On my 30th birthday, my now husband surprised me with a luxury four day getaway to the tropics in Australia. He told me with just a few hours to spare before we left. I had no idea we were going anywhere, let alone flying to another part of the country for a romantic escape. And he had arranged for our children to be looked after, he had packed their bags, without me knowing, he had booked the flights, the hotel, the hire car, the lot. He had taken care of everything.

At the time, we had been together for almost six years, and for a number of those years, every time there was a special occasion like my birthday, our anniversary, or an exciting trip somewhere, I would get my hopes up that there would be a small box placed in my hand with something sparkly inside and a romantic proposal of marriage. And every time when that didn't happen, I would feel so let down.

So here I am, sitting on a plane, heading off for a romantic getaway to celebrate my 30th birthday. And I'm thinking, this is it. I mean, I'm turning 30, right? It's a milestone birthday that couldn't be more perfect for a milestone in our relationship like the grand gesture of a marriage proposal.

Over four days I waited. My birthday came and went. The four days came and went. And I remember sitting on the beach on our final day, looking out at the most amazing view with tears welling up in my eyes. I felt so disappointed and honestly, I was so caught up in what I was expecting would happen over those four days that I couldn't and didn't fully enjoy the beautiful gift that was given to me.

Looking back, it was through experiences like these that I eventually learned a very valuable lesson about the difference between having expectations and holding standards. I realize that expectations often rely on external factors and other people, and they just as often lead to disappointment. While standards are about what we uphold for ourselves. Standards are how we can intentionally create the experiences we want.

And don't get me wrong, it took me a number of years to really learn this lesson and understand that holding standards for both myself and for what I expected of others was my key to gifting myself an everyday life experience that no other person on this earth could ever give to me.

Standards like being responsible for my own happiness in every situation, allowing other people to be who they are in all of their unique ways of being, not placing my self-worth in the hands of external achievement and societal norms like being proposed to.

Letting go of the expectations I placed on others and replacing them with standards I am in control of upholding for myself was a truly liberating thing to do. So, today I'm going to talk about how shifting from a reliance on external expectations to establishing your own personal standards can transform your life and empower you to take control of your own happiness and life experience.

If you have ever felt let down because someone didn't meet your expectations, this episode is for you. Let's dive in.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I'm your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you're ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Hello there, my beautiful friend, and thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of The Self-Creation School podcast.

Today, I am celebrating this 30th episode of the podcast in the way I wish my 30-year-old self would have celebrated her 30 years on this earth. By embracing the moment, appreciating the journey so far and my achievements, and acknowledging my own value without needing it to be validated by anything or anyone else outside of me, like how my 30-year-old self needed that marriage proposal to feel valued and loved.

Now, don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean I don't care about the value that you take from every episode I record, every weekly newsletter I send out, or social media post I publish and so on. I do, I absolutely do. But I don't need for you to tell me you get value from the Self-Creation secrets I share for me to feel valuable as a human being and as a coach. It's nice to hear for sure, but I don't rely on it.

And if you've been listening in, you'll know that is one of the biggest lessons my success in going from a millionaire's maid to making my own millions taught me. You and every other listener out there could write in every week and tell me how much you valued what I share. But that would have very little impact on how valuable I believe myself to be.

And imagine if I expected you all to do that, how very disappointed I would likely be. Because let's be honest, how often do any of us take the time to express our gratitude to the people we listen to on podcasts, or follow on social media, or read their weekly emails? It's not all that often, am I right? And this includes me too, by the way.

If you think about the people in your close circle of friends and family members, how often do we really exchange words of praise? I'll suggest even if you do, and you do often, it will never be enough to make you feel valuable, worthy, deserving, appreciated, loved, happy, and so on. Because the only person who can make you feel those things is you.

If you don't fundamentally believe that you are valuable, that you are worthy and deserving, appreciated and loved, it doesn't matter if people told you this all day long. You will never accept this to be your truth because at the core of who you believe yourself to be, it isn’t.

And the thing is, when you rely on other people to make you feel anything, when you expect that they will, you place your outcomes and happiness into the hands of other people who may or may not be capable of delivering. When you live in an energy of reliance, of expectation, you give away your power to give to yourself everything, and I do mean everything, that you are looking for outside of you.

