Mark: A study of over 900,000 Europeans found that for every dollar spent on advertising in a country, there was a measurable drop in its citizens' happiness. Michelle: Hold on, a drop in happiness? That sounds extreme. Mark: It is. The researchers found the effect was comparable to major negative life events, like a divorce. It turns out, the pictures in our heads of what life should be are literally costing us our joy. Michelle: Wow. So all those perfect lives on Instagram and in commercials are actively making us miserable. Mark: And that's the central nerve that DeVon Franklin hits in his book, Live Free: Exceed Your Highest Expectations. Michelle: DeVon Franklin... he's not your typical self-help author, right? He's a major Hollywood producer. He worked on films like The Pursuit of Happyness. It's fascinating that someone from the industry that creates so many of our expectations is the one writing the manual on how to break free from them. Mark: Exactly. And he argues that these expectations are like a secret software running our lives, an operating system we never chose. Which is where we need to start.

Mark: Franklin’s core metaphor is that our minds are hardware, and expectations are the software running on them. This software dictates our emotions, our decisions, our actions... but most of us have never once stopped to ask who wrote the code. Michelle: I love that analogy. It’s like we’re all running on some ancient, buggy operating system we inherited. And we just assume that’s how it’s supposed to be. Mark: Precisely. And sometimes that faulty code can lead to a total system crash. The book brings up the story of pop star Demi Lovato, which is a really powerful, high-stakes example of this. Michelle: Oh, I remember this. It was heartbreaking. Mark: It was. In the late 2010s, Demi was six years sober, but she was miserable. She was living under this immense pressure to maintain a certain image of physical perfection. Her management team had incredibly strict rules for her, especially around food. They would remove all sugar from her dressing room, even taking the fruit out of her hotel rooms before she arrived. Michelle: That’s not support, that’s control. Especially for someone with a known eating disorder. Mark: It was absolute control. She felt trapped. She tried to tell her team that she was in danger, that she was struggling and might relapse. She reached out for help. Michelle: And what did they do? Mark: They dismissed her concerns. They told her she was being selfish. They basically invalidated her reality. Feeling completely abandoned, and with all this pressure building, she relapsed. A month after releasing a song literally called "Sober," she overdosed. Michelle: That’s just devastating. To ask for help and be told you're the problem. Mark: It’s the ultimate example of faulty software. The expectation was: "You must be perfect. You must look this way. Your struggles are an inconvenience." That programming nearly killed her. The turning point, her "reprogramming" moment, came after she survived. She fired her entire management team. Michelle: Good for her. Mark: She hired a new manager who supported her focusing on her music, not her body. She took control of the expectations. She started writing her own code. It’s a dramatic story, but it illustrates Franklin’s point perfectly: these invisible expectations can have life-or-death consequences. Michelle: It makes you wonder, where does this faulty software even come from? We aren't born with it. Mark: Franklin says we download it unconsciously from everywhere. Our family is the primary source—what our parents modeled, what our relatives valued. Then there’s society: our friends, school, and of course, the media. And finally, our own experiences—our hurts, our hopes—they all write lines of code. Michelle: So it's like we're all walking around with a mental operating system that's a messy combination of our parents' old software, a bunch of pop-up ads from culture, and a few viruses from past heartbreaks. Mark: That’s a perfect way to put it. And most of us never even think to run a diagnostic. We just assume the constant crashes, the slow performance, the error messages of anxiety and unhappiness... are normal. Michelle: But they’re not. They’re signs that the software is failing. That’s a powerful idea. It shifts the blame from 'what's wrong with me?' to 'what's wrong with my programming?' Mark: And that gives you the power to change it. But it's not just our internal software we have to worry about. That software is constantly getting signals from an external network.

