“Where your expectation goes, your life will follow.” Tamara Joy Scott.

Welcome to Midlife Woman Redefined, a podcast for women near retirement who are ready to step into a new chapter of freedom, travel, and fulfillment. If you’re ready to focus on figuring out who you are and what you really want, this is the place for you. Here’s your host, master certified life coach, travel addict, and midlife maven, René Washington.

Hello, mavens, this is C. René Washington and we are here for another episode of Midlife Woman Redefined. And, as you know, we are in the midst of talking about fear. And today, I want to talk a little bit about the difference between entitlement and expectation, so that you are very clear on what you want to ask for in your life and not be afraid to go for it.

Before we do that, we celebrate. Take a moment to think about something that you can celebrate about yourself, something that you’ve personally accomplished or achieved that’s specific to you, not someone other than you like your children, friends, partner; something that you’ve done.

I am celebrating coming to the end of an amazing year with so much clarity on how I want to enter this upcoming decade. I’ve gotten a lot of clarity on my business, my personal life, and making sure that – you know, life is never perfectly balanced, but that I am walking and moving in alignment I want everything in my life to align with my purpose for being here and with my enjoyment in being here. So I am so excited about that.

So, what can you celebrate? And this is the month of celebration, right? We are in the midst of big religious holidays, Hanukkah, my faith is Christian, so Christmas is coming. And you’re listening to this episode – it comes out a week before December 25^th, which is the Christian holiday for Christmas.

And regardless of your faith, this is a month where there’s a lot of celebrating, getting together, a lot of exchanging of gifts. And this thing about entitlement and expectation – so you may have some expectations about giving and receiving this month.

So I want to tell you a funny little story about entitlement that’s personal to me. This happened, probably, over a year ago, when McDonalds changed their menu to allow you to be able to buy breakfast all day.

And I’m not a McDonalds fan, but I do like their Egg McMuffin. It’s a quick little thing if I’m in a rush and haven’t had time to prepare my own breakfast, I can get that on the go and I can feel pretty good about eating it. My husband and I go through the drive-through line and I ask for the Egg McMuffin.

It’s probably 11 o’clock, and the breakfast menu used to end at 10:30. So I asked for the Egg McMuffin and I’m told it’s too late to get it, they’re not selling it. And I just, “What do you mean you’re not selling it” And I went into this little rant because McDonalds has been advertising breakfast all day, why can’t I get the Egg McMuffin?

And I’m told, “Mam, I’m sorry, you can’t get it here at this location.” I was mad, so mad. I was a little nasty about it. That’s typically not how I roll, you know. I felt bad about it. It owned me. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I had acted about a doggone Egg McMuffin.

The next day, I went back to that McDonalds and went inside and I apologized to them. I said, “I don’t know who was listening to me yesterday, but if someone was on that drive-through window and they remember a woman complaining about not being able to get an Egg McMuffin, it was me.”

And I heard somebody in the back say, “Oh yeah, I remember.” And so I apologized. But it was just funny to me how quickly I went into that entitlement mode. I want an Egg McMuffin and I should be able to get it because I deserve to have what I want.

And when we hear the word entitlement, particularly in American culture, it’s usually connected to racism, white entitlement, that type of thing. But all of us that have – I’ll just say that it can show up anywhere, with anybody. And it’s expectation that’s not based in reality, that’s not based on anything real. That’s entitlement.

There are some things though that I do believe we are entitled to. And as I thought about this, what am I actually entitled to? And I’m entitled to saying no to any thing, situation, or person that feels wrong for me. I’m entitled to that.

I’m entitled to having boundaries and having them respected. I’m entitled to do what I feel is best for my life, not what you think I should do. I’m entitled to choosing whatever that good thing is for me. I’m entitled to not feeling guilty for choosing me over you. And I’m entitled to not feeling guilty because my choices are different from yours.

Those entitlements are grounded in reality, the reality of who I am and how I want to show up in the world. And so we have expectations. We have expectations and those expectations, again, should also be grounded in reality and they should come from within.

