245. Inner Excellence: When Love Conquers Fear

Expect Nothing, Handle Anything: A Lesson in Radical Responsibility and Love

Blog Post for today: https://www.kathieowen.com/blog/expect-nothing-handle-anything-courage-love-letting-go
Book Inner Excellence: https://amzn.to/4oFBhjl

In this episode of Kathie's Coaching podcast, host Kathie Owen shares her core speech in preparation for a Toastmasters event. 

Drawing inspiration from a viral moment involving NFL player AJ Brown and the book 'Inner Excellence,' Kathie elaborates on the concept of 'Expect Nothing, Handle Anything.' She outlines three crucial components: non-attachment, radical responsibility, and courage, and shares a heartfelt story about making a difficult decision for her aging dog, Rusty. 

With love as the fourth key element, Kathie demonstrates how these principles can transform expectations and help navigate life's challenges. Tune in for an insightful and emotional journey that emphasizes the power of love and resilience.

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to Kathie's Coaching Podcast
00:39 Setting the Stage: Expectations
01:02 A Personal Anecdote: AJ Brown's Influence
01:55 Core Message: Expect Nothing, Handle Anything
02:13 Three Key Components
03:29 A Heartfelt Story: Rusty's Final Days
05:20 The Power of Love and Courage
06:21 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

0:01

You are listening to Kathie's Coaching podcast. I'm your host, Kathie Owen, and today I'm sharing with you my core speech. This speech changes all the time depending on what audience I'm talking to, but this is a practice run for Toastmasters on Friday. And in fact, I did this for, as a guest speaker for an evaluation contest, and I got five evaluations of my speech, and this is a reiteration of that using the feedback I got on those evaluations. So without further ado, let's get into the episode.

Kathie (2): 0:39

Expectations are a funny thing. And today I wanna shift your perspective of expectations and think for a moment, think of something you're expecting in the future that's gonna be really, really good. And also think of something you're expecting in your future that might not be so good. January 12th, 2025. I was watching the professional football game playoff between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Green Bay Packers. During this game, I hear the announcers making fun of a, of AJ Brown of the Philadelphia Eagles. He was reading this book on the sidelines. Who did he think he was reading a book on the sidelines? The book, I looked it up the next day on Google. It was going viral and so was AJ Brown. The book, inner Excellence Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life. I read it cover to cover. It's everything I coach is sports Psychology is how athletes can perform at their top level, despite all the stress, despite all the expectations. Hmm. In fact, expect nothing, handle anything is where I came up with the title of this speech. It came from this book. And I believe there are three components to truly expect nothing and handle anything. Number one, non-attachment. When we attach to our expectations of how we think things should be, we limit ourselves. And by the way, should is a dirty word. So let go of your attachments to how things should be. Number two, radical responsibility. Responsibility gets a bad rap, but when you take radical responsibility, you take complete ownership for everything that happens. You don't blame anybody and you also have, don't have any excuses. Hmm. I like need some radical responsibility. And number three, it's definitely gonna take courage. Because courage means you take action despite fear, because fear is going to be there. So go back to your expectations and think about that, because just recently I had to live all three of these in an expected moment that I thought I couldn't handle. My beloved dog of 14 and a half years, his health had been dwindling. I mean, we expect that to happen in 14, 15, 16. I heard some blast as much as 17, 18 years. Well, Rusty's was coming to an end six months ago. He lost his sight, but the little guy never lost his spirit. I swear he didn't even know he was blind, but. Three weeks ago, he started dwindling down, sleeping whole lot, and in the last week or so, he stopped eating. He wouldn't even eat Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets. Oh, I knew something was wrong. I made an appointment with the vet. I had already talked about this day coming, and we'd already discussed what could happen and. I made an appointment with the vet hoping they could give him a steroid shot, maybe they could increase his appetite. So as I put him in the car that very day, I looked out at the floorboard and there was my little notebook that I write notes in all the time. And the words in my own handwriting was radical responsibility. Hmm. I had to take radical responsibility for his life, for the life that I was so blessed with. All of these years. I had to take responsibility for the attachment that I had to how things should be. And yeah, when we got to the vet, it took courage to face that decision because. I didn't want him to suffer anymore. Expected that day to be really, really hard. But when I had these three elements changed everything, the fourth element really changed everything and that my friends is love. Love helped me not be attached to how it should be. And love helped me take complete responsibility for what was taking place in my life. And love was what gave me the courage to make that decision And love can take place'cause love and fear cannot coexist. And when I made that decision, my heart was filled with gratitude, with joy, with bliss. Yeah, I grieved, but not in the way you think because when you expect nothing, you can handle anything. Thank you.

6:21

All right, that's my episode for today. I trust that you found it helpful. If you know someone who could benefit from this, please share it with them. And until next time, I will see you next time. Peace out and namaste.