Ben Winter is an actor, improv master, coach, and a best-selling author of several non-fiction books on living a better life. His latest book, “What to Expect When Having Expectations”, is about understanding where your expectations come from, what drives them, why you aren’t always aware of them, how to come to peace after being upset by an expectation going unmet, and increasing communication with yourself and others.
Ben and I discuss several of these topics in this episode as we explore the world of expectations and why they can make us so unhappy. Ben shares with us how we can use the anger and upset of having unmet expectations to find peace and live a happier life.
Ben Winter
Ben certainly hasn’t been idle in life. A couple of years out of college and he started doing things and going places he never would have expected. From traveling to personal growth to marriage and child to divorce and parenthood to entrepreneurialism and inspiring others. Ben has flown an airplane on his own and has been scuba diving in the Galapagos. He has seen the animals of Tanzania and has traveled all over Europe with a 6-month-old child in tow. He has performed improv for over a decade, acted in several plays, and even a movie. He has owned several businesses.
His biggest passion is exploring the mind. In all of his personal growth work, the one constant was that it all stems from the mind. Between personal growth and improv, he found this weird realm called expectations. And while most people would shy away from such a thing, he decided to tackle it head-on. Along his journey, he decided that “the only reason anyone gets upset is because an expectation hasn’t been met.” And begin teaching that in his Success Improv business.
From there, he noticed that there has to be a way to use that upset feeling to fix the situation. And he created the amazing “How to stop being upset” flow chart.
From there it was a simple step of taking everything that he has explored on the subject and put it in a book called, “What to Expect when Having Expectations.”
Underground Antics Podcast 