Again, that's not to say you don't need anyone else in your life. We are a human, after all, and connection with other human beings is an important part of our existence. But when you make that connection having already given to yourself what it is you want to experience from other people, the energetic connection you make with other people will be on such a different level and it is so much more fulfilling, I promise you.

And can we be honest? Now you might not like hearing this, but I think it needs to be said. Expecting other people to be responsible for your happiness, for making you feel in a certain way, and yet having no expectation of yourself to play any part in that, is a bit of a double standard.

We all have that friend or family member who won't help themselves, right? They expect everyone else around them to drop what they're doing to lend them a hand, to help them pick up the pieces, to help them feel better about themselves, while they continue to wallow in self-pity, never doing anything to change their situation.

My friend don't be that person. If you don't or won't do anything to meet your own expectations and instead demand others to meet them, you will never be a SELF Wealthy woman who knows her own worth and acts accordingly. And you will never experience the kind of expansive life you could live out by taking control of your own happiness and creating the life experience you truly desire for yourself.

And listen, while I have just been talking about expectations, personally, I'm no longer a fan of placing expectations on anyone, including yourself, but rather holding yourself accountable to standards. There is a difference, which is what I want to talk about today. So, let's dive in and talk about exactly that.

Firstly, let's make sure we are on the exact same page when it comes to what expectations are versus what standards are.

Expectations are beliefs that something should happen or that someone should behave in a certain way. As I've already been discussing, they often rely on external factors and other people. For example, expecting your partner to know exactly how you want to celebrate your birthday without telling them, expecting your boss to recognize your hard work, expecting your loved ones to celebrate your wins and support you through your losses, because in all those situations, they should, right?

The problem with expectations is that they set you up for disappointment. When you place your outcomes and happiness in the hands of others, you give away your power to create the reality you want for yourself. And when your expectations are not met, you feel let down, you feel frustrated, and often resentful. Expectations create a dependency on external validation and outcomes that you simply cannot control.

Standards, on the other hand, and here remember I'm talking specifically about personal standards. Standards are your personal metrics and measurements for how you act, how you behave, and how you live across the different areas of your life. They are the things that you consider the bare minimum to be acceptable for yourself and they are what you uphold for yourself first and foremost.

Simply put, standards are a set of ideas, beliefs and behaviors that you decide to live by regardless of the ideas, beliefs and behaviors of other people around you. They are your internal benchmarks that guide your behavior and your decisions, and they extend from what you value the most, what you believe is important.

For instance, setting a standard that you will communicate your needs, wants and desires to your partner. A standard that you will only spend time on the things you enjoy or with the people you actually like. Or a standard for the quality of work you will deliver regardless of whether anyone else recognizes it.

Standards empower you to take control of your own life experience. I cannot say that enough. When you set and uphold your own standards, you create a foundation for living intentionally and authentically. You no longer wait for other people to fulfill your needs or validate your worth. Instead, you take responsibility for your own happiness and well-being.

When you make the shift from expectations to standards, you move from a place of dependency to a place of empowerment. You can communicate your needs clearly, establish healthy boundaries, and make choices that align with your true self. And my friend, you will live a much more fulfilling and joyful life because you are no longer at the mercy of other people's actions and behaviors.

In case you're wondering how and when my eventual marriage proposal happened, let me tell you. I made it happen. Because I decided that I valued the commitment of marriage, and it was a standard I would not compromise on. That also meant ditching a societal standard that wasn't serving me in this scenario.

So here's what happened.

Leading up to our seventh anniversary, I decided to take matters into my own hands. My husband was on a buying trip in China that I couldn't go on because I was studying for my end of semester exams at university. At the time I was completing my double degree in business and psychology as a mature aged student, and I took the time I was investing into that very seriously. So I stayed home to study and I spent every spare minute in that week organizing our wedding. I organized the venue, the celebrant, the music, you name it, I locked it in.

When my husband came home, I presented him with a beautiful handcrafted invitation to the wedding of himself to myself with the date, time and location, along with a YES! or no envelope that he could give back to me. And I thought I was pretty kind, I gave him a week to think about it.

