Standards - Building A Life That Inspires You
Unconstrained thinking, challenging hidden assumptions, and cross-examining your life for inspiration.
I hope this finds all 123 of you well! If you enjoy reading this newsletter share it with others who you think would value being an early adopter of this growing community of humans looking to thrive!
One day you'll leave this world behind so live a life you will remember - Avicii
I find the concept of standards to be extremely useful when thinking about designing a life that inspires you.
A Life That Inspires You - First off, I want to explore what I mean by "a life that inspires you". I think a life that inspires you is one that brings you a profound sense of joy and excitement. It's one that when you look at the path you're on and the things your life asks of you daily, you relish those moments.
As I've thought about "life" a bit more I think there are key areas that form the bedrock of our ability to thrive and feel fulfilled in it. To me they include:
My Key Life Pillars
Physical Fitness - Feeling good about and in your own body. Your body is able to do everything you'd want it to do or expect it to do (now and later in life).
Ability to move one's body without pain or quickness to fatigure
Ability to pick up and move every day objects without stress
Ability to do activities such as hiking, jogging, or other natural average-intensity exercises without undue burden
A body who's weight & muscle tone matches their height
Nutritional Fitness - You are well-nourished and energized by your diet. You also really enjoy your diet and your relationship with food is positive - meaning you feel confident eating things that bring you joy and that you're in control of your overall health.
A strong sense of positivity and enjoyment with respect to your diet
You have a strong understanding and foundation in nutritional principles
You often eat nutrient-dense foods, calorically adequate meals, and get the right nutrients/vitamins given your genes and lifestyle.
All bio-markers are in normal ranges
The body and mind have good energy levels most of the time
The body is disease-free (from anything related to nutrition)
Mental Fitness - You are often able to exist in the present moment, non-judgementally. Your mind has healthy thought patterns, a clear grasp of reality, and actively discards limiting beliefs.
You have more often than not a strong sense of calm, peace, and satisfaction in your day to day
You are often extremely present and able to be in the "here and now" and not get trapped in thought
You have a strong awareness of how you're feeling, how you're thinking, and a clear vision of what is within your capabilities.
You are aware of your surroundings and the situations you find yourself in and can see them clearly and objectively
You have beliefs that serve you well and are healthy for you
You are able to look at situations realistically and consider a broad range of perspectives
You are able to deal with life stressors gracefully
You find a great deal of meaning in the things that you do and the experiences you have had
You have a strong sense of faith in ideas that are nourishing to you and your relationships
Relational Fitness - You feel strong connections to people in your life and feel confident in your ability to both maintain those connections and build new ones. You feel connected to the world around you and a sense of responsibility to others.
You have strong relational skills including conscious listening, skillful response, compassion, empathy, and generosity.
You have a high degree of comfort with yourself, your past experiences, and your past actions. You are able to show up authentically and with vulnerability in relationships with others.
You have people you can call and talk to. People you can be 100% yourself with at any time.
You have a community(ies) you are part of, contribute to, and have responsibilities with.
Aspirational & Playful Fitness - You have fun in your life and often do things just for the sake of doing them. There are many areas of your life where you feel like you are in a state of "play".
You do things you enjoy doing just because you enjoy doing them
You find opportunities to reward and delight yourself just because
You indulge your curiosities
You set goals just for fun
Professional Fitness - The work you do exercises your natural strengths, leans into your natural tendencies, and brings you a strong sense of challenge and fulfillment.
You often feel like you're in "flow" when working
You often spend time doing things that are easy for you to spend time on
Your inputs clearly translate into outputs and you can see how those outputs have an impact on the work you're doing
You believe in the purpose of what you're doing
You feel like you're learning and growing constantly
You enjoy the people you're doing it with. More importantly, your values align with those of the people that work with you.
Financial Fitness - Your relationship with money is positive and you feel in control.
We have a clear understanding of our baseline financial needs
You have a clear understanding of the point to which money is correlated with your happiness
You feel like you are in control over your finances
You feel good about your plan for your financial future
You have a strong grasp of "worst-case scenarios" financially and feel comfortable with how you'd approach those scenarios
I Use This Framework To Analyze My Life - To me, these areas are the pillars that deserve attention when thinking about whether or not your life inspires you (if there are some you think are missing please call them out!).
I Think It Can Be A Useful Roadmap For Reflection - I laid these out because I think they can serve as a useful roadmap when analyzing our life and contemplating whether or not we feel inspired by it. It's not exhaustive but it has been a useful frame of reference for me.
So if these are the areas to pay attention to where do standards come into play?
What do we mean by standards?
So what is a standard anyway?
Standard: a level of quality or attainment.
When looked at through this lens and applied to our life the question becomes:
What level of quality or attainment do I want out of my relationships, work, finances, etc?
I Think We Forget We Are Setting Standards All The Time - I like to look at life through this lens and think about standards because I think we often forget that it is up to us to decide the standards we set for each area of our life. By setting standards, whether we're doing it consciously or subconsciously, we are actively making a choice about the realities we are willing to accept across each area of our lives.
We Choose Our Standards - How we want to feel and what we want to experience in each of these areas is up to us. When we recognize that we are in control of setting our standards it gives us the power to consciously decide what we expect out of our life. For example:
Examples Of How We Can Reflect On Setting Standards
Relationships - How do we want to feel in it? What do we want to receive from it? What kind of relationship do we dream of?
