High expectations without high pressure

[Applause]

um

this barbell may look light for some

people

especially men but for me it’s

heavy it’s very very heavy for me

and this is my feeling every time when

the mca announces my name

please welcome miss gina gina fu

i feel like this i have to carry this on

stage

with me all the time

and this is a very heavy feeling

for me so since it’s heavy

i think i should put it down first

i am a trainer not the fitness type of

course

i’m not even that fit i can pause i can

pause

but i am not a fitness trainer

i am a public speaking trainer

and every time when i introduce myself

that i am a public speaking trainer

i always think that people would expect

me to be very good on stage

and i would tell you that this makes me

feel pressured

i’m pressured and i’m scared i’m scared

that i may not be able to meet my own

and

other people’s expectations

and from my experience i’ve learned that

expectation can be either

positive or negative and i wanted to

explore more about expectations so

i did a survey in a special event this

is the only one that i have

i didn’t survey in a special event not a

public speaking workshop

they usually did but the contest

because i feel that in the contest there

would be some

intense during the contest so

i asked 14 contestants before they went

up on stage

i asked them to rate their expectation

level

from 1 to 10 and 10 being the highest

and i also asked them whether their

expectation

drives or pressures them and from the

result

most of them rated their expectation

very high and there were only two people

who said that

their expectation drove them while the

rest

they said that they were pressured by it

they said that they didn’t like having

high expectations at

all and i’d like to tell you that

i used to be the same as the latter

group

i completely let my expectation

preachered me

about two years ago

just before new year like this talk i

conducted a workshop

in a group of professional trainers who

are already

very very good with public speaking and

training and moreover

this client is one of the biggest

organization in thailand

and that put a lot of pressure on me

and do you know what before the day of

the event

i got a lot of phone calls from the

project coordinator

miss dina mistina this is thai accent

so let’s let’s switch miss gina miss

gina

i’d like to tell you that this group of

the trainers

they have a lot of experience and most

of them are quite senior

do you think you can handle them

i i should say yes and i said yes

because i got the money right

so i said yes i can do it i can do it a

few days later

another call miss gina i’d like to let

you know that

some of our trainers they have a phd

miss gina do you think you can handle

them

the day before even another call

miss jina miss gina i’m so sorry to

bother you again

but we are very worried about this even

mistina

because last year we had something

similar

and our trainers were not happy with the

guest speaker

at all so just want to make sure

you can handle them right mistina

and do you know what even the day of the

event

a few minutes before i went up on stage

she came to me

grabbed me by my hand and she said

my life is in your hands now

i was so stressed it was so stressful

for me

i had been praying so many times for

this event i had been praying for

many times for them and thank god

the feedback was good and the project

coordinator didn’t get fired

but i’m not sure if she’s still there or

not

but after this event i took a two-week

holiday

because i wanted to rest but

i got all rest i need that at the

hospital

actually my husband and i were planning

to take a road trip

from bangkok to chiang mai

actually i wanted to visit several

cities

along the way being done

until we reach to chiang mai

but just the second day of the trip

i had a very bad eye area and it was so

bad and i had to ended up

at the hospital in low province

and the doctor said to me that

miss gina i think you should go back to

bangkok

for a more detailed investigation

because

there is a possibility that you may have

cancer

cancer because of that cause

cancer and i didn’t know what to do

at that time

my husband took this picture when we

decided to go back to bangkok

he wanted to motivate me and he told me

that everything is going to be okay

gina i could smile in this picture

but at that moment i kept asking myself

am i gonna die it’s gonna be over like

this

am i gonna die i haven’t finished or

achieved my dream

i haven’t spoken a ted yet so after this

talk i can die

in peace so

we decided to go back to bangkok

cancelling all my hotel bookings

no refund of course that was the bad

part

but we decided to come back to bangkok

and after the investigation

at the hospital in bangkok the doctor

said to me

miss gina congratulations

you don’t have cancer but but

you have gi bleeding and if you don’t

treat it immediately

it may still lead to cancer

so for those of you who are not familiar

with gi bleeding one of the causes of

this

is stress stress

and every picture in my life that i i’m

i’m always stressed pop up all the time

and my family suggested me that i should

only accept work

that are not too stressful at all gina

in order to protect myself

but i didn’t believe that was the right

solution because

if i only accept work that are within my

comfort zone

how would i grow

how would it grow right so today i still

accept work

that are full of high expectations just

like this

talk but the reason why i’m able to do

this

is not because i’m i’m good at is not

like that but because of how i set my

expectations

so do you still remember the little

survey that i did and i showed you at

the beginning

where more than 90 of the contestants

felt pressured

from having high expectations actually

that is not the end of the survey

after the contest i asked them another

question

did you meet your expectation

and why only one person

who said that he didn’t meet his

expectation

because he felt like he should have

practiced more but for the rest of the

contestant

they said that they met their own

expectation

and the reason why they thought that

they met their expectation

they gave me the reason they said that

because i was able to overcome my

fear i met my expectation because

i was able to show my full potential

because i was able

to be myself on stage

i totally admit that this may be a small

survey it may not apply to everyone on

the planet

i admit that but just looking at

how the participants describe their

expectations

we could see that there are actually two

types of expectations

controllable expectations and

uncontrollable expectations

uncontrollable expectations are things

like

expecting to win in a competition in the

competition

expecting to be the best in this event

this is

what i cannot control expecting everyone

to love you expecting everyone to love

your accent

expecting everyone to love your

performance

expecting everyone to understand you

basically things are beyond our control

and if if we have extremely high

uncontrollable expectations

we can easily feel pressured and

stressed

but controllable expectations

there are things like

they are about us controllable

expectations about us

they are about our actions they

are about things we want to do

for example in the past i was not there

to stand on this stage i was not there

for sure because i have to speak in

english

and i’m not really in command of my

english i had to ask my husband to check

my grammar

i had to paint him with coffee but

i was there to stand here because the

way that i set my expectations for this

event

so my expectations for

this event were

there is no need to be the best

only to do my best i did a lot of

mistakes

for this talk but it did my best

and it means that i meet my expectation

to learn something i expect to learn

something

and today i’m here since the beginning

of the event i’ve learned many things

it means that i meet my own expectation

and to have fun and i’d like to tell you

that

i have a lot of fun making wrong

grammars

on the stage at tedx

this is a lot of fun and using the

barbell

as the prop for this event it

is a lot of fun

this is a lot of fun so much fun and so

much fun

see i had a lot of fun

and very shy right now

but it had a lot of fun it means that i

meet my

own expectations

and this is how i am able

to continue speaking on stage without

having a gi bleed

so i would like everyone who

who is suffering from having high

expectations right now

just give it a try instead of focusing

only on the result

it should be the best it should be good

focusing only on the result

we can set expectations about our

actions

and just do it to the best of our

ability

however however everyone i have to give

you a vaccine first

however that doesn’t mean

that having controllable expectations

always leads to happy endings it’s not a

miracle drug

not that we can completely free

of stress or super chill over everything

is not like that

because expectation itself

whether controllable or uncontrollable

they always have weight there’s

always pressure

but the most important thing is

we don’t let expectation pull us down

or stop us from doing things we want to

do

but we let expectation push

us up and let’s see

how high we can go

you