Anyone who’s heard me speak recently at one of my workshops or seminars will have heard me banging on about ‘raising your standards’. It’s one of my favourite subjects at the moment and as such, thought I’d share just how key this is in achieving goals, outcomes, happiness and just about anything else in life.
Firstly, let’s understand standards. These are the levels of what you will stand for in your life. These are the levels of any given area of life that is acceptable to you. You might have high standards in one area of you life, but lower one’s elsewhere. These standards are directly related to your expectations from an area of life and were ‘learnt’ by you and then taken on by you, ‘as’ you.
The truth is … no, the hard truth is, that everything you have in your life is directly proportional to your standards in any given area of life. Your standards directly impact your ‘value’ and self worth. You can only have in life what you ‘deserve’ to have and your levels of deserving are directly proportionate to your self worth. So, if you want more, you need to deserve more and to deserve more you need higher standards…simple! So go raise your standards…
Rarely is it that easy. It is, however, often that ‘simple’. The trouble is that anything you desire in life but don’t have, will have at least an equal opposing force working against your levels of desire, otherwise you’d have it, be doing it or be it already. That includes a desire to raise your standards.
There are any number of forces that work against raising one’s standards, many of which I’ve spoken about before. One of the biggest resistances is how raising standards implicates other areas of your life. The biggest one being that to raise a standard is to raise an expectation, an expectation in you, from you and in and from others. The higher your expectations and of those around you, the greater the responsibility is on you to match those expectations with your actions, behaviour, etc. To the degree with which you embrace these raising expectations and subsequent responsibilities is the degree to which raising standards can be easy or difficult. I often refer to a true story to demonstrate this in real life.
My sister used to work for a Porsche showroom and garage and on this particular day a customer returned with his recently purchased, top of the range, supercar. He complained of a ‘rattling’ sound coming from behind the dashboard. The service agent booked the car in and the highly skilled team went to work. They checked the car in the garages and couldn’t find the rattle the customer had mentioned. They took the car for a thorough road test and still they couldn’t discover any unexpected rattles or noises. They got the customer back in and explained the lack of any findings. Incredulously, the customer announced, “ I assure you it’s there. It’s between 150 and 170 miles per hour”, and demanded they resolve the problem. The service team and mechanics thought this was hilarious and once the customer had left, an amount of mocking of commenced. That was until the general manager came in and offered his take on the situation, “We’ve sold this man, in our word, the best sports car on the market. The customer has bought into the brand and in his mind has paid top money for the best sports car money can buy. The guides state that his car will do over 180 miles per hour and our brochures talk of superlative build quality and customer service. So why shouldn’t he expect his car to not rattle at 150 miles per hour?” And with that their responsibility to this customer and to the standards set by the manufacturer was obvious.
The standard was set very high. The price (it’s value) was set accordingly high. The customer’s expectations matched this standard and value and as such so had the responsibility of those setting the standard. You see, you don’t get to set high value without raising standards and without having to match the resultant expectations with your levels of responsibility. And in short, most of us don’t like a lot of responsibility.
Once you raise standards and accordingly your value and then consistently match the resultant expectations with the appropriate levels of responsibility, your ‘worth’ is raised, as are your levels of deserving. The good news is, that for those who raise their standards and match them with equal levels of responsibility, the rewards are inevitable.
I’ll share one more motoring anecdote that highlights this even further. A customer returns to the showroom with his brand new £350,000 Rolls Royce complaining that the cigar lighter heats up too slowly. The showroom, accepts full responsibility, matching the expectations of the customer. They return the car. He apologetically explains that he still doesn’t feel it’s ‘quite right’. The showroom takes the car back, swaps it with another brand new model (all just for a lighter), apologises and leaves the man with his expectations fully realised. Rolls Royce’s standards remain intact and they continue to be able to demand £300,000+ for their cars because they are ‘worth it’.
Many people fail to realise that they set their own worth - their own deserving in this life. Their fear of matching high expectations with high levels of responsibility holds them back. This fear might show itself in many forms such as a fear of failure or a fear of embarrassment, ridicule or feeling not good enough or worthy. Others set their value high but don’t match it with standards and responsibility. This ‘value’ is rarely matched by the same degree of ‘worth’ and is often short lived.
So my question to you, is where in your life do you think your standards need raising? If you are unsure, look at the areas of your life where you are not getting satisfactory results and look for your standards within them. Raise your own standards in these areas but understand what the expectations from yourself and others will be, based on those standards. If you consistently match these expectations with a level of responsibility commensurate with these expectations, then you have just raised your self worth and you can expect to receive the rewards of such in the very near future.
10 effects of lower standards
1) Low self worth
2) Low self esteem
3) Financial difficulties
4) Weight issues
5) Relationship difficulties
6) Lack of performance
7) Low levels of success
8) Difficulty getting others to see self worth/value
9) Lack of acceptance of responsibility – blame mentality
10) Inability to positively influence or effect ones own life and outcomes
Obviously, like everything, there’s more that can play a part in what you get out of life. But, this is a bloody good place to start :)
No comments:
Post a Comment