Expect The Best

Expect the best from life and you'll generally get it.

Your expectations (harapan) play a key role in the reality of your life. Your mind is a powerful goal-seeking device. When you point it in the right direction, with positive expectations, it will do whatever is necessary to get you where you want to go. The more consistently you keep your mind on your positive expectations, the faster they will become a reality.

Expect the best of those around you, and you generally will get it. Think for a moment what would happen if you nag and complain to your children all day long about how naughty they are. Guess what? Their behavior will get worse and worse. When you expect the best of them, and give them responsibility and respect, they will immediately sense it and their behavior will improve almost overnight.

More than anything, expect the best from yourself. Talk to yourself in positive terms. Don't say "if I get a new house." Say "when I get a new house." Don't say "I'll try to build my business." Say "I am building my business." Words like "try" and "if" presuppose a negative outcome.

In other words, you have to accept the possibility of failure in order for these words to make sense. That may not sound like such a big deal, and it isn't when you only do it once or twice. The thing is, you are constantly talking to yourself. Your thought patterns reinforce (memperkuat/memperkukuh) your expectations, over and over again, all day long, day after day after day. The least little bit of negativity, repeated again and again, can build itself into an invisible wall of negative expectations.

Learn to expect the best from yourself in the way you talk to yourself, in the way you plan for the future, in the choices you make.

-Ralph Marston