“I expected to be further along than this.”
“I expected to be smarter, richer, healthier by now.”
When I start a story it’s rarely the story I expected it to be. It’s usually brilliant in my mind and much less so when I finally type it out.
Instead of griping about it, I had to learn to lower my expectations. This doesn’t mean I’m not ambitious, I continue to strive to improve in all aspects of the craft, but I don’t limit myself by putting forward expectations that will deflate me.
I’ve seen too many creative people kill their dreams and hamper their goals due to high expectations. They get so focused on what ideal they’d expected to see that they don’t see what they’d accomplished.
“I expected to have a traditional publishing contract after writing six manuscripts.” Well you have six manuscripts that you didn’t have before. That’s an accomplishment.
“I expected to be making more money by now.” If people are paying you at all for your craft that’s better than most.
Again, this is a minor attitude shift to keep you on the journey. Expect something small.
There’s nothing wrong with hitting tiny goals.
I always expect to have another fun day of writing, it’s not a huge expectation but something I can achieve and makes life that much more interesting.
So what tiny thing can you expect?
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