Have you ever felt that knot in your stomach before giving a presentation?
Or that wave of anxiety when launching a new project?
Or maybe you’ve hesitated to share your ideas because you were afraid they wouldn’t be “good enough”?
For years, I’ve worked with countless clients who suffer from performance anxiety, fear of public speaking, or paralysis when trying to start a new venture. And almost without fail, we discover the same thing lurking beneath these fears: the dread of not living up to others’ expectations.
But here’s something that might surprise you: not living up to expectations doesn’t actually cause fear.
How do I know this? Well, my kids have absolutely no fear of not living up to my expectations (unfortunately!). And this reveals something profound about the nature of our fears.
Let me walk you through a little exercise that will make this point clear.
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine you’re a small child. Your mom or dad looks at you disapprovingly and says, “I’m very disappointed in you.” Or perhaps they use that tone and ask, “Couldn’t you do better than this?”
They’ve just pointed out that you didn’t meet their expectations. And you can sense their unhappiness with you.
In that moment, as that young child, would you feel loved or unloved?
This is the key insight: It’s not failing to meet expectations that created the fear. It was feeling unloved by the people on whom your survival depended that created it. And the only reason we still feel that fear today is because, as children, we never made that distinction.
That’s how we got conditioned to fear something that is not truly a threat to our survival.
Now, try something different. Close your eyes again and imagine this scenario (which is actually a true story):
Imagine Morty (my late husband) is your dad, and he comes to you and says exactly what he said to our daughters: “You are not here to live up to our expectations—Mom’s and mine. You are here to do your life, and we are here to guide you and keep you safe until you can do that on your own.”
With that foundation, now imagine going to school, and a teacher says, “I’m very disappointed in you. You did not live up to my expectations.”
Would you feel fear? No.
Why? Because you would never have associated fear with not meeting another’s expectations.
When our daughter Brittany was 14 years old, she started high school just after we moved to California. One day, a teacher told her, “I’m disappointed in you.” Brittany looked at her and said, “With all due respect, I am not here to live up to your expectations. I’m here to get an education, and you are here to give me one.”
The teacher called me afterward, amazed. She said no student had ever spoken to her that way. But there was something refreshing about it, too.
Here’s what I’ve discovered:
When you’re afraid of not living up to expectations, your focus is entirely on yourself.
Am I going to be okay?
Am I doing this right?
What will they think of me?
But when you release that fear, something beautiful happens. Your focus shifts outward. When I finally eliminated this fear from my life, I noticed my attention moved to my clients—to you. I stopped worrying about what others might think or if I was meeting their expectations. Instead, I focused on serving, on enjoying my life, on being a contribution, on nurturing whole relationships, on being supportive.
If you say to me, “Shelly, you made a contribution to my life,” I’m ecstatic. If you say, “You didn’t live up to my expectations,” I simply respond, “Okay, can you tell me more?” No fear, no anxiety—just curiosity.
When you realize you’re not here to live up to people’s expectations—that you’re here to live your life and have your excellent adventure—you become so much freer.
How to Eliminate the Fear of Not Meeting Expectations
If this resonates with you, and you find yourself still struggling with the fear of not meeting expectations, I’d like to invite you to explore our Natural Confidence program. It includes a specific section designed to help you eliminate this fear for good—along with 19 limiting beliefs that may be holding you back.
Imagine showing up in life without the weight of others’ expectations on your shoulders. Imagine focusing entirely on your contribution, your joy, and your purpose instead of worrying about being “enough” for someone else.
That freedom is possible. And it’s waiting for you.
Visit www.NaturalConfidenceProgram.com to learn more about how you can eliminate these beliefs once and for all.
