Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast. Kelly here. And today we're going to talk about how to opt out of lowered expectations.

We're going to look at this in both our personal relationships

and our professional slash career relationships. And it's really important that we talk about

lowered expectations because we have covered and discussed cynicism. We have talked about

having standards and really opting into joy by making sure

we set boundaries. But we also need to talk about how a spirit and a behaviors that demonstrate

that our expectations are low keep us locked in struggle. It's common to feel like we're not

living up to our potential sometimes, but it's really important that we push past those limiting

beliefs and really strive for the life that not only we want, but we deserve. And so in today's episode, I really

want to talk about what it really looks like and understanding what lowered expectations are

and how they show up. And then strategies for preventing them in both your personal relationships

and in your professional relationships in your career

in general.

Now, what do we mean when we say lowered expectations?

This is really just a mentality of settling for less and allowing ourselves not to have access

to what we truly deserve in life.

And it can be caused by a lot of factors. I think, again, when we delve into the myths behind what it means to be a black woman

and the myths that we've been told about ourselves and what our legacy is, it's easy to see why we may fall into the trap of lowered expectations.

It could be that because cultural context has told us that appropriate and boundaryed

and healthy and healing love is out of our reach, because historical myths have told us that expecting more from family

is being demanding versus being healthy or that we're really never going to get far in our

career because we've learned that black people just don't advance or black women can never get ahead.

...