The Expectancy Factor - Introduction
Explaining how and what I found - and how you can dream a new actuality into existence. You can be and have anything and everything you want...
First off, let me offer you this subscription, but to my long-enduring readers, click below to adjust your subscriptions:
Now, this new newsletter goes on top of older works, and retitles a newsletter that hadn’t gotten off the ground.
I’ve been considering writing this book for around a year now. Maybe more. I was minding my own business, revamping an old book into a new shape.
Then the epiphany hit.
I’d only been studying personal development materials for most of my life, and here was a simple approach that rounded up all I’d worked to understand for so long.
And this single idea is all around us. It forms the basis of imagination and goal achievement. It explains how we got where we are and how to get to where we still want.
In it’s simplicity: What we expect, we get.
But I explain it better in the introduction, that I wrote almost a year ago:
The Expectancy Rule
WHILE EVERYONE KNOWS about the Golden Rule, there is another equally powerful and popular rule which is also natural in origin, and anyone can apply - but it's come by many names, and this is because the people who discovered this Rule for themselves have considered they were the first to find it.
This rule was the core theme of Earl Nightingale's "Strangest Secret" recording in the mid-50's - the first spoken word LP recording to go Gold, even without any advertising. As well, it started an industry for inspirational recordings.
In that essay, Nightingale pointed to several people who had discovered this rule and even to the book of Proverbs in the Bible where lay "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Nightingale's own phrase was "We Become What We Think About." Nightingale also had quotes from Dorothea Brande, Norman Vincent Peale, Shakespeare, and many others.
Napoleon Hill said this as "Whatever a person can conceive and believe, they can achieve." He then expanded on this in Chapter 12 of his Think and Grow Rich, where he points out how a person can control the thoughts which influence his mind and so engage his own subconscious in working for him - to find new solutions and opportunities. It is likely this is the section which influenced Nightingale to coin his own personal version.
In short, the Expectancy Rule states that "What you Expect, You Get."
And that if your expectation is muddled, not clearly delineated, then the result you receive may not be exactly what you really want. But if you settle for just any old car that comes your way, or just any house, just any job - then you get what you expect out of life.
Those who insist on being paid well for their time, always find jobs within the range of income they expect to be paid. Artists are known by their ability to hold to a certain quality of painting or sculpture. They expect to turn out a certain look and do. So their buyers and fans expect that quality of communication and get it. This especially holds true for musicians - and explains the phenomenon of "one shot wonders" who cannot accomplish more than a single hit song together. That group's expectation didn't carry them through more than one song on the top 40.
Again, it's what vision they hold before them. And exactly how detailed that is. As well, it's how much faith they have in their abilities and persistence to produce. High expectations follow the adage: "If you shoot for the stars, you may reach the moon."
The huge variance in expressing this rule goes the route of the Golden Rule, where that shows up in every major piece of literature or religious scripture in several forms. Hill devoted his first bestselling book and course, The Law of Success, to just that concept as key to any business success. He tells it in various phrases through all his works, such as: "You can't get without giving." Even Jesus phrased it several different ways through the New Testament.
Like the Golden Rule, the Expectancy Rule can be used as a metric to gauge the performance of an individual at their job. How that person treats others shows his capacity for empathy and his ability to cooperate on the job. While how a person holds to a standard of quality, how they will go the extra mile to deliver the highest quality product or service to the customer, that says everything about their own expectations.
Once you understand this concept fully - when you've really internalized it - then you can use this as a tool to get anything and everything you want out of life. And those who haven't will also get exactly what they expect - at best an average life, commonplace.
The people who get rich (which can also be measured by the riches of health, family, and attainment in addition to finances) are those who simply expect more from life and themselves. They set bigger and richer personal visions for themselves. They persist in pushing to achieve or acquire more from and for themselves to match those "sky-high" goals they envision.
In this book, I've collected a set of essays which delineates how you can put the Expectancy Rule to work for yourself:
From Earl Nightingale, we have not only his "Strangest Secret" essay, but several more shorter essays transcribed from his "Our Changing World" radio program, which lasted continuously on-air for nearly 20 years.
Here also is Napoleon Hill's most refined essay about how defining and following a definite purpose will radically transform your life for the better.
One of Hill's students, J. B. Jones, gave his own version of this Rule in his bestseller, "If You Can Count to Four" - and that key chapter is also included.
James Allen is best known for his "As a Man Thinketh" - and a central essay from that perennial-selling classic is also presented here.
And – as I write this, there are still more I need to include...
The point made in this collection follows well the Oriental adage; "No one school has all the teachers." And so this selection of essays are provided so you can read and understand the various approaches to consciously implementing this Rule in your own life.
It has been my pleasure to bring this collection of essays to your view. It is yours to now put these to work to bring that intensely profitable and exciting world that lies within your own heart into fruition around you. For as you think in your heart, so are you and also how goes your world. What you expect certainly measures, refines, and guarantees what you'll get from this point forward.
Best of luck in your life-travels.