Super successful people often have a "sense of destiny".

It can manifest quite early on, and is totally irrational. After all, they don't yet have any achievements to their name.

Richard Koch talks about it in his book "Unreasonable Success"

Koch raises a second trait that very few people actually have, but that you see in some of the most famous people in history: from Mandela to Madonna, Da Vinci to Madam Curie.

"Olympian expectations"

It means relentlessly big thinking + higher expectations over time

These sky-high expectations are how a person attracts others to their vision, and as a team they warp reality around them.

But even though it attracts others, the original vision is unique to one person:

1. Da Vinci: ‘perfect paintings’
2. Churchill: ‘stop Hitler’
3. Thatcher: ‘reverse national decline’

The power of expectations was demonstrated in a now-famous experiment by Rosenthal/Jackson.

18 classes of school kids were tested for IQ. The results were given to the teachers, who were told to treat all the kids impartially.

The kids identified as ‘gifted’ grew their IQ by 10-30 points.

The teachers had subconsciously been giving them more attention, and raising expectations of them.

The twist?

The children identified as ‘gifted’ were in fact average.

The teachers had been deceived.

This is the power of expectation - we all know this from a loving parent, relative, or teacher: they expect a lot, so we want to prove their trust.

The expectation we put on ourselves is also massively important.

Koch: “Even an incorrectly perceived aura of outperformance will lead over time to a larger measure of real outperformance… Those who inherit the earth will be those who expect to”

There’s a fine line between optimism and delusion, but if kids can gain 30% in IQ tests just via expectations, we can definitely raise our sights.

Even at 20, Walt Disney couldn't face being someone’s employee. A secretary said “He had the drive and ambition of ten million men"

When he arrived in Hollywood at age 21, he at last found people with similar sized ambitions.

He was obsessed with the quality of his animations. He considered them part of him, and hired a star animator at double his own pay