Here's the thing, as my husband will tell you, don't ask a question you are not prepared to receive the answer to. I knew it was possible he would say no. I knew it was a possibility, and I was ready for that possibility because I decided that I valued myself and my personal standards enough that if he chose not to make the commitment to me in marriage, that I deserved more.

Now I was madly in love with him, so of course that would have broken my heart, but that was a risk I was prepared to take to uphold something in my life that was highly important to me. Now to get to that place, I had to make the shift from expecting marriage to knowing I was worthy and deserving of that kind of commitment. It's a subtle shift, but energetically it's a very big shift with very different outcomes.

You will have your own take on whether marriage is a be all and end all for you and whether you would risk an otherwise happy relationship for that commitment in marriage. But for me, I took the plunge and happily, my husband said YES!, and we were married on our seventh anniversary just six weeks later. On a Monday, mind you, which is probably why I don't have too many friends, but I'm not about conforming to norms.

And talking about norms, the societal standard I had to let go of to make this happen was this idea that it should be a man who gets down on his knee on special occasions like 30th birthdays, open a box with a beautiful sparkly inside and ask a woman for her hand in marriage.

I am a romantic at heart and I know without a doubt that would be a beautiful experience that I would truly appreciate, and I decided to create my own beautiful experience that neither my husband or I will ever forget in the way that I proposed marriage. So that's how it happened my friends.

Now let's talk about how you can identify where you might be outsourcing your life outcomes and happiness to expectations and how you can embrace standards to take back your power and create the life you want.

And as always, the first step lies in awareness. You cannot change what you do not know exists. So it is important to spend some time to honestly and openly, that means without judgment and criticism, just allowing what is to be and making it mean nothing more than it is. So take some time to look at where you are placing expectations on others.

You can do this by asking yourself these three questions.

Number one, where in your life do you often feel let down by other people, disappointed by them, or like your needs, wants, and desires are unimportant?

Number two. What feelings are you seeking from these expectations? Is it validation, love, recognition, or something else? What is it that you hope to feel by other people doing things for you or behaving in the ways you expect them to?

Number three. What is it costing you emotionally, mentally, and physically to leave your happiness and life outcomes in the hands of others?

Then once you have gathered some insight into where expectations and maybe holding you back from experiencing the life you want for yourself and in particular, what it is you are seeking emotionally in outsourcing your life in this way that you could give to yourself, next, it's time to use this information to shift your mindset from having expectations to holding standards.

Remember, we are bringing this back in house from external expectations to internal accountability. So here's three more questions to help you do exactly that.

Number one. What core values are most important to you?

Spend some time to identify five to ten core values that you want to live by, and then choose the top three to five absolute most important values. The things that are non-negotiable, that you will not bend on no matter what.

Question number two. What feelings do you want to experience as a result of living by these values and what part of your SELF Wealth do these feelings nurture?

So for example, if you want to feel valued and appreciated, when you give this to your SELF, you will increase those SELF things like self-worth, self-acceptance, self-love. You get the idea, right?

And question number three, what personal standards can you set to uphold these values and create those feelings within yourself regardless of the actions or behaviors of others?

An example here could be, I will value my own opinions first and foremost, and let go of what other people think. I will let other people's opinions be other people's opinions.

So you have awareness, and from awareness, change becomes possible. You have clarity around what it is you are seeking, what's important to you in terms of how you live, and what kinds of standards you could uphold for yourself to experience that, and importantly, to nurture your SELF Wealth bank balance.

Lastly, comes implementation, because without the doing part, all of this means nothing.

So the final part of shifting from having expectations to holding standards is about becoming a woman who has these standards. Becoming a woman who values her own opinions first and foremost, who doesn't place her worthiness in the hands of what other people think, and instead lets other people's opinions be other people's opinions. Becoming a woman who, insert your standards.

Let me offer you three final questions to help you brainstorm how you can become this woman and shift from being a woman whose happiness is dependent on external expectations being met, to a woman who is self-serving, and grabs hold of her life with both hands and steals it in the direction of everything her heart desires.

Question number one. What specific actions can you take to uphold your new standards in your daily life?

When you think about a woman who has the standards you identified are important to you, how does she think and act? What does she do? What doesn't she do? What decisions would she make? What conversations would she have? What would she say YES! to and what would she say no to? And so on. What specific actions would she take in her everyday life to live by these standards?

