A Spell for Freedom From Expectation

Expectations are a weight that is ultimately limiting.

The pressure to achieve a specific result

breeds anxiety, and generally just fucks us over creatively.

This spell will help you free your creative impulses

by letting go of narrowly defined outcomes.

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Mentioned:

Carol Dweck’s very insightful book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

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Make Magic:

Specific expectations fuck us over because we’re too smart for them.

On some level, we understand that reality is fundamentally co-creative,

and we can’t possibly know what's going to happen.

So what happens if you decide to embrace that uncertainty,

instead of getting all bound up in trying to defy it?

Transcript: A Spell for Freedom From Expectation

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here. 

Hello, my love. Oh, I hope that this finds you well, and navigating the turn of seasons—whether it is becoming spring for you or it is becoming fall for you—I hope it finds you navigating the turn of seasons with ease and joy. I read somewhere—ugh, I wish I could remember who wrote this—but someone somewhere [laugh] wrote that they loved to see the seasons shift because it's one of the one places where humans really embrace change and welcome change. And I thought, "Yeah, damn, that hits for me for sure." So I hope that this current seasonal shift is feeling good to you. 

Today's spell is another in this set of spells I've been recording really about creativity, about empowering our creativity, freeing our creativity. And an important aspect of that, I think, is around the expectations that we hold for ourselves and our work expectations. Expectations are, bleurgh, they are so limiting. And what I mean by "expectations" are very specific desired results. 

When we have an expectation, we have this rigid idea about how something is going to play out, and so today's spell is a spell for freedom from expectations because, so often, having a very specific idea of how something needs to play out really fucks us over creatively. 

I have worked with a novelist whose second novel was very well received. It was. It sold very well, and it was critically acclaimed. And as she was working on her third novel, there was the weight of expectation, and it was the weight of the critic's expectations, of the audience's expectations, and, of course, of her own expectations. As she is trying to open up to the creative impulse for this next novel, there are all of these forces that are, like, narrowing the channel of expression with so many expectations. 

Here's another example. I was working with a client who was launching her group coaching program. So she's putting it out into the world. And this go-round, she's really going for it. She's invested in some help refining her messaging. She's getting some advertising going. Yeah? And I could feel, as we were talking about it, I could feel the weight of expectation, right, this sense of, like, this has to work. I am putting so much into this, it has to work. And working, obviously, equaled a certain amount of registrations, a certain amount of money.

So, in both of these instances—the novelist who is writing her next work; the entrepreneur who is selling the next iteration of her program—expectations are a weight. They are applying a pressure that is ultimately limiting. The pressure is bringing anxiety with it. The pressure to achieve a certain narrowly defined result is actually limiting their access to co-creativity. Yeah? So what I coached them—both of them—through was finding freedom from such a narrow, specific expectation. 

So here's the spell for freedom from expectations: I have no idea how this is going to work. So there are two pieces here: one, I have no idea how, like, I really don't know how, I am uncertain; and this is going to work. I have no doubt that whatever the results, they will ultimately work in my favor. They will help me. 

So it's holding a paradox—as you know, I love to do—but there's power in paradox because this is reality, yeah? So I think part of the reason that holding a very specific expectation fucks us over is that we are just too smart for that. We understand that the nature of reality is so fundamentally co-creative that we cannot possibly know what's going to happen, right? 

"I have no idea how. I don't really know what's going to happen. I don't know what other books will be released at the same time of my book release. I don't know what's happening in the news at the same time that my book is coming out. I don't know if the whole publishing staff of my publisher will go on strike. I don't know what's going to happen," our novelist might say, right? "I don't know. I have no idea what's going to happen." 

You've heard me say so many times on the podcast that where we are most powerful is in the present moment. The present moment, that's where we are. That's where we exist right here and now. This is where we have choices. This is where we can be responsive to our ideas and our environments and other beings, yeah? This right here, right now is where we are most powerful. 

And when we are expecting, when we are thinking about the specific thing that we want to happen in the future, we are pulling our attention out of the present moment, and we're projecting it into a specific future. We don't have any power there. There's no power there because we're not there, and because we don't know with what we are co-creating. So to embrace that "I have no idea how" is—I hope for you because it is for me—to kind of reel my attention back into this moment right here right now, and to get me resonating with and aligning with my ideas, my co-creators, my clients, my creative impulse. 

I don't know if you've ever sat to do artwork with a really little kid. Have you done that? [laugh] If you sit with a really little kid to do art—and you could be doing finger painting, you could be doing drawing—like guaranteed, whatever that small child creates is going to look amazing. [laugh] It's going to look so good because this child is in I-don't-know energy. They're just channeling creative expression, and whatever they draw is going to look incredible. 

