Do you expect things of yourself? Are there certain areas of your life where expectations are high and others where expectations are low?

What creates them?
The truth is expectations are required for us to function in society. For example, it is expected that you should put on pants when you leave your house. If you don’t, things might get a little weird.

So, expectations have their place. But problems arise when we fail to give the right significance to expectation, such as expecting more/less from others or ourselves than we ought to. It is then that we set ourselves up for disappointment.

In the past, in the present, and in the future, this truth reigns supreme:
To live a bigger, better, bolder, and far more beautiful life…
You must expect and demand more from yourself.

This video was a beautiful piece of advice from Jose Mourinho (a.k.a., The Special One) to Dele Alli at a time in Alli’s blossoming career with English Club, Tottenham Hotspur.

The English media with their usual rhetoric were scripting numerous articles on the player, painting an image of the re-incarnated football god, Armando Maradona. Though a beautiful player on his good day, his work ethic and professional demeanour were far less of a player with a God-given talent. Jose Mourinho daily warned that he must improve his work ethics and demand more from himself to be able to sit at the table with the very best. But alas, Dele in youthful exuberance would party like a pop star and never really pushed himself toward being the best.

Within 4 years of receiving this advice, Alli has become a football sojourner (he is currently playing for Turkish Club, Galatasaray, after a brief yet unsuccessful spell with Everton Football Club). His once scintillating football career now seems dead even before it was birthed.

The morale of this story is: “to be the best in your art, you must demand more from yourself; else you will regret the time wasted.”

I am of the school of thought that the best things in life are free, and that the best strategies in life are simple.

Video Credit: @tom_gardiner6