What You Tolerate Creates Your Reality
The Secret to Insane Progress
· Defining the floor
· A misquote ruined it for many
· The cause of low floors
· How to raise your floor in 3 simple steps
∘ Step 1: Get clear on your major goal
∘ Step 2: Identify current floors you must raise
∘ Step 3: Find a mentor to model
· Wrap upYour standards consist of two levels:
The ceiling and the floor.
If you’re anything like most people, you probably spend the majority of your time focused on the ceiling of your standards.
These are the highest possible qualities you’re willing to accept such as a date with Beyoncé or a $100,000 per annum salary.
Improving your ceiling means adding more layers.
Basically…
It’s limitless.
You can stack your ceiling as high as your mind will allow you; the only issue with doing so is it isn’t based on reality.
The ceiling of your standards are just dreams.
That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with dreaming — you should dream.
But if you want to make real progress, you must shift your focus from the ceiling to the floor of your standards.
These are what shape your daily behaviors and produce the majority of outcomes in your life.
If you accept low quality, you’ll get low quality.
Another way to put it –
You get whatever you’re willing to tolerate.
Raising your floor is how you change your outcomes.
It accelerates the journey toward what you want to achieve by purging the things that “don’t make sense” for who you want to become.
If you can raise your floor, you can alter your reality.
Defining the floor
Your floor is the opposite of your ceiling – duh!
It’s the absolute minimum you’re willing to accept in various given scenarios.
This varies for each individual and can be adjusted freely.
But here’s the catch –
It must be enforced.
For example, let’s say you splash out with apple pay like Apple is the one paying and only cool off once your bank balance approaches -$100…
That’s your floor.
It doesn’t matter if you win the lottery or sign a million-dollar record deal with Roc Nation…
As long as your floor remains at -$100, you’ll always find yourself back at -$100.
Someone else, on the other hand, may have a financial floor of around five million dollars – this is the point they start to feel broke.
They will freely spend money until they approach the five million mark, and only stop once they’ve reached or slightly passed it.
A misquote ruined it for many
“If nothing is done about your floor, nothing will change.”
A misquoted statement from a 17th Century clergyman has condemned many to mediocrity for generations.
His name is Thomas Fuller.
This is the geezer credited with saying “Seeing is believing.”
The actual quote is “Seeing is believing, but feeling is the truth,” insinuating that sometimes you can’t see a solution, but you know what to do in your heart — he was talking about your gut feeling.
Many have ran with the warped version of this saying and fallen into the trap of thinking their situation will change only when their circumstances improve.
As in…
“My spending habits will get better when I earn more money.”
No, it won’t.
This is like putting a bandaid on a stab wound.
The actual problem is your standards are too low.
You’re willing to tolerate bad spending habits.
Earning more money will only allow you to spend more until you arrive back at your floor.
This will always be the case until you raise your lower level cos that’s what defines your outcomes.
The cause of low floors
Raising your floor isn’t as simple as raising your ceiling.
You can’t just stack things on top.
Merely saying, “I want a to 10x my earnings” won’t do much to change what you’re willing to accept.
You’ve gotta tighten up on what you let slide.
It’s action based.
You must actively define the worst-case scenarios you’re willing to accept and enforce them to see a change.
More often than not this means deliberately putting yourself in unfamiliar territory.
You know what comes with unfamiliar territory dontcha?
Uncertainty.
Moving towards uncertainty completely goes against the natural wiring of the human brain.
We’ve evolved to equate uncertainty with a threat of survival.
When faced with a decision to accept or reject a contract that doesn’t reflect your worth, your default is to go with what you’ve always done cos you know what to expect.
If it means lowering your standards, so be it.
Your brain craves familiarity cos it puts you at ease. It’s comfortable.
The name of this phenomenon is called the “familiarity principle.”
It’s the reason people end up in crappy relationships…
A female who grew up with an alcoholic father finds all the men she’s attracted are alcoholics cos their behavior is familiar.
Keeping things as they’ve always been is the path of least resistance.
How to raise your floor in 3 simple steps
You determine the level of your floor.
The goal is to set it high.
Doing so will raise your ceiling by default.
In other words –
Your idea of what’s possible expands as you increase your standards.
This is why Elon Musk believes it’s possible to live on Mars – his floor is extremely high.
But let’s stay on track…
Here’s how you raise your floor.
Step 1: Get clear on your major goal
“If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy and inspires your hopes.”
— Andrew Carnegie.
The first step to raising your floor is getting clear on where you’re going.
What is it you want to achieve?
Just pick one thing.
It doesn’t have to be “realistic.”
Once upon a time, airplanes were a fantasy — just saying.
Your mind is allowed to run wild when deciding what you want.
Imagine the creator gave you a pen and told you to write exactly what you want.
Step 2: Identify current floors you must raise
“You can’t heal what you don’t acknowledge”
— Jack Canfield
Many of your floors are modelled from people who may not align with where you’re going.
For example, if your goal is to become a multimillionaire but you learned your money habits from your parents who are in shitloads of bad debt and think the top 10% of society are scum, it’s likely you’ll have a low floor for what’s financially acceptable too.
This isn’t the time to get angry and start fighting anyone though.
You’ve just got to acknowledge you’ve learned to tolerate some bad practices so you can begin the raising process.
Step 3: Find a mentor to model
“Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master”
— Leonardo The Vinci
The idea behind mentorship is to learn their floor, which would be significantly higher than yours, and set it as your new floor.
Basically…
There’s no need to figure out what you’ve got to do on your own.
People have already walked the path you wish to tread.
It makes sense to seek them out and learn from them directly.
This allows you to get a sense of what they expect of themselves in certain situations so when you’re faced with a similar scenarios you can ask yourself, ”What would [insert mentors name] do in this situation?”
When you commit to modelling a mentors standards, your growth will be accelerated beyond your comprehension.
Wrap up
Here’s a sad fact —
The majority of people have deficient standards in most things.
They rarely achieve anything of significance, which is terrible for them, but great for you.
It means raising your floor, even slightly, gives you an edge over the pack.
If you dare to raise your floor, you’ll see how fast you start moving toward your current ceiling.
Try it and see.
Thanks for reading!
Get your hands on a FREE copy of “Don’t Just Set Goals. Build Systems” if you’re tired of setting goals and not achieving them.
