The Pathway To Your Results
This podcast has been helping individuals remember what they truly were capable of before they forgot. Host Derick "DG" Grant dives deep into spirituality, metaphyics, and other topics to help listeners regain power of their minds. Remember, Life is Mental.
The Pathway To Your Results
Letting Go of Expectations
This episode explores the relentless cycle of expectations and how they can create suffering in our lives. We discuss the power of living in the present moment and focusing on intentions instead. The conversation emphasizes that our perception of success is shaped by societal pressures and that letting go of these expectations allows for a more fulfilling life experience.
• Understanding the connection between expectations and suffering
• The importance of embracing the present
• How societal pressures shape our expectations
• Real-life examples of expectations leading to disappointment
• Strategies to live without expectations
• Encouragement to embrace life's unpredictability
Once you see what you actually are, that you're an infinite, limitless being, you'll see that nothing exists outside of you. I'm your host, derek Grant, and this is the Pathway to your Results Podcast. Bro, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Pathway Results podcast. It is your boy, dg. You know this is presented by DG Mindset, so don't act like you don't know that this podcast episode, this podcast episode, is for everybody out there who is struggling right now with creating suffering in their own life. If you are creating suffering in your own life, this is for you, and here's what I mean. If you're creating suffering in your own life because I know what you're probably thinking yourself, dg why would I ever suffer in my own life consciously? We do it all the time, all of your suffering. If you've got a pen, if you've got a piece of paper, please write this down. Please write this down, please, please, please and thank you. Please write this down. If you're driving, pull over, pull out your phone, go ahead and write this in there. If you are suffering right now, it is because expectations have not been met. If you are suffering right now, it's because expectations have not been met. Now. This is going to be kind of tough for some of us to hear, because you expected me to say something different. You expected yourself, maybe, not to be held responsible for this. Now I'm going to have to go ahead and say and shoot you straight, like I always do. I realized in my own life how much suffering I was creating. I was creating and the suffering that I was creating was because my ego, my mind, used one of my faculties of imagination and had conjured up this story, this outcome, this result of how we were going to get there and what it was going to look like and how it was going to feel and who was going to be there when we were at the top of the mountain. And then, all of a sudden, life says nah, that ain't it, brother, we got something else. And now I get to the top of the mountain or maybe I don't even get to the top of the mountain, I get halfway and I look at it and I'm like wait a minute, this isn't how I thought it was going to be. Expectations weren't met. The moment that the expectation wasn't met, the suffering was induced. And now the suffering creates survival. And now, because it creates survival, it actually feels more comfortable to be the victim of suffering than it does to be the victor and live in abundance. And we don't realize. We're so attached to the outcome of how it's going to show itself that we miss out on this thing that we call now.
Speaker 1:How many times you hear the old head say this Boy, I'm telling you, judge, that used to be the good old days. It used to be the good old days. Do we not know that you are in the good old days right now? You look back on your life when the kids were so little. Oh my gosh, the kids remember. They were babies. My wife does this all the time. We will see babies like oh, look at the babies, oh my gosh, look at them. What I wouldn't do just one time to hold them. You sure wasn't saying that when you was in it. You sure wasn't saying that when you was getting two hours of sleep a night and your nipples was chafed. You wasn't saying that when you was breastfeeding they was biting on you and we were tired and we needed sleep and we would have paid any amount of money just to get a nap, just to sleep six hours. We weren't saying it then. But now, isn't it funny, when we look back we say oh wow, these were the good old days.
Speaker 1:Man, here's my point. We miss out on the good old days right now that are happening, because we've developed expectations on what it's supposed to look like when we get there. You were brainwashed, you were programmed, somebody had convinced you that your life was supposed to look a certain way, your body was supposed to look a certain way, your finances were supposed to look a certain way, your finances were supposed to look a certain way. All of these things came with these boxes, these preconceived notions of how your life was supposed to look. And then you took these expectations and you took them as truth. And now, the moment that an expectation doesn't get met it never gets met. You feel disappointed, you feel like a failure, and now you can never learn and grow like you at the rate that you had the capability of growing at. It's the only reason why I'm saying this Let go of your expectations of what you think life should look like. Let go of them. Let go of them. This is the miracle, the beauty of life. This is the beauty of it. There was infinite ways we can get into the quantum mechanics. There's infinite possibilities. There's infinite realities. There's infinite ways. I don't think you understand what infinite means. Infinite, that means there is literally in infinity, a number of ways that this outcome can show itself.
