Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. What got you here is not going to get you there. To get where you've never been, you've gotta be willing to do what you've never done. Now I know that you've heard these quotes before. And today, they are weighing heavy on my mind.

Because what if you aren't 100% sure where you wanna go? How do you know what to do? Where do you even begin? I wanna share this with you today because I don't necessarily know where I'm going. I have good days where I am absolutely positive in my convictions, and I'm all about trusting the process.

And then I should have my not so good days, and sometimes those turned into not so good weeks. And those are the days where I wonder, how is this even going to unfold when I don't even know what I'm doing? And, yes, yes, friend, I have so many days where I feel like I don't know what I'm doing. So today, I want to talk about expectations. I wanna explore with you what they are, how they show up, and most importantly, how to take control of your expectations and roll with the punches when things do not go just the ways they would.

Expectations are our personal roadmaps about how we think something should unfold. And I don't have to tell you that life does not unfold the way we expect it to. We all have expectations, expectations for ourselves, for our relationships, our careers, and even for others. And some of these are crazy unrealistic.

When I look back with the gift of hindsight, which we will mention a lot today, I see all of the expectations that I had that did not work out for me. And y'all I'm not lying to you when I expected to marry my first love, which was also of course a high school love. I also expected to stay at my first job for my entire working career. I'm not kidding. When I tell you, I remember thinking, oh my gosh, I am so lucky to have landed my perfect gig, doing what I love, which was working out for a living with a company with solid benefits, vacation time, and a 401(k).

This is the job I'm going to retire from. Y'all, first of all, that's naive as hell. Second of all, we know that didn't happen. But I have had expectations from friendships over the year, my parents, and also from just different experiences that I was going through. I expected to breastfeed my son for an entire year.

And I had this expectation that it would be this magical bonding experience, that it would be super easy and we would both just love it. I didn't expect the work that it would take. And because I had these unrealistic expectations that I placed on myself, I almost sent myself to burnout city when it wasn't playing out the way I had planned my mind. Now I kid you not when I talk about the lactation cookies I bought, how I woke myself up in the middle of the night to pump extra so that I've increased my milk supply and just the overall frustration and stress that I experienced. I missed out on a lot of the present moments with my kids, because I was so worried about something that eight years later doesn't matter at all.

And I also really struggled with my confidence during that time. But I wanted to talk about expectations with you today because I find myself feeling a bit of disappointment with myself for reasons that I don't know that I quite get yet. So I'm on this path of self discovery and as my friend, Laura Gassner Otting in her book Wonderhell writes, she talks about it's the place where I'm on the brink of this next success, whatever that is, but it's like this space of unknowing. Now if you go back to episode called Wonderhell, it dropped on the fourteenth. You don't wanna miss it.

It is by Laura, and it is amazing, but we talk about just not knowing what's around the corner and what to do when success doesn't feel like it should. But I'm over here and I'm doing all the things that I think I should be doing. I'm creating content, I'm posting socials, I'm dropping podcasts, And I'm in community with keynote speakers and executive women. I am literally doing the most right now. And I have no idea where this is going to lead.

I know where I would like it to lead. I have my expectations, but I sometimes doubt my ability to get there. And I also just don't know where it's all going, but here's the thing throughout my failed expectation life moments. I've learned that what doesn't work out for me is not meant for me. And what is meant for me will come to me.

I met with a spiritual advisor. Her name is Gabrielle Laura Gimler. You can follow her on Instagram, which, Hey girl, if you're listening, I want you on the show. But Gabrielle talks about the spiritual journey that we are all on. And depending on what you believe in this may or may not resonate with you, but I do believe that we are all called to a higher purpose.

And it's all in life's work to understand and find that purpose and to clear out all the BS that's in the way. And sometimes that just means trusting your intuition, going with your gut, doing the work, taking the steps, even when you're not sure what that outcome will be. I don't know when this podcast drops, if y'all are going to like it, it might get zero listens, but I have to trust. I have to go ahead and be vulnerable and put it out there. And that's the thing you have to trust that on the journey that you are going to invest your time and probably sell money is that some things also won't pan out.

You'll have failures that turn into lessons and you'll have losses that you do grieve over that when you have the gift of hindsight, you will realize it all worked out the way it was supposed to work out. When I think back to that first high school love, the boy that taught me so much about what it meant to be valued and to be loved, I learned so much about how I wanted to be loved. And of course, while I was actually going through that broken heart experience, I learned even more about myself. I learned how resilient I was. I was able to see how I handled grief and loss.

I learned lessons about how I never wanted to feel and how I would never make others feel. I learned from my true friends. And now twenty years later with the gift of hindsight, I knew that breakup was always meant to happen. And that it led me to become this person, the person I am today, and to have the merits that I have today. And the same goes for me where I am right now.

I have expectations of the work that I am putting in right now, today. I have expectations of the timelines that I will hit certain milestones and certain outcomes that I will achieve. And I'm already seeing where I'm not meeting some of those expectations, but guess what? Those are expectations I put on myself. No one is holding me to those.

And if I can let go and trust what is meant for me will happen for me, that road will be so much easier to walk down. And I've got one last story before I go. And yes. It's about motherhood. When I went into the hospital to have Hudson, my first kid, I had zero expectations of what my birthing story would be.

I just knew that I was walking out with a baby and I had ideas of what I would like to see happen. I knew that I wanted an epidural. I knew I didn't wanna have a C section, but I was just there to have a baby. Well, at some point Hudson's heart rate plummeted and the hospital room alarm started sounding off with this crazy high pitched noise. The room was flooded with nurses, pushing my husband clear out of the way and pulling the sides of the bed down so that they could get to me quickly.

And in just a moment's notice, it was mad chaos. And one of the nurses got really close to my face and she said, Erica, if this heart rate does not change in two seconds, we're taking you back for a C section. And I can remember that so vividly all the noise in the room fell away. And I remember looking up at her and just saying, okay. Thankfully, his heart rate stabilized once they moved me into a different position, and he was born without a hitch.

Although they kept that room filled with nurses and doctors, and they were ready to roll him out with whatever medical issue may occur. But afterwards, and this is the piece of the story I really wanna share with you. Afterwards, the nurse said to me, I truly believe Erica that this happened because you you just let it happen. You were so relaxed. You were so calm and you were ready to do whatever needed to be done.

Call it, go with the flow or whatever you wanna call it. But when you remove those crazy expectations of how things should be and how they should go, you allow for things to happen. And that's what happened with my birthing story. Is it easier said than done? Of course it is.

Can you practice this? Absolutely. So next time you find yourself with something that isn't quite going your way, or you find yourself mentally napping out how things should be, how people should act and the way things should go, you've gotta stop yourself. Take a beat, recognize that what is meant to be, it will be. Everything is unfolding exactly how it should be.

Now that doesn't mean that you don't get to kick back and relax. You still have to show up and do the work. But know that when you do consistently show up and you do the work, even when you are filled with doubt, even when you are second guessing yourself, show up, just show up. And what is meant to be? Girl, stop biting, stop doubting because it will be.

Now let's keep breaking ceilings together. Thank you for listening. Make sure you follow me on my socials, especially Instagram and LinkedIn where I have more content just like this that I made just for you. I'll see you soon.