What Happens When You Set Standards Too High?

Posted in Perspective · Self Improvement |  Email This Post | by James Rick

When you set unrealistic standards, you are making a commitment that you just can’t keep. It’s like walking into a gym with the bold plan to lift 500 lb weights your first time. It sounds like a glorious idea and it will make you feel significant to tell people of your high standard. But in practice when you try to lift the weight and it falls on your throat, the experience might cause you so much pain, embarrassment and self disappointment you never attempt to set any standard, or you end up settling for far less than you’re actually capable of.

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Someone brought up an important point for clarification in the last newsletter: the difference between standards inside yourself that you completely control and standards outside yourself that are generally beyond your control - and therefore INEVITABLY violated.

“My struggle was over allowing a friend to come into my home with filthy bare feet, green with horse dung, and walk diet onto my floors. This was a standard of disrespect to herself and to me that I had not encountered before but I was allowing it for fear of being offensive whilst being offended. Next time I will speak kindly but firmly and put a stop to it.”

You will find that setting high standards outside of yourself, like house cleanliness can actually cause you more stress than necessary. The difference here is control. You can set personal standards within yourself and control them. When you start setting standards about your environment - outside your control you are setting yourself up for aggravation. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set external standards, it just means that if you insist on maintaining these standards you should readily communicate them and be flexible in changing them.

To properly assess the value of your standards:

(1) Look at where the control is: when you commit to a healthy lifestyle who has the control - you do. When you commit to a clean house you only have moderate control, if it’s important to you set the standard but be open about it. No standard that is important to you is worth keeping silent. It’s HOW you communicate openly that will determine whether you still have a friend or not after you voice it.
(2) Take the long term view. A house is temporary, the house will eventually get dirty. Personal growth is long term. Keeping commitments with the self are long term. A friendship of open communication and mutual respect is long term.

In short: the value of a standard is based on your level of control and the long term impact.

- James Rick
http://www.jamesrick.com/blog

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