Speaker 1:I'm sitting here on this podcast right now. If somebody would have told me when I was 10 years old I'd have a podcast, I'd look at them and say what the is that? What is a podcast? What are you talking about? If somebody would have told me six years ago I'd have a podcast, I'd say there's no way. Nobody wants to hear what I have to say. But here's what I didn't do. I didn't close my mind. I kept my mind open.
Speaker 1:So if you have expectations, you are closing your mind. Well, derek, what am I supposed to? Never, just, I'm never supposed to just like have goals. No, you can have goals, you can have intentions, but do not develop expectations as to how the goal is going to show itself or what it's going to look like, because all that's going to happen is your butt's going to suffer. So I have to remind myself of this.
Speaker 1:I know what the top of the mountain looks like, I know what it feels like, but my job is to focus each step, because with each step, the path will illuminate, the words will be filled in, the story will be written. You ain't going to be able to write the story from right now until the end. You're not going to be able to do that. Each word gets written as you walk, so your job is to focus on the walking. Your job is to focus on now. Your job is to focus on the process. The expectations I'm telling you right now. They'll never be met. How many times we do this? How many times we do this? How many times we do this? We develop expectations of what something's supposed to be like and then, when we go to do it or we have the opportunity, we're disappointed. But somehow, something when we exceed our expectations, it's because you really didn't have any expectations, because this was your first time doing it. You had nothing to compare it to.
Speaker 1:We do this with a restaurant. There's a place by our house called Burritos and Beer. Burritos and Beer. I know it's a weird name, I don't know, but it's some of the best food. Imagine Qdoba or Chipotle, whichever one you like Doesn't matter. I'm not trying to start an argument here. It's like Michael Jordan versus LeBron James. Who's the GOAT? We can go back and forth about Chipotle, qdoba, but I digress.
Speaker 1:This place called Burritos and Beer was right next to Subway and a couple of years ago, during COVID, I took the kids to get something to eat. So we were in Subway but Subway's line was crazy. It was crazy and I was just kind of becoming a vegetarian. So I'm like you know what? I'm going to go inside of this place called Burritos and Beer. I stumbled upon it, right, I go in there. I'm looking at them like damn, this is like authentic Mexican food, but with the fast food vibe, I've never seen anything like it, right. So I go in and order something.
Speaker 1:I forgot what I got. Maybe I got like a quesadilla, right, and there you can put anything you wanted, right, I get the quesadilla. I'm like yo, what the what is this goodness coming up out of this? I have never tasted such. I have never.
Speaker 1:My taste buds were having a festival. They were like yo, what is this? It was the best meal that I had ever had up until that point. And I'm like I tell Carly, I'm like yo, we got to go there. I'm telling you, you got to try it, you got to try it. It's the best thing I've ever tried. She's like burritos and beer. And I'm like, no, no, don't judge it. Don't judge it. She had it. She was like, oh my gosh, this is delicious.
Speaker 1:We went back there for the next three Saturdays straight, three straight weeks. Tell me why? Every time after that it was never as good as the first time, because the expectations will never get met. But the first time was so delicious because I had no expectations, I had no framework, I had nothing to compare it to. So why am I saying this? Because you don't have to develop expectations for your own life. This is why a lot of us get disappointed when we fail. We don't realize that we had expected to succeed, because we were comparing our lives to somebody else's standard. So this is why we were supposed to think outside the box, because the box came with expectations, the box came with perceptions, the box came with checkmarks and benchmarks of where you were supposed to be in your life.
Speaker 1:I'm here to tell you right now there are no expectations for you in this life, and now you get to experience the beauty of this thing called life. It is nothing more than a miracle. It's a miracle happening right now when you start to realize that if I can get rid of my expectations, I will experience the wonderment and the bliss of this experience that we call the human game. Oh, my goodness, I get to experience life as it is instead of how I think it should be. I need to go ahead and say that again, because y'all ain't trying to hear nothing. I'm saying you ain't picking up nothing that I'm dropping off right now.
