Stefanie Edwards (00:00)
hello and welcome to the Life Changing Manifestations podcast. I'm your host Stephanie Edwards and today we are going to talk about your expectations and the expectation that you are holding on to that is leading to stress. Why stress? Because the expectation you have is negative and that expectation is manifesting as stress in your
because that's what you're expecting. You're expecting things to get complicated, difficult, et cetera. So let me explain. There is a direct correlation between your expectations and the stress you experience. When you expect things to go well, like let's imagine you have an upcoming vacation and you're going someplace you've wanted to go for years and you're really, really excited about it.
It's almost like you can just breeze through the other activities that are going on in your life. They're not impacting you. They're not hitting you the way they normally do because your energy, your enthusiasm for what is coming with this occasion has elevated your energy, has changed your whole disposition, the way that you're thinking, that you're so pumped up that these other things are just kind of like, bing, bing, bing, just popping off of you.
another good scenario to think of is like how people get so excited every Friday afternoon. And it's because they're coming to the end of the work week. They're excited about the weekend and having two days off for their job, which, you know, it's a whole other conversation, but there's this energy, there's enthusiasm. I remember doing a sales training years ago and they said, make sales calls on Friday afternoon. Don't take off early, don't go do other things.
be the sales agent who makes the calls on Friday afternoon. And I remember somebody asking, why, why would we do that? I'm like, because people are kinder, people are happier, their energy is excited and they're more willing to, you know, relax into the afternoon and they'll pick up the phone or they'll take that call and they're more likely to say yes. So I was like, that's interesting. But you gotta think that...
energy with which we expect things to happen. The expectancy we are living into is what is creating the feelings that we have. And it's all based on how we're thinking. That's why we're always talking about our thoughts and we're always trying to find them and control our thoughts. Because if we can control our thinking, we can control how we're feeling and the outcomes that we're manifesting. So going back to the expectancy with work, a Forbes article from 2023 reported,
that 80%, it's a really big number, 80 % of people say that Monday is their most stressful day at work. So let's tie that into the expectancy. Why are people so frustrated and stressed out on a Monday at work? It's because they're surrounded by other people who've also come in and they're upset that they had to come back into work, that the weekend's over. They're frustrated in their expectancy.
is not in a good place. You've been here, right? You've been in a job where you start on a Monday after having the weekend off and you know people are slower to get going, find their rhythm and find their groove back at work. They might even be complaining about, I had to come back in. And the other person's like, yeah, I know. And then it just builds. And they fester off of each other with this negativity, which builds up more stress and it just takes more effort to get people back to
And this is what I think about when I'm thinking about the expectancy that you're having and what results you're getting as a cause of it. Everything is cause and effect. Everything is a cycle. So if we put this into place, the cycle that you're getting is based on the cause and effect. So what cause you're putting out is the effect that you're getting. So the expectancy is what you're causing and the stress is what you're getting as a result. Why?
because you were expecting things to be challenging. You were expecting things to be frustrating. You walk into work on a Monday after being off for the weekend and your expectancy is, ugh, this is gonna be difficult. This is gonna be a lot to get everybody going again. is, know, whatever it is that these thoughts that you're having, you walk into work, you notice these things. These things start to happen around you. A great illustration of frustrating expectancy is in the Book of Jonah. And I wanna share this with you.
because Jonah is the perfect example. He's my go -to example. I always have in my mind of not wanting to do something and and rebelling against it. So God speaks to Jonah and tells him to go and minister to the people of Nineveh because God is getting ready to destroy Nineveh, but he's giving them another chance. He's giving them opportunity to turn away from their sin and
turn towards him. And so he wants Jonah to go and give them this warning and give them an opportunity to switch things around for themselves. But Jonah doesn't want to do it. And that's the whole story of the book of Jonah. The vision is really short. So you read it really just simply. But you get to the end of the book and we read about Jonah's frustration at the opening of chapter four. So by this time, Jonah's already had the experience where he was in the whale.
He's already had the experience of being on the boat and the storm coming and like everyone's going to die and perish if they don't figure out why this storm is so intense and all these different things. So he's already been through a lot. So here is Jonah at the end of the book and he's upset.
I'm reading the NLT version as usual and it chapter four verse one says this change of plans greatly upset Jonah. What was that change of plans? That change of plans is where God allowed the people of Nineveh to survive. And so this change of plan greatly upset Jonah and he became angry. So he complained to the Lord about it. Didn't I say before I left home that you would do this Lord? That is why I ran away to Tresh.
I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God slow to get angry and filled with unfeeling love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people. Just kill me now, Lord. I'd rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen. The Lord replied, is that you're right for you to be angry about this. And then Jonah goes on and he's like, yes, yes, yes. and he stays angry this entire chapter.
So I just wanted to bring this up because this is so important for us to understand the expectancy that we're having. Jonah's totally stressed out. He's really frustrated. He's angry. He even wants to die. Like that's how mad he's letting himself get because he's like, I knew this was going to happen. I knew God that you were going to have compassion and forgive these people. So what was the point of me even going? That's where he's at. And he's just frustrated that God called him to do something. But instead of seeing that this was God's opportunity,
to partner with Jonah, to teach him a lesson, to guide him. Who knows what else was prepared for Jonah in his life? Maybe this is an opportunity for him to grow into something that he'd been seeking, but he's missing all his lessons. He's missing all his points because he's so focused on what he's expecting to happen, which is negative in his opinion. And he's like, this is just not something I want to do. I don't want to be bothered with this. And he goes to so much complication. wastes so much time and energy running away from God.
instead of just living into what God is calling him to do. And sometimes we are so absorbed and so caught up in our negative way of thinking and what we don't want to do that we know that we should be doing.
What you have been knowing is in your heart is your intuition is speaking to you. The Holy Spirit is speaking to you. Not to you in a certain direction or you've read something in the Bible that is even a direct commandment and is telling you a direction you should go and you're resisting. And why are you resisting? And you've got to start to track this. You've got to start to notice where these are coming up. And what is it that you're expecting to happen if you did it?
What are you expecting is going to happen if you don't do it and their expectancy that you're having in whichever way it's pulling you away from God is an expectancy that is something you need to deal with. So let me say that again. So I make sure this is clear when you hold an expectancy of something going one way or the other. And it's such that it keeps you from wanting to do what God is calling you to do. Then that
is an expectancy you need to examine and work on releasing, work on changing, work on modifying so that you can draw closer to
And if you want more on what God has planned for you, the path that you can follow and why we talk so much about fixing your thoughts, that's what the whole fix your thoughts challenge is all about. And it's daily meditations. So it's a little bit of conversation like what we have here on the podcast, but it's towards a certain focus. Every day is guided by scripture.
and a lesson with meditation built into it. So you're meditating just means focusing on God's word and thinking through the direction that God wants you to go. It's about establishing the path that God has for your life so that you are fixing your thoughts in the direction he wants you to go. He tells us about this in the Bible. There's so much. It tells us what to think about, how to be thinking, because he knows that our thoughts are creating our results that we're getting. So we want to manifest better results in our lives. We want our lives to feel better.
be better, have greater impact, we need to start at the source, which is addressing our thoughts. And so the Fix Your Thoughts Challenge is day by day for 30 days, and it includes group coaching on a weekly basis. It's so much goodness. And right now you can download day one for free. Listen to it, go through that whole experience. And if it sounds like something that is a good fit for you, you can join into the challenge whenever you're ready.
visit the link in the show notes for how to get there or you can go over to LifeChangingManifestations .com and you can find that up in the navigation bar for the Fix Your Thoughts Challenge. Thank you so much for letting me share with you today. I wish you a fabulous
