Give yourself a reality shifting experience

To prevent or remove entitlement in yourself, in your family, and on your team, work to clarify three things:

1. What do you deserve as basic rights? Only a few things truly qualify here. It’s an extremely small list, even if you don’t want it to be. Clarify it so you are confident in it.
2. What do you need to earn, and keep earning, if you want it? Doing this well will shift your experience of reality. Money, job security, and a promotion are easy to identify on this list. Trusting relationships, loving connection, and emotional happiness are more difficult to come to terms with.
3. What is the standard required for earning it? Standards will fluctuate by person, environment, and context. Work out for yourself the standards you believe in. Be prepared that smart people will disagree with your standards, both above and below the standards you’ve set.

I can’t overstate the importance this clarity provides. Ground yourself in reality and set your foundation for what the world owes you vs what you owe to get what you want.

Failing to do this opens the door to a life of perpetual blaming, complaining, and defensiveness. At best you make yourself a bitter self-imposed victim of world that won’t do what you want. At worst you live in a fantasy of self-delusion, self-deception, and self-destruction.

Embrace the chase. Do the work.