Okay, so question number two. What boundaries do you need to set with yourself and others to support these standards and protect the feelings you want to experience?

If your new standard is you will only spend time doing the things you love with people you actually like, you may need to put a boundary in place for what kinds of social activities you say YES! to, irrespective of whether your best friend, for example, loves doing those things. So the boundary is with you first and you will need to communicate this boundary with your best friend.

Now listen, a quick note on that. Know that you do not need to explain yourself. You do not need to justify your new boundary. Some people will not like your new boundaries. That's okay. Remember, everyone gets to have their own experience, but part of being a Self-Created woman is not needing to justify or explain why something is important to you, why you want the things you want, need, and desire. This includes yourself.

You get to want the things you want, simply because you want them. You get to have the values that are important to you, simply because they are important to you. You get to have the life experience you want, simply because it's the life experience you want. That's it. No explanation, no justification needed.

That doesn't mean you can't be both clear and direct, and gentle in communicating your boundaries. You might tell your best friend, listen, I love that you love going to the cinema, and it's not how I would love to spend my time with you. I'm here to do X, Y, Z, whenever you like, but the cinema, it's not for me.

Then, stand firm in your new boundary. Next time your best friend suggests going to see a film, remind her, listen, you go and enjoy the film and we can get together to do XYZ another time. Trust me, it will only take a few times of reminding her before she gets it and knows that if she wants to see you and spend time with you, it will be by doing XYZ. If she is a true friend, she will respect that.

Now the final question I have for you is this. How will you hold yourself accountable to these standards and what will you do if you find yourself slipping back into your old patterns of expectations?

Spend some time to brainstorm all the ways you can remind yourself and hold yourself accountable to your new standards, of how you are committed to showing up for yourself and in the world. How you want to think about yourself. What you want to believe about yourself. And the way in which you value behaving as a woman who has these standards that you want to uphold for yourself.

It could be something like creating a manifesto, outlining all of your standards, and reading this every morning as part of your daily journal routine. Perhaps creating I AM affirmations and placing them where you'll see them often to remind yourself and affirm to yourself who it is you want to be, the kind of woman you are who has these standards.

It could be not responding immediately to invitations, to give yourself time to pause and consider how this fits with your standards, with the life you want to experience. Rather than immediately feeling obligated to agree to these things and then later wishing you hadn’t.

Now, I recorded a podcast on I AM affirmations way back in the first few episodes of this podcast. I think it is episode number six. Let me check. Yes, it is. It is episode number six titled, What Kind of Woman Are You? So you might like to check that out.

I also talk about Setting Standards for Success in episode five, by the way, if you want more on this, and Shattering the Shoulds, those societal norms, and self-imposed expectations we limit ourselves to in episode number eight. And finally, you might enjoy episode number 17, where I talk about how I use my manifesto every day to help set my day up for Self-Created success and to remind myself how to be the woman who says YES!.

Now you can also download my personal manifesto for free. That link is in the show notes for you. And when you do, make sure you don't miss rule number nine, because it is an absolute game-changer. If you have previously grabbed my manifesto, make sure you check it out again because just a month or so ago I updated it and refined it, and I think you'll really love the new version.

Lots of resources there for you to help you continue your Self-Creation process and create a life you love living out every single day.

As I bring this episode to a close, I want to leave you with this.

If you will take responsibility for the life you experience, knowing that ultimately you get to decide how you experience your life in every moment, you get to decide how you react in situations, you get to decide how you feel about yourself and other people, you get to decide what you believe to be true about your own value and worthiness, if you will bring this in house instead of outsourcing it and expecting the people in your world to tow the line, you will open the door to an amazing freedom and an expansiveness that honestly, words simply cannot define.

You can say YES! to yourself. You can say YES! to living out your every day in a way where you matter, first and foremost. And you can say YES! to intentionally choosing your reality.

That's it from me this week. Join me next Wednesday for a discussion that I don't think you'll want to miss. If you haven't already subscribed to the show, make sure you hit the subscribe button so that episode is queued and ready for listening at 8 a.m. next Wednesday, Central European Time.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, want to know what's stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my FREE 60 second quiz to find out what's standing in your way today and I'll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it.

That's https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.

