Fear of Failure vs Celebrating Success

This morning I got up and read Seth Godin's blog post, which I usually do, and which usually gets my brain stimulated. This morning was no different but this morning I found myself disagreeing with Seth.

Seth wrote this piece on his blog today:

The paradox of expectations

Low expectations are often a self-fulfilling prophecy. We insulate ourselves from failure, don't try as hard, brace for the worst and often get it.
High expectations, on the other hand, will inevitably lead to disappointment. Keep raising what you expect and sooner or later (probably sooner) it's not going to happen. And we know that a good outcome that's less than the great one we hoped for actually feels like failure.
Perhaps it's worth considering no expectations. Intense effort followed by an acceptance of what you get in return. It doesn't make good TV, but it's a discipline that can turn you into a professional.

I'm not sure I agree with Seth on this one. I believe that in order to succeed as individuals and as a society we must continue to push our limits. I think that setting no expectations at all is a bit cowardly in fact. I see why people would do this though and why people would embrace this notion of NOT setting expectations. Our whole lives we are taught to fear failure and that failure is a bad thing. So isn't it easier to just not set any expectations and embrace the outcome, of course it is, but I'm calling BULLSHIT on this one. 

If we want to get ahead we need to embrace failure, learn from failure and we need to get a whole lot better at celebrating our successes. They don't have to be big successes but we need to realize that positive reactions to any success can build up and in fact be as strong a motivator as our fear of failure. I think we need to set high expectations for ourselves or we risk settling. I think without expectations and pushing the bar higher we may find ourselves being alright with mediocrity and the status quo. Simply putting in intense effort is just not enough, we need to shoot for something and we need to learn to push beyond our self-imposed and often self-perceived limits. 

I mean our entire world right now teaches us that failure is not ok ("oh Billy you got another D, what will we do with you?"), that being status quo is alright ("Jenny you got 2% higher then the class average that is great"), well that just can't be alright? Can it? Shouldn't we strive to improve? And strive to move beyond our perceived limits? Should we not push ourselves and each other?

So although I might agree a tiny bit that we do need to get better at accepting outcomes, whether they be good or bad I still really believe that in order to strive for betterment that we need to continue setting expectations, high expectations, but yes realistic expectations. Humans are capable of incredible things and it is shown time and time again that when we are backed into a corner we can do amazing things, so I ask you this why do we have to wait until we are backed into a corner? Let's get out there set expectations high and reach, reach, reach for them. Then when we fail once, twice, or maybe even three times we get up and yell "do over!" We pick ourselves up and we persevere until we achieve. 

So in the end I truly believe that this is an exercise in learning to deal with failure better and also really acknowledging and actually celebrating our successes way better than we currently do. 

What do you think? Set expectations or just leave expectations out of the game?