One of the things I feel trips us up, is having different sets of standards for different areas of our lives. So maybe you give 100% of you at home, 50% of you at work. That can work, but let’s look at this a bit closer.
You may have heard the statement – “How you do one thing in life is how you do everything in life.”
If you drop your standards in one thing – you will more easily drop standards in another area of your life. Then suddenly you find other things in your life changing. And you have no idea why they changed. It is a real W*T*A*F moment. Because you were asleep at the wheel, you let your standards slip. Once, OK. And nothing huge changed. The next time you found a “short cut”, it was more tempting to take that. After all nothing “went wrong” the last time you cut a corner and did something you were probably not 100% proud of.
Each one of these incidents adds up!
Before you know it, your standards have slipped. Things in your life are “just getting by” and you cannot make as much progress in proportion to the amount of work you put in. Have a look at your standards. If you can stand outside yourself and view your life dispassionately. Ask yourself – where are my standards?
Choose any scale that you like – something easy – scale of 1-5 – are my standards at a 5? If not, what number best represents the level. No judgement!
Now you have a base level. Where would you like your standards to be? If they are already at a 5 – congratulations. Keep up the same standards.
If you feel that your standards are really low – then the only way to go is UP! Start small, one step at a time. Each choice you get, ask yourself what can you do to make the best choice possible at the highest standard I can achieve. This isn’t meant to give you a stick to beat yourself up with either! Just notice and make adjustments. A bit like sailing – make adjustments to the sails gradually until you become more confident and more able to sail at full speed. Start at where you are – not the same standards as another person. You do you the best way you can. Likewise do your standards the best way you can do.
Going back to my first statement – hopefully now you realise that giving 50% at one place and 100% at another is unbalanced and you will soon feel the tug-of-war to either compromise with everything, or go and raise your standards on all fronts.
If you find that there are problems or fears that arise as a result – this is a good time to get to grips with them and finally give them their marching orders.