San Jose STÖF

■ Optimism isn't near as powerful as realistic expectations
■ Awareness is key to recognizing opportunity
■ Action often involves waiting for a better opportunity
■ Unmet expectations reveal opportunities for personal growth
■ Take up the opportunity the first time it surfaces

Discuss Expectations

You remember Alex Laudon from the previous episode said;

"Daniel the thing that's holding you back is your equipment. This wing on your foil is one of the first ones and it's fabulous. It's carbon fiber. It's beautiful but it's slightly smaller than what you need because we've been able to develop wings further since then."

What you need is this. You need a much bigger wing for you to have a stable jibe.

So I called the factory and because of COVID they're inundated with production and it would be months and months. It'd be way past the end of this season before I'd get a wing. Wait a minute you just showed me a wing. I thought you said you needed that. I did. There were none of them available. I had no idea how I was going to go about getting one.

Watch what happened.

I had my ears and eyes looking for a solution - I believe by anticipation. I'll figure something out but I'm not going to get in there and grind and hammer and pound. Listen to this story of how it worked out so as you practice this for yourself.

Keith I was inviting you to be part of the evidence for this episode because you've done something highly unusual in today's world which is to trust another human and also be part of a solution which most people are not. I wanted to have you tell the background of how this came about and all that you've been through on the other side of the story.

Keith: "This is my first foray into foiling. I decided to get into foiling and late 2018 after my third knee surgery and said well this high wind sailboarding isn't for me. And this looks like it is. So there's a local guy who's making these in the gorge and I went and bought this from him and then this year I started foiling on this. I was down at Stevenson one day and I got it all together and put my suit on and went for a sail. I didn't put these in the board."

Keith: "It took me 10 minutes to put this string in there and I forgot these so I went sailing. I swam out about 25 yards and I got on the board and I sailed about 25 yards when this fell out of my board into the river."

Daniel: "Into the river?"

Keith: "Into the river! 75 yards off the beach at Bob's Beach in Stevenson, WA. What are you gonna do? Well, I hired a scuba diver to come and look for this. I spent 200 bucks and he couldn't find anything. He spent about three hours looking. So I gave up on it and bought another foil. Three weeks after that the scuba diver called me up and said you know I don't want to give up on that foil. How about you give me 400 bucks if I find it and if I don't find it and I spend all year looking for it you don't owe me anything. Well, that sounds like a no-lose deal."

Keith: "So long story short. One day he went out and found it and pulled it up out of the river. Well, now I have two foils."

Keith: "I was down on the beach one day and here came Daniel asking about this. It's a newer foil system from the original. It has a bigger front foil. It's friendlier. Daniel decided he wanted to buy it all and we came to a deal and here we are."

Keith, I want to appreciate your retrieving it and paying for it because it turns out this thing is an absolute solution to my riding problem. In the previous episode as you can see Alex said; "Daniel it's your gear" and there it is - there's the bigger wing that I've needed to solve that. Thank you so much for all of your anguish and for being part of a solution.

Keith: "Hey you know we got to make this work and we're all connected. It's my belief you help somebody out and it turns out well in the end. So I hope you enjoy the foil."

It turns out that Keith's character and generosity combined with an unexpected loss combined with the diver's perseverance on top of Alex's suggestion that I look at my tools all became a solution.

I then grabbed some of my physical tools and added a new hole in my fuselage, put threads into that. Mounted the adapter and wing and had an entirely new riding experience per Alex's suggestion. This story then becomes a physical example of how to find solutions.

I'd like to suggest that Volume 1 of SCOTOMAVILLE has cognitive tools for you to do likewise with your Personal Everest. You see there are 15 tools that you can apply to one see opportunities change the way you think and what you believe and then start assembling new life experiences with the unexpected circumstances that come your way.

When I say life has curves it's been my experience that solutions come in complex forms. They often involve an unmet expectation which is a fabulous opportunity for us to review our beliefs and our character and the foundation of our thinking. This episode on expectations should include more examples.