Speaker 1:When you get rid of your expectations, you get to experience life as it is instead of how it should be. See, how it should be is future-based, but we know that there's no such thing as time. The only thing that exists is what we call now. So life is, life is so. When I get rid of my expectations, I get to experience the is-ness. I get to experience the quote-unquote good and the bad, because both of them are happening in this moment. Wow, look at the turmoil, look at the sadness I'm feeling, look at the anxiety that's going through my central nervous system right now, instead of saying dang, I didn't think I was going to be this scared, I didn't think I was going to be this nervous. You see, you had expectations and expectations. All it did was keep you in a loop of suffering. I'm here to help you to break yourself free. It's time to say I don't have expectations, I have intentions. I have intentions, I have clarity on where I want to go, but I'm going to let this beautiful thing that we call life take me there as I'm supposed to get there.
Speaker 1:It's like you're sitting on a river in a raft. You know where the end of the river is. You know where you're going to get off at. I never will forget. We were about to move.
Speaker 1:I was just finishing my sophomore year of high school. We're moving from Louisiana to New Jersey. We finished out school. So the last day of school for those sophomores because in Louisiana you could get your license at 16. So if you had a license, you could drive. The last day of school, everybody went tubing. Everybody went tubing and they went on this river. Right, the tubing was like four hours. Right, these kids I didn't drink, but they were underage, drinking everything. I'm like where are these parents at? I don't know, but that's a whole nother thing. So we're on this river. I'm like I'm going, it's my go out there for four hours in Louisiana in June we got out of school in June it was hotter than a mother.
Speaker 1:I'm going to tell you right now this is the first time that I learned that black skin can burn, I was asking myself because I'm laying on a tube on my back, I'm like dang, why my nipples hurt? Why take a shower? Why does it hurt when I take a shower? Because, yo, it's got burn. That's why you got sunburn. But anyway, I was on this river for four hours, four hours getting burnt up, and I didn't know where the river was going.
Speaker 1:I just knew that at some point everybody said look, there's going to be an end. You're going to get off and make sure you park your car here, because that's where you're going to be able to get. I knew that at some point I was going to be able to get off. I knew at some point I was going to reach my destination off. I knew at some point I was going to reach my destination. I knew at some point I was going to get quote unquote there. But my job was to focus on the here, and the here was that river. That river was just taking me. There was bends. There was times when it would turn left and it would turn right. There was times when it got shallow. There were times when it got deep. There was times when you had to get out and actually walk with it because it was too shallow, because you were dragging. There were times that the river showed me all of these different capabilities that it had of this water to go down towards the destination.
Speaker 1:Do we not know that you were on the river of life? You're on the river of life, as my father used to tell me. He said, son, don't ever be in a hurry to run downhill. Don't ever be in a hurry to paddle downstream. Life's going to take you there. Don't ever be in a hurry to paddle downstream, life's going to take you there. Your job is just to enjoy it. Your job is just to learn. Your job is to be in the now, the isness of life. But you can't do that when you have expectations.
Speaker 1:So I started doing an audit of my life and I realized that every disappointment that I've ever encountered was because I had an expectation Coming out of college. Coming out of college, I was conference player of the year, I was regional player of the year, I was all American. I had all these accolades that developed an expectation in my mind I'm either going to be in the NBA, I'm going to be over in Italy making half a million, $750,000 a year. I'm going to drive a Maserati. I had written everything out. You see, that's the other thing we've got to realize. We create vision boards and we attach ourselves to the vision board, and the vision board creates expectation.
Speaker 1:And now, the moment that it looks like it's not going to happen, your behind starts to suffer instead of just allowing the malleability of life to take you in the direction that you were supposed to go at that moment, because maybe your soul needed to learn something at that bend in the river of life. So now here I am. I have these expectations. I go to one camp try and get a pro contract. I don't get a pro contract by the time I leave. Now I'm disappointed. Now I'm questioning my ability. Now I'm down on myself. Now I'm wondering is this going to happen? I go to another camp don't get a pro contract. Now I'm even further down in the dumps. I go to another camp. Same thing happens again.