On my 30th birthday, my now husband surprised me with a luxury four day getaway to the tropics in Australia. He told me with just a few hours to spare before we left. I had no idea we were going anywhere, let alone flying to another part of the country for a romantic escape. And he had arranged for our children to be looked after, he had packed their bags, without me knowing, he had booked the flights, the hotel, the hire car, the lot. He had taken care of everything.

At the time, we had been together for almost six years, and for a number of those years, every time there was a special occasion like my birthday, our anniversary, or an exciting trip somewhere, I would get my hopes up that there would be a small box placed in my hand with something sparkly inside and a romantic proposal of marriage. And every time when that didn't happen, I would feel so let down.

So here I am, sitting on a plane, heading off for a romantic getaway to celebrate my 30th birthday. And I'm thinking, this is it. I mean, I'm turning 30, right? It's a milestone birthday that couldn't be more perfect for a milestone in our relationship like the grand gesture of a marriage proposal.

Over four days I waited. My birthday came and went. The four days came and went. And I remember sitting on the beach on our final day, looking out at the most amazing view with tears welling up in my eyes. I felt so disappointed and honestly, I was so caught up in what I was expecting would happen over those four days that I couldn't and didn't fully enjoy the beautiful gift that was given to me.

Looking back, it was through experiences like these that I eventually learned a very valuable lesson about the difference between having expectations and holding standards. I realize that expectations often rely on external factors and other people, and they just as often lead to disappointment. While standards are about what we uphold for ourselves. Standards are how we can intentionally create the experiences we want.

And don't get me wrong, it took me a number of years to really learn this lesson and understand that holding standards for both myself and for what I expected of others was my key to gifting myself an everyday life experience that no other person on this earth could ever give to me.

Standards like being responsible for my own happiness in every situation, allowing other people to be who they are in all of their unique ways of being, not placing my self-worth in the hands of external achievement and societal norms like being proposed to.

Letting go of the expectations I placed on others and replacing them with standards I am in control of upholding for myself was a truly liberating thing to do. So, today I'm going to talk about how shifting from a reliance on external expectations to establishing your own personal standards can transform your life and empower you to take control of your own happiness and life experience.

If you have ever felt let down because someone didn't meet your expectations, this episode is for you. Let's dive in.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I'm your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you're ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Hello there, my beautiful friend, and thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of The Self-Creation School podcast.

Today, I am celebrating this 30th episode of the podcast in the way I wish my 30-year-old self would have celebrated her 30 years on this earth. By embracing the moment, appreciating the journey so far and my achievements, and acknowledging my own value without needing it to be validated by anything or anyone else outside of me, like how my 30-year-old self needed that marriage proposal to feel valued and loved.

Now, don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean I don't care about the value that you take from every episode I record, every weekly newsletter I send out, or social media post I publish and so on. I do, I absolutely do. But I don't need for you to tell me you get value from the Self-Creation secrets I share for me to feel valuable as a human being and as a coach. It's nice to hear for sure, but I don't rely on it.

And if you've been listening in, you'll know that is one of the biggest lessons my success in going from a millionaire's maid to making my own millions taught me. You and every other listener out there could write in every week and tell me how much you valued what I share. But that would have very little impact on how valuable I believe myself to be.

And imagine if I expected you all to do that, how very disappointed I would likely be. Because let's be honest, how often do any of us take the time to express our gratitude to the people we listen to on podcasts, or follow on social media, or read their weekly emails? It's not all that often, am I right? And this includes me too, by the way.

If you think about the people in your close circle of friends and family members, how often do we really exchange words of praise? I'll suggest even if you do, and you do often, it will never be enough to make you feel valuable, worthy, deserving, appreciated, loved, happy, and so on. Because the only person who can make you feel those things is you.

If you don't fundamentally believe that you are valuable, that you are worthy and deserving, appreciated and loved, it doesn't matter if people told you this all day long. You will never accept this to be your truth because at the core of who you believe yourself to be, it isn’t.

And the thing is, when you rely on other people to make you feel anything, when you expect that they will, you place your outcomes and happiness into the hands of other people who may or may not be capable of delivering. When you live in an energy of reliance, of expectation, you give away your power to give to yourself everything, and I do mean everything, that you are looking for outside of you.

