On Standards - Not Letting Others Lower Yours

When you’re surrounded by people with low or even no standards, it can be a challenge to not lower yours. Thankfully, we love challenges here.

The Standards of Others

Nothing exists in a vacuum, and that includes the standards that the people we interact with hold themselves to. We do our best to associate with people who meet or exceed our personal standards in life: morality, fitness, mindfulness, ambition, and so forth. However, we cannot always choose our company. Co-workers, in-laws, siblings, that person in the aisle at the store. On any given day, we are forced to interact with other people. Inevitably, we must interact with people that simply don’t care as much as we do about themselves, their actions…Their standards.

You cannot completely avoid this, and you should not try to. You should endeavor to surround yourself in your closest chosen circles with people who inspire and drive you. For precisely the same reason, you should not shy away from being exposed to and even taking pains to note the detrimental effects that having poor personal standards has on others.

It is equally important, however, that you take even greater pains to not become influenced by the low standards you are exposed to. The higher standards that you hold yourself to, the more often you will find yourself in contact with people who do not care as much as you do. It can become tempting in these cases to let yourself slip, just a bit. After all, everyone else is taking it easy. Would it really be so wrong for you to slack just a bit?

The answer that is yes. Yes, it would be so very wrong. We must take on the work of both learning from the behavior and mistakes of others, but never allowing ourselves to be diminished by them.

Your Own Standards

Maintaining your own standards has its own set of challenges on top of simply keeping them high. In order to be a force for good in the world, you need to be seeking, even striving, to have a positive impact on others. This means not just avoiding being negatively impacted by those who set the bar low. It means actively finding ways for your high standards to rub off on them whenever and wherever possible. It is all well and good for you to perform at a high standard. However, as we discussed early on in this…Nothing exists in a vacuum.

Think about the people you have to associate with every day. That co-worker who eats nothing but junk. That friend of a friend who always seems exhausted. That in-law who is always miserable, but doesn’t take steps to change anything. While it is true that you cannot help those who will not help themselves, have you even tried? Have you sought to actively be an example of what a higher standard of existence can lead to? Have you spoken to them? Our strength means very little if we only use it to benefit ourselves. By contributing to a culture of accountability, strength, and higher and higher standards, we can and will bring about change. We just have to make the choice, every day, to make it happen.

What are Your Standards?

As always, I want to hear from all of you. Tell us about the standards you have, how you hold yourself to them, and how you deal with the higher and lower standards of those around you. You never know who you might inspire.