When we start placing expectations on what we believe other people should be doing, that’s when we trip ourselves up. What do you expect for your life? As the opening quote said, because what you expect, that’s what you receive. If you expect things to not go well for you, most likely, they won’t.

It’s not anything magical. It’s because that’s how you will move yourself through the world, expecting things to go wrong. And so you will go down paths to make that become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I expect to enjoy my days full-tilt. I expect to live a grand romance with Mr. Washington. I expect my coaching offers and programs to be filled with fabulous women. I expect to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. I expect to meet Barack and Michelle Obama ne day because, as I have these expectations, that’s where my thoughts will go, that’s where my feelings will go, and that’s where my behavior will go.

And, well, some of those specific things are going to happen, but whether they do or not, something good is going to happen. It may look totally different than what I expected because our vision is limited. Our vision is limited and I have learned an experience that, for me, in my faith walk, God always gives beyond what I can see, what I can envision.

But what is for me to do is to keep stepping toward my expectations. And that’s what I’m encouraging you to do. Set your expectations big. Move toward them. Set them big and move toward them.

I love planning to expectation, and then intuitively following that nudging that ends up superseding my expectations. Where your expectation goes, your life will follow.

And let me tell you, sisters, I am enjoying the hell out of this journey and I literally mean enjoying the hell out of my journey. I’m letting shit go continuously, and that’s why I am telling you this every week. Let your shit go. Enjoy the hell out of your journey so that you can have the best life that you dream about.

So, what are you expecting? What are you expecting? I saw a man – I don’t know if you are familiar with Tamron Hall, the NBC court journalist who has her own talk show now. And I saw this man on her show talking about it – I’m sorry, his name just escaped me. I’ll try to include that in the show notes because he has an amazing story.

He was an NFL football player and he’s also a magician. And as a child, I think he was 10 years old, as he went off to school, he looked back and saw his dad standing in the driveway and when he returned home, he and his sister found out that the dad had killed their mother, and killed her in a gruesome fashion.

And he went, from there, he ended up in therapy, which was very helpful for him. An somebody told him about football as a way to work out his aggressions, his anger, because you could hit people in football and get away with it. So he became a really good professional football player.

And then he had this heart problem, had to quit football, and in the meantime, he had picked up magic. It calmed him down. And so now he goes around doing motivational talks and magic. Just an amazing story.

But in the worst of circumstances, you know, to find out that your dad kills your mom, he talked about choosing happiness. Because Tamron Hall said, you know, “When you talk about this, you’re pretty calm.” And he just really talked about how much therapy had helped him and how he continues to choose to enjoy life, to choose to be happy in spite of and because of.

We always have a choice. We always have a choice. What are you expecting? Are you expecting things to go well for you? Are you expecting things to go badly for you? When things do go badly for you, or if they do, what do you expect? Do you expect to rise above it? Do you expect to walk in resilience?

What do you expect? Because that’s how your actions will then direct you. We rise or fall to our level of expectation. What are you expecting? I hope whatever you are doing in this month of December, whatever you are celebrating, whatever you are excited about – and I hope you are excited about your life.

And if you are not, there is help for that. There’s therapy, there’s coaching, counselling. Get the help you need. Surround yourself with people who have high expectations for this blessing of like that we’ve been given.

So, I wish you all the best. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate Christmas. Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate Hanukkah, and just the best of everything to all of you. I love you, mavens, and I’m looking forward to a wonderful new year and new decade.

Remember, mavens, living well is our only option. And if something in this episode lit you up, resonated with you, take a few moments and gift me the honor of leaving me a review and a rating. I would so deeply appreciate it.

The instructions for that are in the show notes. And if you are not subscribed, be sure you hit that subscribe button too. Peace, joy, and love to all of you.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Midlife Woman Redefined. If you’re ready to learn more and reclaim your time, head over to crenecoach.com.