 people have kind of written a script for us in the way that they think we're going to interact with the world and it's really difficult for us to escape their script and to kind of take charge of that to kind of chart our own kind of narrative if you like. There's a whole ton of research on this you know a lot of it from education, looking at teachers' expectations of students and you know teachers should be quite good judges and often they are of like who are the more able students but they're still biased like everyone else they come with these assumptions and then you know they transmit those beliefs about someone's ability to that person where it becomes internalised and it can be you know it doesn't have to be someone being actively verbally nasty to a kid or a student or an employee it can just be like non-verbal cues like whether you you know whether they kind of look distracted and bored when you're speaking or whether they kind of nodding along if they give you enough time to finish a thought or whether they're just like dismissing you instantly and you know moving on to another point before you've really had a chance to develop what you were talking about you know all of those kind of cues are really important and what happens is that you know when you're treated in that way you begin to feel that you are not an effective agent yourself so increases your anxiety makes you feel you know less capable more demotivated and then that translates into your performance and that's you know that's incredibly sad actually that when you look at the data sometimes these teacher effects you know it can begin like quite early on and then it kind of escalates throughout the school because each you know once a kid starts underperforming then they're kind of it's going to create the expectation that they're going to always be you know kind of lower in the class so it's a real problem but there are ways to deal with that and one of my favourite exercises that people have shown can help you to overcome this is called self affirmation and that is again it sounds a bit kind of you know new agey kind of flaky pseudoscience but it's not like just repeating a mantra like I'm going to become rich I'm going to become rich it's like it's much more about trying to look at the things about yourself that you really know you value and it doesn't have to be related to the task at hand at all so if it's you know someone worried about their academic performance or public speaking or you know work performance just forget about that and try to focus on the other things you like about yourself so your sense of humour how good a you know son or daughter you are how caring you are how creative you are you know your music taste all of these things and then you kind of list maybe 10 pick one write a short essay about that in particular like why that value or that ability is so important for you and then that's it you can forget about it but what that's done is there is created this sense that you have a well a realisation in fact that you have all of these other resources it helps to increase that self-efficacy that might have been taken away by the other people around you and so what we see is that in education for example that can help these disadvantaged groups who are facing that um stereotype threat and that anxiety all of that that comes from this from others beliefs it can help them to kind of let go of that anxiety and so they actually start to perform consistently better when they perform this exercise regularly and I think for a lot of our clients who are into self-development they might not have friends or family members who are so into this or feel like this is an area that they want to strengthen and oftentimes they'll feel that the expectations of others will hinder them from sharing or wanting to take action or wanting to stretch their comfort zone and then the flip will happen they'll join a group like our x-factor accelerator be surrounded by people who have removed the expectations of what it would be like to land a sidewalk or remove the expectations about what it would be like to use the conversation formula with a stranger and come back the next week feeling like anything's possible in that environment when you're surrounded by people who are only talking about positive expectations removing the negative pessimism self-talk and expectation setting that are often found in in social groups or in our community or in our family who could be holding us back yeah that's it we really want to surround ourselves with those people who are not kind of pre-judging what you're capable of you know I hope and in my experience some people do kind of update their expectations of you other people don't and some people you know this is even shown in that research some people actually react very negatively when you kind of break away from the script and I don't know I don't have a good answer for how we kind of deal with those people but I think if you know they're coming from a bad place and then they're trying to you know subconsciously maybe but holding you back like we need to be really conscious of that effect they're having on us and make a kind of sensible decision about how to manage that relationship I think an important part is determining what side of you you feel comfortable sharing with them right and maybe this self-development side is not what you share with them you share your musical interests or you share your sports that you enjoy with them but you remove that pessimism or that negative effect that they have on this area of your life where you're really stretching yourself and look for other people coaches mentors or even other participants in coaching programs who are going through those same challenges with positive expectations of growth and you'll be able to see it's like fertilizer for your growth and your ability to perform in these moments I think there's a another aspect to it as well and there's there's a safety mechanism but the traps that come with setting up expectations and focused on the wrong things for a lot of people I think their peer group is an opportunity to measure themselves about what their expectations should be and or if they're chasing say happiness that we certainly there's a there's a book by our Russ Harris called the happiness trap and all about that which is if you're looking at if I'm looking at AJ and I'm like well AJ's happy so I need to be more like well like AJ and then all of a sudden I hear that AJ's on the self-development kick and he's growing and he's putting himself in these situations to grow now I have to follow that and maybe I'm too scared to do that so I don't want AJ to be doing those things because I want AJs to be next to me and happy so I could be happy right yeah I mean social comparison is like you know one of the number one things that kills joy and life satisfaction yes and so I think it's you know it's also important for us to recognize that we have this tendency ourselves like you say and so I think with our own self-development it can be useful to focus on your own trajectory more than focusing on how you compare to these other people because you're always going to be able to find someone else who's a bit more successful than you seems to be happier than you as richer than you know all of those things and that's not good for your satisfaction and I think it can be demotivating with your growth and we actually see that even with studies of exercise you know the kind of fit-spiration posts on Instagram like I'm sure they are useful for some people but for lots of people actually they're really demotivating at the gym and because by comparing yourself to someone who maybe has a slightly more toned than you know better abs like bigger muscles on their legs or whatever that negative comparison you're making between yourself and them that then reduces your perceptions of your own physical ability it actually makes the work out then that you do significantly harder and it reduces like it kind of damages your mood afterwards you don't have that run as high so yeah we have to be careful of our own self-comparison to others and I think like you say we should also be conscious of how other people might be perceiving our personal growth and whether we might be having the same effect on them