Choosing Your Standards

Challenge for everyone: when you talk to people at work or in personal relationships, ask them about their standards. Many people will be unable to articulate their standards because many people have them but have never solidified them.

They might be able to articulate part of them but will balk at sharing them. They might find it hard to put their finger on it, but you can tell by their behavior, how they talk, and what they choose to avoid that they do have standards.

Here’s the problem. A lot of us inherited or absorbed our standards. We didn’t intensely think about them. We did not agonize over them. Too many times, it seems like we blindly or mindlessly appropriated them.

We often live our lives oblivious to the standards we hold ourselves to. We will inherit from our families. We will add to our standards through our culture. We will join groups that will influence us. We will meet new friends and associates. Family and friends we currently know, love, and trust say things we often latch onto without thinking. In the end, we wind up absorbing some of their accepted standards.

Often, these seem so comforting and reassuring that they are ‘natural’ to us. Many seem to fit our concept of ourselves and our personalities. We apply confirmational bias to them. However, we often filter out standards that challenge us and push us up and out. Instead, we corroborate or validate the things we think we already ‘know’ about ourselves.

It would be marvelous if these standards always worked for us. It would be fabulous if they always pushed us up and out. But that’s not the case. Then, we often add impossible standards that discourage us.

Other times we are lazy and accept whatever someone else offers up as a subpar standard that seems to make us feel good, yet we know deep down that it is wrong. We continue to apply our confirmational biases in hopes that their standards will fit our life so we don’t have to think too hard about it.

When either of these drag on for a long enough time, it devastates us. The worst part is that we eventually think this is just the natural order. We believe that’s just the way it goes. Either way, standards are all the same, aren’t they?

Well, they’re not. We must understand that we always have a choice as to the standards we choose to live by. It’s always a choice.

Believe it or not, the standards you currently have were not mindlessly absorbed by some mystical lottery. It’s not as if someone just dropped them in your lap, and you had no choice.

You always have a choice. When you retain these standards, it is a choice in and of itself. It’s all a choice.

I believe you should always choose your standards consciously. Do they reflect your values? Do they speak to our compassionate side? Are they leading you to where you wish to go in life? Have you thought about where you want to go in life?

These are huge, monumental questions you need to grapple with, so you can clearly understand your standards. Molding them to work for you instead of against you is a challenge but well worth the effort.

Choose them carefully and precisely. Choose your standards to reflect your interests, focus, and values genuinely. Don’t fall into the victim trap that this just happened automatically; there’s zilch you can change to improve it.

That is not true. That’s a bald-faced lie. You always have a choice. The only questions are whether you believe this and whether you are willing to make changes that allow full use of it. You always have a choice.

Learn to think logically and critically and focus on others’ welfare and your own.