Again, that's not to say you don't need anyone else in your life. We are a human, after all, and connection with other human beings is an important part of our existence. But when you make that connection having already given to yourself what it is you want to experience from other people, the energetic connection you make with other people will be on such a different level and it is so much more fulfilling, I promise you.

And can we be honest? Now you might not like hearing this, but I think it needs to be said. Expecting other people to be responsible for your happiness, for making you feel in a certain way, and yet having no expectation of yourself to play any part in that, is a bit of a double standard.

We all have that friend or family member who won't help themselves, right? They expect everyone else around them to drop what they're doing to lend them a hand, to help them pick up the pieces, to help them feel better about themselves, while they continue to wallow in self-pity, never doing anything to change their situation.

My friend don't be that person. If you don't or won't do anything to meet your own expectations and instead demand others to meet them, you will never be a SELF Wealthy woman who knows her own worth and acts accordingly. And you will never experience the kind of expansive life you could live out by taking control of your own happiness and creating the life experience you truly desire for yourself.

And listen, while I have just been talking about expectations, personally, I'm no longer a fan of placing expectations on anyone, including yourself, but rather holding yourself accountable to standards. There is a difference, which is what I want to talk about today. So, let's dive in and talk about exactly that.

Firstly, let's make sure we are on the exact same page when it comes to what expectations are versus what standards are.

Expectations are beliefs that something should happen or that someone should behave in a certain way. As I've already been discussing, they often rely on external factors and other people. For example, expecting your partner to know exactly how you want to celebrate your birthday without telling them, expecting your boss to recognize your hard work, expecting your loved ones to celebrate your wins and support you through your losses, because in all those situations, they should, right?

The problem with expectations is that they set you up for disappointment. When you place your outcomes and happiness in the hands of others, you give away your power to create the reality you want for yourself. And when your expectations are not met, you feel let down, you feel frustrated, and often resentful. Expectations create a dependency on external validation and outcomes that you simply cannot control.

Standards, on the other hand, and here remember I'm talking specifically about personal standards. Standards are your personal metrics and measurements for how you act, how you behave, and how you live across the different areas of your life. They are the things that you consider the bare minimum to be acceptable for yourself and they are what you uphold for yourself first and foremost.

Simply put, standards are a set of ideas, beliefs and behaviors that you decide to live by regardless of the ideas, beliefs and behaviors of other people around you. They are your internal benchmarks that guide your behavior and your decisions, and they extend from what you value the most, what you believe is important.

For instance, setting a standard that you will communicate your needs, wants and desires to your partner. A standard that you will only spend time on the things you enjoy or with the people you actually like. Or a standard for the quality of work you will deliver regardless of whether anyone else recognizes it.

Standards empower you to take control of your own life experience. I cannot say that enough. When you set and uphold your own standards, you create a foundation for living intentionally and authentically. You no longer wait for other people to fulfill your needs or validate your worth. Instead, you take responsibility for your own happiness and well-being.

When you make the shift from expectations to standards, you move from a place of dependency to a place of empowerment. You can communicate your needs clearly, establish healthy boundaries, and make choices that align with your true self. And my friend, you will live a much more fulfilling and joyful life because you are no longer at the mercy of other people's actions and behaviors.

In case you're wondering how and when my eventual marriage proposal happened, let me tell you. I made it happen. Because I decided that I valued the commitment of marriage, and it was a standard I would not compromise on. That also meant ditching a societal standard that wasn't serving me in this scenario.

So here's what happened.

Leading up to our seventh anniversary, I decided to take matters into my own hands. My husband was on a buying trip in China that I couldn't go on because I was studying for my end of semester exams at university. At the time I was completing my double degree in business and psychology as a mature aged student, and I took the time I was investing into that very seriously. So I stayed home to study and I spent every spare minute in that week organizing our wedding. I organized the venue, the celebrant, the music, you name it, I locked it in.

When my husband came home, I presented him with a beautiful handcrafted invitation to the wedding of himself to myself with the date, time and location, along with a YES! or no envelope that he could give back to me. And I thought I was pretty kind, I gave him a week to think about it.