Speaker 1:I went to six camps that summer, six camps. By the time I got done with the six camp, I was in such a low state, I was so down on myself. I was so my self-worth and self-acceptance and self-validation was in the gutter, all because I had expectations of what my life was supposed to look like and how it was supposed to go. Then I finally did get a job. That job was paying me $30 a game. I played 30 games a month. You go do the math. There's only usually 30 or 31 days in a month. I did. I played 30 games for $30 a game. So roughly my check would be about $900 before taxes. And I did this for about eight months and I will forget. I was probably about two months in.
Speaker 1:My father came to visit me. I've told this story before, but for those of us who never heard it, my father came to visit me. We were sitting in a hotel. I'm 22 years old 23 actually. I just broke down. I started crying. I broke down.
Speaker 1:At that moment it was a son with his father. I felt so worthless. I felt like a failure. I felt like I let him down, let my family down. They supported me, they invested in me. So I go to these camps and here I am now, coming home with about $750 a month. $750 a month.
Speaker 1:I was sitting in the hotel with him. I just break down, I start crying. He looks at me. He says son, what's the matter. I said man, this is how I thought it was going to look. He said wait, hold on now. You remember when you were 10 years old and you wrote down that you want to be a professional basketball player. I said, yeah, but I'm supposed to be in Italy making all this money. He goes wait, hold on. Are they paying you right now? I said yeah, but he goes hold on. So if you're getting paid to play basketball, that makes you a professional.
Speaker 1:At that moment he expanded my perspective just enough for me to allow my expectations to dwindle, for me to let go. So the reason why I'm saying this you develop these expectations of yourself. Sorry, you've adopted these expectations for you of what you thought life would look like, because you thought if you met those expectations, that would make you enough. Y'all ain't trying to hear nothing.
Speaker 1:I'm saying right now this is why you have expectations, because the expectations were developed by the ego, so there would be a sense of enoughness. But if you realize you will never be enough through the ego, that means the expectations will never get met. You ain't never going to meet the expectations. It was like the carrot dangling in front of the donkey. You ain't never going to get it. And if you do reach it, it was like the dog chasing the tail You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. You sit here and chase that tail all you want. You'll never catch it. And if you do catch it and you bite that mother, guess what? You're going to be howling to the moon, because it was your tail that you bit.
Speaker 1:These expectations that we have adopted culturally, religiously, spiritually, financially, socioeconomically we have developed and taken on these expectations. And all the expectations were just another magic trick of the ego to make you think that when the expectations had been met, then you would finally be good enough, you'd finally be enough for your religion, you'd finally be good enough for your parents, you'd finally be enough for what society says, you would finally have enough money. You ain't never going to have enough money until you realize there was no such thing as enough, there was no such thing as an expectation being met. So that's why I'm telling you set the goal, set the intention and drop the expectations. And then here's what's going to happen You're going to hit that mother goal.
Speaker 1:You're going to hit it. And when you hit that goal, guess what you're going to do? You're going to look back of where you started, and now you're going to come from a place of celebration instead of expectation. You're going to come from a place of being proud instead of being disappointed, because you never had an expectation. And then you're going to start to see the series of consequences excuse me, this series of sequences that had to have taken place for you to achieve this, for you to get to this point, and you're going to start to see God dang. For you to get to this point and you're going to start to see God dang. This was in my destiny. This was in my destiny. This was in my life's path. It was supposed to be this way. So this is why I'm here to tell you and give you encouragement on this part of your journey, on this part of your life path. Good God, almighty. If this ain't the spirit speaking, I don't know what is. Whatever you have encountered, whatever you have gone with, gone through, it doesn't matter. If you get rid of those expectations that you had, you will start to see that all of this was divinely working out for just exactly how it was supposed to be.
