"Expect everything and attach to nothing.”

Carrie Campbell

Funny thing. I thought I have the expectations topic thought through and all my convictions about it are well established. The main one is: expect nothing, as the more you expect the higher probability, that you will end up being disappointed. For years I’ve been trying to fight my expectations with more or less success. The more expectations I remove from my life the more proud I am of myself. The general idea is that I won’t get disappointed or heartbroken because of somebody’s actions, because I didn’t expect anything in the first place. Whenever I start expecting something I give myself a slap on the wrist trying to get rid of this feeling. It’s a self preservation thing. Also the less I expect, the more chances are of a pleasant surprise (and I like pleasant surprises).

So this is a new concept, that I would like to explore further. Expect everything, but attach to nothing. 

 

At this point let’s assume that the expectations aren’t really a bad thing. On the contrary, setting high expectations is setting high standards. Without high standards human beings tend to settle down for mediocrity or position themselves as life victims. And when the good standards are set it’s easier to build the life we want.

It’s really the outcome, the specific result, that we should avoid building in our minds after each expectation is set. And this is the hard part. We’re human, so we imagine things. When the imagination kicks in, we like to create these perfect scenarios, where everything goes exactly as we have planned. The sky is blue and the sun is shining and we’re singing with the birds like a Disney princess who is just one step of meeting and marrying her Prince Charming. Well, the real world is not a Disneyland, the Prince Charming can always be late or not a great husband material and on top of that a thunderstorm might appear when least expected and ruin the whole scenery. These things happen in life and they’re not always pretty. The main idea is to except what happened, make the best out of it and move on to the new (and sometimes a lot better) outcome. 

 

Creating a plan is crucial for any big undertaking – it gives purpose, structures the activities and keeps the timelines working. But space for the unknown must always be a part of it. You cannot really predict the actual outcome of event the most meticulously planned project.

A tip of the day. Keep in mind ideas and standards, strive for them and aim for the best, but always mark your final plan with an *

*This may end up in a completely different way.

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

Steve Jobs

Today will be about HR. I recently went to Paris to attend a Corporate Research Forum conference: Recourcing – How HR’s Core Competence is Evolving where I was exploring how the talent attraction nowadays shifts from “recruiting and hiring” to “advertising and engaging”. We all hear it's an "employee market" out there and companies must prepare for it. But what does it really mean?

According to Anthony Robbins, who made some extensive research by questioning approximately 3 million people, we can identify 6 basic human needs, that we fulfill daily in different ways. These needs are the core reasons for each decision we make in life and the more aware of them we are the more resourceful decisions we can make and the easier it is for us to create an inner peace and sustainable state of happiness.

The 6 core needs are:

Needs of the Personality

- Certainty (we need to feel safe and in control)

- Uncertainty or Variety (we like being surprised by life, need the change and challenges)

- Significance (we need to feel special, like we matter to the world)

- Love and Connection (people are important for us as we need to be connected, we have a need of loving and being loved by others)

Needs of Spirit

- Growth (the need for constant emotional, intellectual and spiritual development)

- Contribution (we want to give to the world, leave our mark on others’ lives).

Companies these days do a lot in order to meet these basic needs of their employees. The big HR strategies are being created to make sure, that people feel safe in their work environments and have new things to deal with in order to not get burned out or bored. Awarding systems are reflecting sense of meaning and importance of the employees. Connecting people together, feeling “like a family” is what keeps them in their positions for a longer time.

The needs of spirit are also being more and more addressed by employers: extensive learning & development portfolios offer variety of ways to grow and improve and the activities like best practice sharing and volunteering (very popular especially in big UK corporations) are becoming number one priorities for candidates who search for a new job.

People want to work, where they can see the point of their contribution. They are no longer just earning money, they want their work to be meaningful with a clear purpose. That’s why Employer Branding activities are more and more required in big companies.

Nowadays companies build something called external talent pipelines, which is basically connecting with people via social media like LinkedIn or Glassdoor, contacting them on a regular basis (like once in half of a year) and just checking how their careers are going. They don’t offer any jobs, just stay in touch. It's a smart long term hiring strategy. You invest your time and interest in a person, you network with them and then, when the right time comes and you have a suitable position, you know exactly where to go to find a talent to fill it in. On the other side, the talent is already connected, already knows you and somehow can trust that this position is something they should be interested in. 

I believe this is where the recruiter's role will be shifting in the future, as even now, with today's research we're already aware, that the AI can better (and more objectively) assess a person during an interview than a person, which means that the future of a typical interviewing will actually belong to robots, not humans.

Connection is everything these days. The world is full of opportunities and the great way to benefit from them is staying connected and being open to new challenges. That's how we learn, aquire new skills and become better talents - the ones worth showing up in somebody's external pipeline. 

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” 

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

This quote resonates so well with me. When I was younger, I always thought that what we experience is just another part of our lives, and whatever happens, we move on and continue to live as we had lived before the experience occurred. Looking back, I have no idea how such an insane idea could come to my mind. Or maybe I just never really thought about it and only now, in my thirties, when I finally started to reflect on what I’m doing and how it impacts my life, it became relevant and important.

Every major experience brings us to a point in life when there’s no return to our old selves and beliefs. It literally changes the core of our beings irreversibly. The more influence it has on us personally (and by that I mean emotionally, as the whole world is built on emotions – but that’s the topic for a different episode ;)) the more impactful it will be to our consciousness.  

I like this feeling. To see new possibilities opening up, new paths I can follow, new standards I can live up to. It’s exhilarating.

Each day I realize more and more how it doesn’t make sense to carry on with a plan that isn’t working out, when a better solution exists, and that it’s really better to adjust to reality, rather than forcing incorrect patterns or habits just because they felt right at some point. Life is a non-stop changing journey, which means doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results not only defines insanity, but in my humble opinion is simply a waste of our precious time here on Earth.

I’m also a big fan of disrupting myself as often as I can, exploring new ways of thinking and learning, experiencing and absorbing as much as I can of the world around me. If you like to do the same, or if you’ve been thinking about it, but don’t really know where to start – join me in this adventure, as the more different views and opinions, the better chance of being a part of something great. Cheers!

I'm a Captain of this blog and I don't give a ship.

Brace yourselves... It's coming :)