Here's the thing, as my husband will tell you, don't ask a question you are not prepared to receive the answer to. I knew it was possible he would say no. I knew it was a possibility, and I was ready for that possibility because I decided that I valued myself and my personal standards enough that if he chose not to make the commitment to me in marriage, that I deserved more.

Now I was madly in love with him, so of course that would have broken my heart, but that was a risk I was prepared to take to uphold something in my life that was highly important to me. Now to get to that place, I had to make the shift from expecting marriage to knowing I was worthy and deserving of that kind of commitment. It's a subtle shift, but energetically it's a very big shift with very different outcomes.

You will have your own take on whether marriage is a be all and end all for you and whether you would risk an otherwise happy relationship for that commitment in marriage. But for me, I took the plunge and happily, my husband said YES!, and we were married on our seventh anniversary just six weeks later. On a Monday, mind you, which is probably why I don't have too many friends, but I'm not about conforming to norms.

And talking about norms, the societal standard I had to let go of to make this happen was this idea that it should be a man who gets down on his knee on special occasions like 30th birthdays, open a box with a beautiful sparkly inside and ask a woman for her hand in marriage.

I am a romantic at heart and I know without a doubt that would be a beautiful experience that I would truly appreciate, and I decided to create my own beautiful experience that neither my husband or I will ever forget in the way that I proposed marriage. So that's how it happened my friends.

Now let's talk about how you can identify where you might be outsourcing your life outcomes and happiness to expectations and how you can embrace standards to take back your power and create the life you want.

And as always, the first step lies in awareness. You cannot change what you do not know exists. So it is important to spend some time to honestly and openly, that means without judgment and criticism, just allowing what is to be and making it mean nothing more than it is. So take some time to look at where you are placing expectations on others.

You can do this by asking yourself these three questions.

Number one, where in your life do you often feel let down by other people, disappointed by them, or like your needs, wants, and desires are unimportant?

Number two. What feelings are you seeking from these expectations? Is it validation, love, recognition, or something else? What is it that you hope to feel by other people doing things for you or behaving in the ways you expect them to?

Number three. What is it costing you emotionally, mentally, and physically to leave your happiness and life outcomes in the hands of others?

Then once you have gathered some insight into where expectations and maybe holding you back from experiencing the life you want for yourself and in particular, what it is you are seeking emotionally in outsourcing your life in this way that you could give to yourself, next, it's time to use this information to shift your mindset from having expectations to holding standards.

Remember, we are bringing this back in house from external expectations to internal accountability. So here's three more questions to help you do exactly that.

Number one. What core values are most important to you?

Spend some time to identify five to ten core values that you want to live by, and then choose the top three to five absolute most important values. The things that are non-negotiable, that you will not bend on no matter what.

Question number two. What feelings do you want to experience as a result of living by these values and what part of your SELF Wealth do these feelings nurture?

So for example, if you want to feel valued and appreciated, when you give this to your SELF, you will increase those SELF things like self-worth, self-acceptance, self-love. You get the idea, right?

And question number three, what personal standards can you set to uphold these values and create those feelings within yourself regardless of the actions or behaviors of others?

An example here could be, I will value my own opinions first and foremost, and let go of what other people think. I will let other people's opinions be other people's opinions.

So you have awareness, and from awareness, change becomes possible. You have clarity around what it is you are seeking, what's important to you in terms of how you live, and what kinds of standards you could uphold for yourself to experience that, and importantly, to nurture your SELF Wealth bank balance.

Lastly, comes implementation, because without the doing part, all of this means nothing.

So the final part of shifting from having expectations to holding standards is about becoming a woman who has these standards. Becoming a woman who values her own opinions first and foremost, who doesn't place her worthiness in the hands of what other people think, and instead lets other people's opinions be other people's opinions. Becoming a woman who, insert your standards.

Let me offer you three final questions to help you brainstorm how you can become this woman and shift from being a woman whose happiness is dependent on external expectations being met, to a woman who is self-serving, and grabs hold of her life with both hands and steals it in the direction of everything her heart desires.

Question number one. What specific actions can you take to uphold your new standards in your daily life?

When you think about a woman who has the standards you identified are important to you, how does she think and act? What does she do? What doesn't she do? What decisions would she make? What conversations would she have? What would she say YES! to and what would she say no to? And so on. What specific actions would she take in her everyday life to live by these standards?