Speaker 1:I wasn't supposed to make it to the NBA. I wasn't supposed to make it and play overseas. I was supposed to play for the Harlem Globetrotters. I was supposed to travel and go on Good Morning America and the Today Show and do all of these. I was supposed to do that because later in life, when I had gone through my sacred wound, my spiritual awakening, I could take the information and the experiences from that stint with the Globetrotters of being able to walk into a room and talk to anybody, being media trained, having the awareness of different perspectives of how people live life. So now, when I actually got on my soul's mission, I actually got on my grizzly and started to live my life in an authentic way that resonated with me, instead of living how the world wanted me to live. When I started doing that, I would have the tools, the capabilities to be able to live fully through this. So this is why my mom good God almighty, margo Leguette Grant I know you listen to this right now she used to always tell me she used to say ain't nothing wasted, ain't nothing wasted, Ain't nothing wasted.
Speaker 1:When you get rid of those expectations, you will see how little, not how little how nothing gets wasted in your life. Everything in your life is always leading you to the next thing. But when you got those expectations, you're blinded. You can't see it. I'm here to tell you something you don't need those expectations. I promise you this. I will promise this. As the old folks used to say, I'll swirl full low.
Speaker 1:If you can get rid of these expectations and you can enjoy the fulfillment of this moment that we call now, you will start to see that these miracles, these synchronicities, these divine orchestrations were always around you, leading you to the next point of your river of life. You will start to see I'm going to get to where I have to be when I need to be there. I may not need to be there right now. I may not need to be there. Good God, almighty, I may not need to be there right now. It may not be my time right now. That doesn't mean that it's not going to happen. It's just a not yet. Maybe I have to go through some experiences. Maybe I have to go through some situations so I can gain experience.
Speaker 1:I wasn't supposed to get to the NBA. I can look back now and tell you why I wasn't supposed to get to the NBA. I wasn't supposed to get to the NBA because I needed to help others who were already in the NBA, from a level that I would not have been able to if I had not taken the life path that I took in this life. So I'm here to tell you this your higher self already knew which way it needed to go. Your job was to trust. Your job was to trust, but you can't trust when you got expectations. I'm here to tell you this. I'm a living testament of this. I can only speak from experiences that I've had.
Speaker 1:Get rid of them, expectations, and you will see the fulfillment of life. You will start to see that all of your suffering was because you expected an outcome. That's the fear. That's the fear. Y'all ain't trying to hear nothing. I'm about to get off this. I'm about to get off. Y'all ain't trying to hear anything I'm saying. That's why you're afraid. You are afraid because the situation that you have conjured up in your mind won't be what you thought it should be. That, my friend, is what we call an expectation. If I get rid of the expectation and I walk in this energy of whatever it's supposed to be, it's going to be, if I walk in that energy, watch how this mother universe conspires, conspires to see that you get there, because you're going to get there. You're going to get there regardless. But when you start to see, without expectations, you come out. That's why you think they used to do this in church. Right, they get your arms open, you wide open. I'm open. I got no expectation. I'm coming fully vulnerable. I'm trusting that this river of life, the current of life, is going to take me wherever I'm supposed to go, and that is my responsibility. I need to stop being so doggone, nosy.
Speaker 1:I'm telling everybody here, the universe source, creator, whatever you refer to it, imagine him sitting here like, oh, we got it all planned out. Yep, we got Cassandra's life all planned. Look, I'm telling you, look, she's going to go here, she's going to go. Wait, what'd you say? She's what. She's developed expectations With that little pea brain she has. Well, why is she? Does she know what's coming? She has no idea because she's still operating through time. Right, unbelievable. Are we over here trying to give her her blessings? Is she over here? This is what. Imagine that, imagine that. So this is why I keep telling you you need to let go, you need to let go, let go, let go, trust, let go, trust, let go, trust, trust, trust. You're going to get there. You're going to get there, but you got to let go. You got to let go, you got to let go. And I know it's scary, I know it's scary. I know it's scary Because the same thing that created your suffering was also the same thing that created your comfortability as well.
Speaker 1:See, those expectations are what made you feel comfortable. It made you feel safe. That's why some of us excuse me if I trigger you some of us walk around here as some control freaks. We walk around trying to control every little thing. So that way, if I can control it, if I have expectations, maybe I'll be safe, because maybe I grew up in a time or in a household where there was no control and then we developed this autonomous mechanism to stay safe. Now, to stay safe by controlling and develop expectations. Wait, wait, hold on. To stay safe by controlling and developing expectations. Wait, wait, hold on. Heal that wound. Heal that wound and then you can release the expectations and the control.
