or going through heartbreak and breakup after breakup, which turns into the belief that something is wrong. Wanting nice things, nice experiences, and great relationships is fine. Expecting them to happen on the same timeline makes a person crazy and miserable.

The view of where they are after 10 or 15 years, set against a couple of years, is not a fair fight. An Instagram page of highlights and seeming successes can leave someone feeling bad for the rest of the day. When a friend shares good news, part of the reaction is happiness and the other part is upset and jealous, because win after win on their side looks like luck while hard work still does not deliver what is wanted.

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Transcript

Let Go of Expectations and Attract What You Desire | Lewis Howes ·

The School of Greatness

More from this episode

  1. What Is a Silent Contract?A silent contract is the unspoken bargain Lewis Howes names as doing something and then treating a return as owed: I did blank, so I am owed blank.
  2. What Was Lewis Howes's Life Like in His Mid-20s?Lewis Howes was broke in his mid-20s, with no money, sleeping on his sister's couch and working an unpaid internship a few days a week in Columbus, Ohio.
  3. How Do You Stop Feeling Behind Successful People?Lewis Howes says looking at a successful person's life at the same stage stops the feeling of being behind and turns the gap into learning.
  4. Why Do People Walk Past What They Wanted?Lewis Howes says people walk right past the exact thing they have been asking for because it did not show up looking the way they pictured it.
  5. Why Did Lewis Howes Start a Relationship in Therapy?Lewis Howes started the relationship in therapy because expecting a partner to understand his entire history, every gesture, every word, and every future…
  6. Why Are People Afraid to Stop Expecting?Lewis Howes calls expectation number five the fear that if you stop expecting something, you will stop getting it.
  7. Why Did Lewis Howes Meet His Wife Later?Lewis Howes met his wife later because he was not emotionally ready 10 years earlier. The love of his life showed up when he stopped trying to force it.

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