As you can see things are unexpected. It's about noon on September 11th, 2020 and you would remember in history the terrorist attacks. The news today has wildfires across the entire west coast. 10 percent of the Oregon population is now displaced. They weren't expecting that.

That's the usual launch site. Not what we expect. Windsurfing season is coming to an end. There are roughly 10 days of sailing for the rest of the year so expectations for getting on the water are not looking good for the end of this year. Yeah, would be fun.

Expectations can be a really valuable asset in your self-awareness Personal Everest but it's not because they're so wonderful. It's because when you have an expectation of something a really deep felt belief in the outcome of something in the future and it doesn't happen then you can start working on acquiring an emotional vocabulary.

Unmet expectations usually trigger deeply felt emotions. Triggers are emotional flares where your brain is pegged. I have a hard time finding the words to express things calmly. An expectation is something that you fervently believe will happen, or you tenaciously want as an outcome - like we did to go get AWRNSS (awareness), our Airstream, in Albuquerque. Remember, until you're committed you can always pull back but once you are fully committed then providence moves it's not until you're fully committed that things happen that you have to fight for what you want. You do you can't just wait until it happens. You have to put the initiative fully commit and then some things can happen. But when things don't happen as you expected - with your partner - with your business - with COVID - with the economy - with your job - your spouse - your school - the opportunity then all sorts of belief systems come into play on how they relate and what we believe and what... [car noise] ...they're at least three miles away!

I would like it to be quiet. It wasn't at lake pleasant and it's not here. This is hilarious and I'm learning to go with it because usually, an unmet expectation is a gateway to personal growth. The deep emotions that come up allowing you to peel back the onion. Remember that chapter? Use triangulation to get more points of view - you remember that chapter. Expectations can be our friend. They can at least be an appreciated experience. They're a gateway to personal growth.

A few weeks ago I had a great opportunity to do the unboxing of my first volume. A few weeks ago my box of volume one of SCOTOMAVILLE arrived and I wanted to do an unboxing. You know the classic youtube unboxing video. There were non-stop interruptions and noise and traffic and emotion for me. Let me tell you when you try to meet your expectations...

Film the car. Oh my gosh. Shiny pretty motorcycles. Oh, another car. Man oh, man. I'm not okay. I hate this mask. It's like suffocating all the time and it's outdoors! I'm not doing this. I understand the three microns n- 95 holes and all that, but it's just that I wanted to shoot some shots of Angelina and me riding on the twin tunnels trail and that was filled with shots of other people.

Have a look at your strength finders assessment and try to correlate where your strengths might set you up with unrealistic expectations. You see mine are achiever input learner so of course, I would expect myself to learn a lot faster than most people and that's unrealistic. I try to fly drones in high wind. That means it's a thousand feet in the air in the wind without satellite connection in the smoke and I've got less than 20 hours of experience. My expectations can be completely out of line and my results are disappointing.

What you can expect about expectations is that they are strongly linked to your strengths which are your coping mechanisms from your childhood wounds therefore they are absolutely strong indicators of wounds of patterns and habits that are ripe for adjustment. Things that you can learn over again because next time oh expect interruptions noise etc. I had expected (strongly imagined the outcome) of my unboxing to be similar to the way I had seen other people do unboxings - you know something really exciting and really fun and I had built up my emotional expectations so much couldn't be met. Similar to wanting drone shots that are cinemagraphic. I have to acquire those skills first. I can't just go straight to Disney outcomes without the flight time and that entails taking risks.

When you have an opportunity through a trigger to investigate an expectation that's been unmet dig in it's great. It's an opportunity to discover who you are. You remember you've got a supercomputer pointed at your brain that knows you better than you know yourself and the race is on. Self-awareness self-understanding it's no longer an option. It's not a luxury. You have to stay ahead of the recommenders. I think that's enough to think about. From my ford studios in SCOTOMAVILLE see you next episode

Angelina: we are at mountain hood today and look at how pretty it looks with no snow in the flowers we are um definitely not in purgatory it's pretty beautiful up here it is this is mount hood our regular ski area it's beautiful the flowers the blossom the bees are in heaven.

Daniel: Angelina why are there always people showing up in my shots?