Meanwhile, here I am, an adult, with this idea in my head, "oh, this is the thing that I want to put on the paper," and it never works. [laugh] It doesn't work because I've created this like, for me, impossible-to-execute expectation, and then it sort of messes with the choices I'm making in the moment. Have you had that experience? I wonder if that's just me. 

So this openness to "I don't know," this openness to uncertainty, "I don't know what's going to happen," right, it is so incredibly freeing, and not only is it freeing but it places us back in this moment where we do have the power to open up to inspiration, where we do have the power to align with our values and our feelings, yeah?

So my client who was preparing her launch, every time we went from, "Oh, I have to bring in this many people or that much money and this better work," right, everything would kind of get pressurized. And then every time we came back to this moment, like, "Why do you want to do this? Who do you want to talk to today? What do you want them to know today?" that's where the most empowered would flow through. 

And for any entrepreneurs out there, I want you to know, this is my trick for infusing a launch with life, with vivacity. Be here now. OK, you've got your plan, you've got whatever. But like today, where are your people today? What are they dealing with today? What are you experiencing today? How can you pull presence through? That is where the creative magic is, huh?

So "I don't know how," that embrace of uncertainty, that reclaiming of beginner's mind of wonder, like, listen, have you noticed that once upon a time long, long ago, when you hadn't yet proven anything, when you were just getting started, it was so much easier to create and to put something out there, wasn't it? It's like the little kid doing her drawing. 

It was like you putting things into the world for the very first time without any expectations of who you needed to be or what you needed to prove. If you can remember back to that time, that's what this spell can help you reclaim: that beginner-ness; that shrug, "I don't know. I have no idea how this is going to work out." And there is freedom and integrity in that. Humanity, there's a lot of humanity in that. You get to be a mere mortal [laugh] when you embrace that. "I don't know how." 

OK, so the second part of the spell, "this is going to work out," meaning, no matter what the result, no matter what happens, no matter what, this is going to work for me, it might appear as a failure. It might fail to meet my desired result. And, yet, I trust that it is working out for me. 

So my favorite espouser of this perspective is Oprah Winfrey. Like [laugh], google "Oprah Winfrey quotations failure," and you will find a treasure trove of these. I'm going to share just a few to embroider and elaborate this perspective, yeah? So here we go. 

Oprah: "There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction." She says, "There is no such thing as failure. Mistakes happen in your life to bring into focus more clearly who you really are." 

I don't know how this is going to work out. If this novel doesn't succeed, if this launch doesn't succeed, if this event doesn't succeed, if it doesn't conform to my narrow understanding of success, so be it. So be it. It will still work out for me. It's definitely going to help me learn, grow, align, to know who I am, to refine my approach, to help me adjust my course to where I really want to go. 

So this is very growth mindset, yeah? Carol Dweck in Mindset, which is all about growth mindset, talks about how valuable failure is. When things don't work out, we learn, we grow, we reassess so much, and that's what Oprah's quotations really embrace. 

OK, let me give you one more from Oprah. She said, "Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness." So there is this inherent worthiness that you have, that your creations have. 

Even if your painting isn't critically acclaimed now, who knows how it will be received in the future, right? Even if this program that you're launching doesn't work out, who knows what it will teach you about what to do next? So, in this place, there are only stepping stones to greatness because you are already great. You are a queen. 

Greatness is the entire path. You cannot get this wrong, and/but if we are expecting that there is one path that is so much better, so much more right than all of the others, then we get hesitant, even scared to step at all, yeah? 

OK. I know I said that was the last Oprah quotation, but I have one more. [laugh] I have one more. I have one more. Oprah says, "I don't believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process," meaning, if you can be here writing, and enjoying surfing the waves of creativity that enable writing; if you can be here selling a program that you believe in, connecting actively with people here, not by executing a tight plan that's asking for a tight result but being open to what comes up and what comes through; if you can, sitting there with the finger paints, enjoy the colors and the textures, and free yourself from an expectation, the better and better we can get at being in process rather than attached to a specific product, a narrowly defined result, the better we can get at being present, at trusting that it is all working out in our favor, that we exist in creative response, we're not in this alone. 

Of course, we can't ensure our success; no one can. We're all in this together with the news cycle, and the stock market, and the weather, and the asteroids hurtling around our solar system. The reality is I have no idea what's going to happen, I have no idea how, and I trust it's going to work.

So, there you go, hold that paradox to free yourself from expectation: "I have no idea how it's going to work." And I super hope that enables you to get very present with whatever creative impulse you are having, to get into process and away from product, to trust deeply that when you are open to possibility, to possibilities [laugh], to all that might happen, when you trust that it's all in your favor, then you are most consciously connected with aliveness, and most able to relax and enjoy or at least experience this ride. 

All right, my love, thanks so much for listening as always. Till next time.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. 

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time. 

End of recording