Mark: Right, Franklin describes this as navigating an 'expectation gauntlet.' We're constantly being bombarded by expectations from our culture, our families, and our romantic partners. Michelle: The gauntlet. That feels accurate. It’s coming from all sides. Mark: And it manifests in both huge, life-altering decisions and tiny, everyday interactions. Franklin shares a personal story about his own college choice. He grew up in a tight-knit church community, and his entire family went to Oakwood University, a historically Black college in Alabama. It was the expectation. Michelle: The family tradition. I know that pressure. Mark: He felt the weight of it. But his dream was to work in Hollywood. His spirit, his inner voice, was telling him he needed to be in Los Angeles. He knew that following the family expectation would mean giving up the life he was called to live. So, he had to stand up to everyone and choose the University of Southern California instead. Michelle: That takes a lot of courage, especially when you’re young. You risk disappointing everyone you love. Mark: He did. But he argues that it’s better to disappoint others than to betray yourself. That’s a macro-level example. But then he shares this other story that is so small, so relatable, it’s almost comical. He calls it the "Baked Chicken Incident." Michelle: Oh, I am ready for this. This sounds like my life. Mark: Shortly after he and his wife, Meagan, got married, she would often make him baked chicken for dinner. He loved it. It became this little routine. Then, she took an acting job in New York for six months. When she came back, she stopped making the baked chicken. Michelle: Okay, I can see where this is going. Mark: He started getting resentful. He didn't say anything, of course. He just let it fester. In his mind, he started building a case against her. 'She doesn't love me anymore.' 'She doesn't care about being a good wife.' His internal 'software' was running wild with interpretations. Michelle: Based on chicken. This is every relationship argument ever. It's never about the chicken. Mark: Exactly. It finally came to a head one night. He just blurted it out: "Why aren't you making the chicken?" And Meagan’s response was brilliant. She said, "Because you started expecting it. It stopped being a gift I gave you and started being a job you assigned me. You took the joy out of it." Michelle: Wow. That is a mic drop. I have lived that story. The unspoken expectation that turns a kind gesture into a chore. It’s the silent killer of goodwill in a relationship. Mark: It is. And Franklin realized his love was becoming conditional. He was holding her accountable for an expectation he had never communicated and she had never agreed to. It was a huge wake-up call. Michelle: Okay, but in a marriage, you have to have expectations, right? You expect fidelity. You expect support. How do you set them without it turning into... well, the baked chicken fight? Mark: That is the million-dollar question. And Franklin’s answer is surprisingly practical. It's not about having no expectations, but about mastering them. It's about moving from defense—surviving the gauntlet—to offense. It’s the art of the ask.

Mark: Franklin lays out a simple, three-step process for setting expectations in a healthy way. First, you have to communicate it. Clearly. Out loud. Second, you have to get agreement. The other person has to actually say, "Yes, I agree to that." And only then, third, can you hold them accountable. Michelle: That middle step—agreement—is the one everyone skips. We just assume that because we said it, the other person is on board. Mark: We do. The baked chicken incident was a failure of all three steps. He never communicated it, never got agreement, and then tried to hold her accountable. It was a recipe for disaster. But this framework doesn't just apply to relationships; it's incredibly powerful in your professional life, too. Michelle: How so? It seems like at work, the expectations are set for you. Mark: They are, but how you frame them in your own mind can change everything. This brings me to one of my favorite stories from the book, about George Clooney. Michelle: Okay, you have my attention. Mark: Early in his career, Clooney was struggling. He was going to auditions and just desperate for the casting directors to like him, to pick him. He was focused on what he could get from them—a job. And he was failing, constantly. Michelle: A familiar story for any actor, I’m sure. Mark: But then he had this massive epiphany. He realized that the casting directors and producers had a problem. They were under pressure to find the right person for the role. Their jobs were on the line. He decided to change his entire perspective. He stopped walking into auditions thinking, "I hope you pick me," and started walking in thinking, "I'm here to solve your problem. I am the solution you've been looking for." Michelle: Wow. That is a total game-changer. It flips the power dynamic completely. He’s not a supplicant anymore; he’s a collaborator. A problem-solver. Mark: Exactly! He started projecting confidence, not neediness. He was there to help them. And he started landing parts consistently. He exceeded their expectation. They expected another desperate actor, and they got a confident professional who was there to make their lives easier. Michelle: So for us non-movie stars, that means walking into a performance review not thinking 'What will they give me?' but 'How can I solve my boss's biggest headache?' Or approaching a client not with 'Please buy my product,' but 'Here is how I can solve a major pain point for your business.' Mark: You've got it. It's about shifting your focus from what you can get to what you can give. It's about understanding and then exceeding the real, often unspoken, expectation. The real expectation isn't just "do your job." It's "make my life easier." "Help us win." When you do that, you're not just meeting expectations; you're creating value.

Michelle: When you put it all together—the secret software, the expectation gauntlet, the art of the ask—what's the one big shift we need to make? Mark: It’s realizing that freedom isn't living with no expectations, but living by your set expectations. It’s a quote from the epilogue that really ties it all together. You are moving from being a passive user of someone else's buggy software to becoming the active programmer of your own life. Michelle: From being controlled by the code to writing the code. Mark: That’s it. You decide what's a priority. You communicate your boundaries. You choose your goals based on your own values, not what culture or your family tells you to want. You take responsibility for your own happiness instead of outsourcing it to your partner or your boss. Michelle: That feels both incredibly liberating and a little terrifying. It’s a lot of responsibility. Mark: It is. But the alternative is a life of quiet resentment, burnout, and unfulfilled potential. Franklin suggests a simple, practical first step. He calls it a 'cost-benefit analysis' for any obligation. Before you say yes to something you feel you 'should' do, ask yourself: is the cost to my peace, my energy, my joy, worth the benefit? Michelle: I love that. It’s a quick diagnostic for the 'should trap.' Is this a genuine desire or a software bug? Mark: A perfect way to frame it. It’s about making conscious choices. Michelle: I’m so curious to hear from our listeners. What's one 'should' you're going to drop this week after hearing this? What piece of faulty code are you ready to delete? Let us know. We love hearing your stories and how these ideas land in your real lives. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.