Speaker 1:Life is going to take you where it needs to go. Trust that, trust it. Look where you are today, look where you were 10 years ago. You couldn't have written this out. Somebody said we'll give you a billion dollars if you can tell us the exact path from 10 years ago, you couldn't have written this out. Somebody said we'll give you a billion dollars if you can tell us the exact path from 10 years out. You couldn't do it. You can't tell me what's going to happen here in three hours, but you try to figure out what's going to happen in two weeks. You can't tell me what's going to happen, matter of fact. You can't even tell me what you're going to eat for dinner on Thursday, but you will sit here and plan out your life 10 years from that.
Speaker 1:Life can change like that. One moment it may look like you ain't got two nickels to rub together, and the next minute you may be swimming in financial abundance, taking care of everyone in your family. Sometimes you got to remind yourself that it don't take long to change when we understand the law of polarity. You have the negative, you have the positive. If my life can change for the negative like that, through an unfortunate consequence, do we not know that the same energy must exist on the positive end, on the abundant end? Why don't you just walk in now, focus on the isness of now. The isness of now, because life is now and this, my friends, is how you eliminate your suffering. This is how you start to live from a place of alignment and abundance.
Speaker 1:Good God, almighty, y'all ain't trying to hear nothing. I'm saying Get rid of the expectations. And I'm telling you as an entrepreneur, I'm telling you as the provider of the family, I'm telling you as somebody who is super driven I have to get rid of my expectations. It's a daily battle. I got goals, I got dreams, I got places to go that I want to go. I got intentions, but I've let go of the expectations of how it's going to show itself. Good God, almighty.
Speaker 1:I bet you use the metaphor, the story when Moses got to the Red Sea and the Israelites were chasing sorry, the Egyptians were chasing the Israelites and he didn't know where he was going to go and Pharaoh was going to kill him. He got to the edge of that water. He didn't know what was going to happen. He probably didn't know how it was going to show itself, but he knew he was going to be delivered. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt God was going to come through. He didn't know how it was going to show itself. He never could have guessed that the seas was going to be split so he could walk down it. He probably thought God's going to make a raft. God's going to do something. God's going to be. You're going to do something. He'll get me to float on the water. Never did he think that he put his staff down and the ocean was split. Do we not know the metaphor of what that was supposed to say?
Speaker 1:Keep yourself open to the infinite possibilities of how these miracles and how these situations and how these experiences and how these relationships can show themselves, so you can continue down your river of life and don't worry about where the river life is taking you. Sometimes it has to take you through the turbulent water. Sometimes it'll take you to the shallow water. Sometimes it'll take you through a shallow water. Sometimes it'll take you to a deep water, just like it was when I was on that tube going down that river, but I trusted I was going to get to the end at some point. The same goes for you, my friend. So enjoy the scenery. You're in the good old days right now. You're in them right now. I'm here to tell you you are in the good old days. It don't matter what your life looks like. You are in the good old days right now. You're in them right now. I'm here to tell you you are in the good old days. It don't matter what your life looks like. You are in the good old days right now Because, even when I went through my sacred wound, I lost everything.
Speaker 1:I was financially bankrupt. I didn't know what I was going to do. I contemplated even taking my own life. Even now I can look back on that. That said, come on, d, you know what you're here to do. You know what you're here to do. Get on that grizzly. Get on it. Do it now.
Speaker 1:We lost everything. There is no attachment anymore. There is no expectation. You at the bottom, you at the seafloor. There's nowhere else but up, get on your horse, get back up and do what you've been put here to do. So now I can tell you here, sitting here with you on this podcast, sharing space and time, on retreats, having the opportunity to mentor and coach you, doing the power hours every week in the community. I'm here to tell you good God, almighty, even that hard thing, even that challenging thing, was the greatest thing that has ever happened. So let's get rid of those expectations, keep those intentions, focus on the isness of now and eliminate that suffering so you can enjoy this human experience. I shouldn't say eliminate suffering, maybe minimize it, because suffering is needed. It lets you know that you're still human. So keep going, keep going. Don't expect for what it's going to be like, but just keep going, and I wish you nothing but the best on the pathway to your results.