Want A Better Life? Start With Better Standards
The often overlooked strategy by self-help gurus that makes for a better life.
“If you’re already on the fence about it, don’t bother setting it up.”
My dad said something to that effect last week as I found myself in a particular situation. After a few weeks of waiting for some income tax filing tests, the one who organized the project decided to wait for a better time since they were so busy.
I wasn’t too worried about it since I had a few backup plans. One is to delve into tutoring English to people online. The other is effectively my old job before I delved into writing — selling credit cards.
It’s been several years since I last did the job and it’s not as high demanding as before, but I was still kinda iffy on the whole thing the more I thought about it.
That’s when that advice was dropped and decided to go for the language tutoring. It fits more of what I’m already doing and since I planned to work in my parent’s home, it would allow me to delve into another project I had in mind.
In the end, I remembered my standards and adjusted them to make a better decision.
Our environments encourage speed and efficiency in everything that we do and that has conditioned us to want everything done fast. We want quick solutions to our problems, quick bursts of happiness, quick dopamine injections, quick sex, quick results, quick earnings, and more.
The issue with this sort of environment is that soon enough we’re able to find convenient solutions that make these quick things feel reasonable. Self-help has perpetuated that idea for a very long time thanks in part to pseudoscience and other elements.
If you don’t think about getting sick, you won’t get sick. Even if you have all the symptoms of a cold or worse cancer, gurus can insist that believing those aren’t real and that you don’t have them can be just as effective as the actual treatments of them.
Beyond that, people cling to those ideas of quick results as self-help gurus show the end result — their life fully glorified. Driving expensive cars, living in a large house, being physically fit, and so on. They sculpted the “perfect life” and pass along courses and advice that doesn’t quite work.
Revealing the destination makes it easier for people to visualize those things and want them as well. When they picture it again and again, it becomes an obsession to achieve that or to think one already has these things. That’s why The Secret was and still is so effective.
If you can think it then you already have it.
The Secret borders that way of thinking to the point that people have already caught that. Some people get this higher sense of worthiness for something even if they aren’t owed it nor worked to achieve that sort of position. They expect that the universe will accommodate their needs just because they used wishful thinking.
At the end of the day, many self-help gurus have set the bar pretty low. They would rather feed into those emotions rather than being real with people about the challenges. They focus on the highs rather than the potential challenges or other strategies that can help individuals grow.
And one solid method to help with growing as a person is to simply have better standards.
It’s Easy To Have, But Hard To Enforce
Standards at their core are easy to have and form, but the biggest issue is enforcing them. I of all people am familiar with how flexible we can be with our particular rules and values. Some of us place hard restrictions on ourselves through diets or work ethics, but they can become shaky under particular circumstances.
If you have a “don’t bring work home” rule in place, it can be difficult to uphold it if your boss calls you late at night with something urgent.
In these kinds of areas, standards feel like tests of will power (but not really) when they’re placed in these circumstances. And even though these are being tested, standards are more rigid when you understand how to use them.
Standards are hard to enforce because we’re not taught what they actually are and how they function. We consider them like rules or our code. We’re like Batman and his “don’t kill” rule which is constantly threatened by criminal masterminds like The Joker who wants Batman to break his one rule.
In our minds, we’re constantly under that threat of The Joker. Though in our case it might just be our boss, a cookie, the idea of skipping the gym today, or some other element that persuades us to break our rule.
And unlike in the movies, those kinds of things win. And it also doesn’t help us that self-help gurus don’t normally bring this up beyond some rousing motivational speech or phrase.
How To Make Standards Built To Last
We need to redefine what standards are in our mind and the first step is to consider them more than simply rules. They are our values, interests, personal identities, and affiliations. We’re allowed some flexibility with them, but usually that comes from more careful decisions and considerations.
Our standards are like a safe with multiple security levels to them. Those security levels are more like checks in our mind that keep the integrity of our values and goals.
And it’s our mission to ensure those checks are strong. One weak link and it all breaks apart.
So what kind of locks can we build for our standards? Well, here are some particular ideas:
- Past lock — Recall what was established in the past that can connect with the standard you have today. If you’re faced with a similar opportunity but under slightly different circumstances, like I have been, weigh that into your consideration when making a decision.
- Optionality — Another logical approach is to consider all of your options and avenues. A lot of times our standards become flexible because we believe it’s the only option. Thinking about other options that you have decreases the risk of making a bad decision and compromising your standards.
- Redefine & Reinforce — Standards can be a little flexible and part of that comes down to your own mindset. How you view particular things changes as you go through life. As a result, it’s important to make adjustments and to understand who you are in that current moment. For example, I used to not like accounting at all after I graduated but I’m at a point now where I’d be okay with doing the tax side of things due to my experience and tying that to what that means to me. Beyond that, reinforcing your standards is helping to clarify to you about where you stand in a particular situation.
- Value-Based — These are your standards and so it’s natural to have a lock to consider what you get out of something and compare that to the cost. Does lowering a particular standard really help you in this exact situation, especially when you consider the other locks that you have in place? Like a freelancer charging what they are worth, you might not be getting a lot of clients, but the clients that you do get are well worth it because you get more experience, and you’ll be getting paid much better than the person who takes every gig they get their hands on.
- Define — Even though concepts have general definitions, we do still have our own personal definitions for things. For example, capitalism gets a lot of bad rep in my mind due to what we’re seeing today. But to me, that’s exploitation, not capitalism. Capitalism is something else entirely different to me. It’s more in line with a sense of community since capitalism was defined to me as “the invisible hand of the market” which is dictated by everyone rather than a select few people. It’s this act of defining something to you that can help you solidify a standard and how you view events and solutions. And all that can be done by taking to time to figure out what a concept or a philosophy means to you.
- Research — When adding new standards or being exposed to something different, it’s natural to want to look it up. This is a good general check to get a feel for something.
When you build standards in this fashion, you instil more confidence in yourself and provide reassurance. This is necessary in the face of the more tempting and easier route to take. And while it may be easier, it does require more sacrifice on your behalf and it could cost much more later down the road.
I think back to the network marketing companies I was part of and how they provided an easy route to building a business, it demanded a heavy investment into while also roping more and more people into it. It requires deceiving a lot of people and the only “redemption” you have is the idea of investing into yourself through self-help.
Going down that path isn’t all that inspiring and requires you to keep lying to yourself again and again whether you make progress in the “business” or not. It forces you to think that you’re helping people when you’re actually not.
And that same level of impact can be felt with other decisions as well.
Meanwhile, establishing standards and creating these locks doesn’t always mean you refuse to do something. Rather it’s helping you to figure out what is the best decision in these situations and ultimately helps you form a more healthy relationship with events.
After all, these locks can help you look at things more objectively and that’s better than letting your emotions steer all your decisions.
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