Good morning,

Last Saturday night I had drinks with my friend "Mary". Mary was in New York City for the third round of interviews for a prestigious job.

The job is great. It is exactly what she wants to be doing with her life AND this particular job is with the best employer in America in her field. Not only that, the work is important and makes a huge difference in the world.

Mary is qualified to the job and it is almost a foregone conclusion that she will be offered the job.

And she is scared to death.

Like me, Mary is from a small town in the western United States (actually a town much smaller than the one I am from). It is one of those places where very few people leave the town, much less go off to college.

Mary’s family had to make a lot of sacrifices for her education and opportunities.

For someone like Mary, NYC seems to be filled with the smartest, most talented people in the world. Her prospective colleagues are almost exclusively the product of Ivy League universities with postgraduate degrees (which she does not have).

Mary is worried that is worried that she can't hack it. That she will move to NYC, find herself in over her head, and fail miserably. In doing that she fears she will let her whole family down and throw away everything they have done for her.

If she stays at her current job, which she is good at, but doesn’t love, she will be successful.

But in Mary’s mind the risk of moving to New York equates to risking disappointing her family and invalidating all of their sacrifice. I could see the struggle tearing her apart as she talked about it, tears streaming down her face.

In the face of that sort of fear it makes sense that she would not move to NYC.

What I find interesting about Mary's worry is the fact that her family has never said they would be disappointed in her if the job didn't work out. They have never said that she has to be a certain type of successful. These are all expectations that Mary has assumed to be true.

True or not, the situation has created a great deal of anguish and Mary’s fear of letting her loved ones down might prevent her from seizing an opportunity she knows in her bones is right for her.

Dealing with the named (or unnamed) expectations of our loved ones can be crippling. We are caught between not wanting to hurt those we love and doing what we want (or need) to do.

This week I have a tap-along audio that will help you to deal with the named and unnamed expectations of your loved ones. I have also included a tapping script that you can print out if you prefer that to a tapping audio.

Listen to the tap-along audio here: http://tappingqanda.com/309

Even if you don't think these types of expectations are holding you back, I encourage you to tap along to this audio as it will help to uncover any of such worries that may subconsciously be holding you back.

Blessings,

Gene