Patrick Mosher describes how unrealistic expectations drained his energy while building a website in Kajabi. A coach redirected him from finishing the site to generating ten questions instead, which unlocked progress. He argues that shifting expectations from immediate output to structured learning preserves motivation on big goals.
Chapters
I was learning how to build my own website, which I've never done before in my life. And I said, "You know what? I'm going to do this." So I said, "You know, I've heard people say this is so easy, you can put it up in an afternoon." So I said, "I'll set aside 2 hours and do my website." And I got into this new system and I was learning things and over here, and I got so frustrated and I said, I gave up after 3 or 4 hours. Then I'd walk away and then I'd get frustrated. A week later, I'd come back to this thing called Kajabi and I'd look at it and the ball was back at my feet. I rolled that ball up a hill and it was back at my feet. I couldn't remember anything from 2 weeks ago when I started this thing. Then I'd say, "Okay, I need to learn this. I'm going to set aside a half day for this time." I roll up that ball for half a day and I'm so frustrated that I can't get it done. I go, "You know what? I need to just give up today." I walk away. A week later, I walk there. The ball is at the bottom of the hill again. Have you ever had that kind of experience? I'm sure you have. We all have. Where you get so frustrated rolling a ball up a hill and it comes back down at your feet. Well, at the time I had a coach, a certified high-performance coach, and I bounced this one off of her and I said, "You know, I'm really having troubles with this." And she gave me this great advice, this great sage advice. She said, "You know, Instead of having a goal of getting it done, the next time you sit down, have a goal of generating 10 questions for a coach. Wow! I went into that next session, I was like, I'm not trying to get this thing done, I'm just trying to generate 10 questions. So I had my little sheet on the side and I, oh, I have a question about that, I have a question about that, I had a question about that, and I listed those 10 things out. And then I found a coach, I enlisted a great coach, she might actually be on this call, and I said, "Hey, I have these questions." And she's like, "Okay, here's blah, blah, blah, blah, I just faced these 2 weeks ago." And she answered the questions and I'd go back at it and I was like, "Okay, next time I'm going to spend half a day and I'm going to generate 10 more questions." So I did that, generated 10 more questions because what happened was is that I changed my expectations for the result. My expectations for the result went from getting it done to generating questions. That was so good. So my first challenge in your big audacious goal that you've got is to create a learning plan. And sometimes in the beginning part of this, the learning is more important than the getting it done part. What do you need to learn? What do you need to learn? So with that big audacious goal that you have, what do you need to learn? And I've got this quote for you, write this down: "Your expectations are where your energy leaks the most." Your expectations are where your energy leaks the most. Meaning, I want to get this thing done, and then you go into this thing and it doesn't happen, and then you're like, "Oh, screw it." The issue isn't how hard the thing was, The issue is that you had an unrealistic expectation. Ah, your expectations are where your energy leaks the most. Yes, yes, go with that.