Work - What problems get us excited? What kinds of humans do we want to be around? How do we expect to feel when we're involved in the work?
Finances - What do we need to be happy? What would make us feel safe? What do we needof how the kinds of relationships we want to have, how we want to feel in our work, and what goals we want to dream up.
For example, I've often heard people describe their relationships, their job, their physical fitness in the following ways:
Examples Of Us Actively Choosing Standards That We’re Not Thrilled About
Relationship
It's okay. We bicker a lot.
I feel like I'm never listened to or just ignored
Work
It's a stepping stone.
My benefits are solid though.
My boss is just stressed a lot so they can be a bit short.
I don't feel like my work is valued, but maybe I'm just not doing enough.
Physical & Nutritional
I have "X" physical ailment
I don't have time because of work
Aspirational
I have not had time for a vacation
I've always wanted to go there (but haven't)
I used to love doing that, but stopped
These are silly examples, but the point is that we often are subconsciously setting standards when we make these kinds of statements.
We Say Things That Acknowledge We’re Accepting Lower Standards - When we say "my job is a stepping stone" we are telling ourselves it's okay that we don't enjoy what we're doing today or that we're not learning today because it is a path to a better future.
Lowering Your Standards Might Be Okay For What You Want Or Need - I'm not here to judge any decisions or to say that line of thinking is right or wrong. In many cases, that might be exactly what that person wants and needs.
What I am advocating for is consciously reflecting on the standards we are currently accepting in each area of our life and also actively choosing the standards we want for ourselves.
Should we raise our standards?
So we've reflected on the current standards we are accepting in each area of our life. Now how do we choose whether that's right for us?
Deciding To Raise Your Standards Is Extremely Personal & Subjective - I don't have a good answer for that today. I think this is one that is hard to have a rubric for and likely stems from a gut feeling. The only thing I feel can generally help here is being careful to avoid a few things by asking yourself a few questions:
Questions That Can Help You Decide If You Need To Raise Your Standards
Is this the standard I want or expect in this area of my life forever?
If this is not the standard I want or expect, is there a reason I've chosen to accept this standard today or for now?
If there is a reason I am choosing to accept this standard today are the assumptions I am making true and is lowering my standards really necessary?
Are there alternative paths to get what I want and expect without lowering my standards?
For example, a common one you hear is:
I am doing this work because it is a stepping stone to getting me to Y
The things I don't like about it include → who I work with, the nature of the work, my boss, the hours, etc, etc.
It's okay for now because X will get me to Y?
I think its a useful question to ask yourself, can I get Y without sacrificing A, B, C? Or what it would it look like if I could get Y and not have to deal with A, B, and C?
There Are Multiple Ways To Get What You Want. So There Must Be A Way To Do It Without Lowering Your Standards - I think this line of thinking can be extremely useful because there are hundreds of paths one can choose to achieve the results they want or live the experiences they are craving. Often times we begin to accept things we don't want in our lives and lower our standards without consciously realizing we 1) are accepting lower standards and 2) that there might be alternatives.
Lowering our standards can happen unbeknownst to us in all kinds of ways. Let's say you want the following:
Examples Of Wanting Things and Subconsciously Lowering Standards To Get Them
You want: I want a partner that loves me and is happy
Reflect On Standards: Does that mean I need to change who I am and what I naturally like doing to have a partner that loves me and is happy?
You want: I want to become a great executive.
Reflect On Standards: Does that mean you need to learn from someone that's a jerk?
You want: I want to travel the world
Reflect On Standards: Does that mean you need to wait until you're 60?
You want: I want to go on a beautiful hike?
Reflect On Standards: Does that mean you can only do that on Saturdays?
I Think We All Subconsciously Lower Our Standards At Times - Some of these may seem silly and obvious but I bet each and every one of us is doing this subconsciously in some way shape or form. It's useful to look across your life and ask what standards am I currently setting and is that what I want for myself?
I Want To Raise My Standards, Where Do I Start?
Kids Dream Big - As kids when our parents used to ask us what we wanted to be when we grew up we said outlandish things like "pirate of a flying ship" or "the fastest basketball dribbler in the world" and that was amazing because our thinking was unconstrained.
Life Had Not Conditioned Us Yet As Kids - We had no life experiences that suggested there were things we should fear, expectations we should have, and responsibilities we needed to carry.
Unconstrained Thinking Is Powerful For Standard-Setting - Now we can't go back to being five years old, but we can go back to unconstrained thinking and imagining a life that inspires us. I think an easy place to start is by challenging our assumptions.
Pay Attention To Problematic Assumptions - A red flag are words like: should, must, need. Anytime we are doing something because we feel compelled or obligated to do that thing we have a responsibility to ourselves, I think, to challenge those assumptions. We have one life to live and we should live it in a way that inspires us.
Before You Can Do Anything, You Need To Imagine It - The second piece here is unconstrained and unbounded thinking. Before any human being has done anything they always imagined it first. We imagined flying way before we figured it out. We imagined being up amongst the stars way before we figured it out.
You don’t accidentally end up being great. First, you must believe that you’re great. And then you work hard to achieve it. And maybe one day because of the work you put in, you’ll have a shot at being great - Draymond Green
Realism Is Overrated When Designing Your Life - You don't need to be realistic when setting your standards. The “standard” for setting your personal life standards, in my opinion, is:
Does this inspire me?
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