What are your expectations in life? Or marriage? or your career? What are they for this year, this month, this week, today? Are you hoping to have a successful outcome on a business venture? Are you looking forward to getting home and the smell of lasagna greets you as you walk in the door?

What makes you think that you deserve any of that? Is it the hard work you’ve done to prepare for that contract or doing the shopping knowing the ingredients were there for the meal? Is it knowing that you have done all you can and that your best just has to be good enough?

Expectations come from somewhere and realistic expectations are more or less the anticipation of reward for excellent actions done in good faith. In good faith. Great reward comes from fulfilling someone elses expectations. Does this sound circular? It is.

We really are talking about the incentive for action which all ties into attitude. Attitude? This is what your teachers in high school used to scold you about. “You’ll never get anywhere with that attitude, young man!” And perhaps that teacher was right.

What each of us needs to realize is that expectations and attitudes are tied together in business and in life.