Okay, so question number two. What boundaries do you need to set with yourself and others to support these standards and protect the feelings you want to experience?

If your new standard is you will only spend time doing the things you love with people you actually like, you may need to put a boundary in place for what kinds of social activities you say YES! to, irrespective of whether your best friend, for example, loves doing those things. So the boundary is with you first and you will need to communicate this boundary with your best friend.

Now listen, a quick note on that. Know that you do not need to explain yourself. You do not need to justify your new boundary. Some people will not like your new boundaries. That's okay. Remember, everyone gets to have their own experience, but part of being a Self-Created woman is not needing to justify or explain why something is important to you, why you want the things you want, need, and desire. This includes yourself.

You get to want the things you want, simply because you want them. You get to have the values that are important to you, simply because they are important to you. You get to have the life experience you want, simply because it's the life experience you want. That's it. No explanation, no justification needed.

That doesn't mean you can't be both clear and direct, and gentle in communicating your boundaries. You might tell your best friend, listen, I love that you love going to the cinema, and it's not how I would love to spend my time with you. I'm here to do X, Y, Z, whenever you like, but the cinema, it's not for me.

Then, stand firm in your new boundary. Next time your best friend suggests going to see a film, remind her, listen, you go and enjoy the film and we can get together to do XYZ another time. Trust me, it will only take a few times of reminding her before she gets it and knows that if she wants to see you and spend time with you, it will be by doing XYZ. If she is a true friend, she will respect that.

Now the final question I have for you is this. How will you hold yourself accountable to these standards and what will you do if you find yourself slipping back into your old patterns of expectations?

Spend some time to brainstorm all the ways you can remind yourself and hold yourself accountable to your new standards, of how you are committed to showing up for yourself and in the world. How you want to think about yourself. What you want to believe about yourself. And the way in which you value behaving as a woman who has these standards that you want to uphold for yourself.

It could be something like creating a manifesto, outlining all of your standards, and reading this every morning as part of your daily journal routine. Perhaps creating I AM affirmations and placing them where you'll see them often to remind yourself and affirm to yourself who it is you want to be, the kind of woman you are who has these standards.

It could be not responding immediately to invitations, to give yourself time to pause and consider how this fits with your standards, with the life you want to experience. Rather than immediately feeling obligated to agree to these things and then later wishing you hadn’t.

Now, I recorded a podcast on I AM affirmations way back in the first few episodes of this podcast. I think it is episode number six. Let me check. Yes, it is. It is episode number six titled, What Kind of Woman Are You? So you might like to check that out.

I also talk about Setting Standards for Success in episode five, by the way, if you want more on this, and Shattering the Shoulds, those societal norms, and self-imposed expectations we limit ourselves to in episode number eight. And finally, you might enjoy episode number 17, where I talk about how I use my manifesto every day to help set my day up for Self-Created success and to remind myself how to be the woman who says YES!.

Now you can also download my personal manifesto for free. That link is in the show notes for you. And when you do, make sure you don't miss rule number nine, because it is an absolute game-changer. If you have previously grabbed my manifesto, make sure you check it out again because just a month or so ago I updated it and refined it, and I think you'll really love the new version.

Lots of resources there for you to help you continue your Self-Creation process and create a life you love living out every single day.

As I bring this episode to a close, I want to leave you with this.

If you will take responsibility for the life you experience, knowing that ultimately you get to decide how you experience your life in every moment, you get to decide how you react in situations, you get to decide how you feel about yourself and other people, you get to decide what you believe to be true about your own value and worthiness, if you will bring this in house instead of outsourcing it and expecting the people in your world to tow the line, you will open the door to an amazing freedom and an expansiveness that honestly, words simply cannot define.

You can say YES! to yourself. You can say YES! to living out your every day in a way where you matter, first and foremost. And you can say YES! to intentionally choosing your reality.

That's it from me this week. Join me next Wednesday for a discussion that I don't think you'll want to miss. If you haven't already subscribed to the show, make sure you hit the subscribe button so that episode is queued and ready for listening at 8 a.m. next Wednesday, Central European Time.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, want to know what's stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my FREE 60 second quiz to find out what's standing in your way today and I'll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it.

That's https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.