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