What do you tolerate in your life? Are you constantly compromising your beliefs and needs? You are talking about your goals but you are not hitting them. Maybe you are lacking respect. Are you finding yourself surrounded by people who are not motivated or behaving badly? Maybe you are not where you wanted to be in your life at this moment. Maybe your tolerating so much is the reason your marriage went down in flames.
What do you tolerate? Another way you can say this is what are your standards? Are you willing to have a line in the sand that says I will not tolerate this? Many people do and more don’t. They get frustrated when people don’t respect them. People with low standards cling to old friends who haven’t done much since they got out of high school and then wonder why they aren’t successful. They sit and wonder what happened after they’re handed divorce papers and told to move out of their house. Where did it all go wrong? The answer is they tolerated too much. These poor souls didn’t have a high enough standard for what they expected out of life.
What is a standard?
What do you expect from other people? That is a standard. How do you expect to live? That is a standard. Standards are expectations. What do you expect in your life? How about what you expect from your friends? How do you treat others? These are all standards. From mindsets and how you are viewed, we all have these boundaries that we hold ourselves and others to.
At its base, it is what are you willing to tolerate? The poor are poor because they are willing to tolerate being poor. There are some places that people simply won’t tolerate. People often won’t stand for a lie. They expect honesty and they get it. If that standard falls below a tolerated amount then that person will make the needed adjustments to bring their expectations back up to their standards.
How do you set a standard?
When it comes to standards the means of the setting of standards can be pretty easy. The key is to get out of your own head. With setting standards, you will have to be ok with being thought of as picky. Then there is the whole thought process as to why you are wanting to raise your standards. If you don’t have your why you will not keep those new standards.
What are you not going to tolerate?
When deciding what standards you want to raise, it is good to start with what are you tolerating in your life? Do you have friends who flake out on plans all the time? How about you blowing out your budget every month?
Look at what you are tolerating and start there. Are you tolerating too much? What are you not happy with? Are you broke all the time? Then you want to stop tolerating overspending. Stop tolerating that you are not putting any money back for a rainy day.
You have a choice you can choose to not tolerate a mediocre life and live an extraordinary life on your terms, not the terms of those around you. You can choose to have a better set of friends. The old saying Show me your friends and I will show you your future is true here. You have the choice to upgrade yourself and not tolerate someone who isn’t driven to up their standards too. Are you going to tolerate being mediocre? You are reading this far so I would think not.
What are you wanting out of life?
Ask yourself what do you want out of life? This question can help you to find what you expect and what standards you want to set. Are you wanting to have a life of adventure or do you want to tolerate boredom? Do you want to tolerate the couch or expect that discomfort is going to present in your life? If it is the latter you will be more likely to lean into discomfort and be willing to grow more. The more you grow the higher your standards become.
There are many different fields you can look to in improving your standard.
There are many different fields of life where you can set standards. In fact, these are also called core values. Be it living honorably, having a creed that you live by, or that you will live your life in integrity. Look at the different fields of your life and make sure they are all up to your standard.
You can raise your standards in health, by eating right and cutting out cokes. Decrease junk food consumption. You can start looking at yourself as a person who exercises or at least walks 30 minutes a day.
You can raise your financial standards by simply saving before you spend. You know what you have as a check each week so why not say that everything over a certain amount goes to your savings account. You might even put it into a savings account that you can’t just tap into when you want. Set your standard to investing a little each pay period.
Have higher qualities in your relationships by deciding what type of person you want to date, marry or share your life with. If you have friends you need more. Increase your number of friends and make it a point to talk to each of them weekly.
Have a standard of expecting self-discipline from yourself. You can’t expect that from other people because you can’t control those other people but you can influence them to want to improve themselves. Besides, do you really want to be associated with a negative person?
Then the biggest challenge of them all… Stick to those standards. Yeah, this is the big daddy. It will be hard to do especially when you first start. There are skills involved with upping your standards, so it will take time and practice.
What are the benefits of having higher standards?
Now there are benefits to increasing your standards. Not only will you have more money in the bank, and live longer but there are also changes in you that will shine through as you improve your standards from what you have now to the shiny new standards you develop.
Living true to yourself
You excel more when you are living true to your intentions. Living intentionally is one of the keys to being able to live your life to the fullest. If you are not being true to yourself you are playing small. People who play small in life do not gain the big wins. To have the standard is you being true to yourself.
To be able to live to your expected standards you have to push yourself and be honest. Though we try we can not lie to ourselves. We find ways to tell ourselves stories so that we believe we are living, but in reality, we are often lying to ourselves so that we can be comfortable and safe.
That is living below our standards, so raising our standards at all levels allows us to become more of who we were meant to be. It allows the real you who has been staked to the corner of your mind free.
Gaining respect
We men often want to have more respect from our peers, our spouses, and the community. Yet we seem to get very little or none at all. Why? That is mainly because our standards and what we expect out of life are too low. This is where we are playing small really shines through.
We are following our musts. We compromise on our core values and beliefs and that is disrespectful to ourselves. So why should anybody respect us if we can’t even respect our own selves?
Changing and setting new standards doesn’t offer instant respect but it starts the seed of respect on the path of growing. The more you are true to yourself and your standards the more respect you will earn from others.
Reach new heights
Ever thought of having that nice house on the hill? Yeah, that is an amazing dream, isn’t it? I am sure you have wanted more out of life. Yet, it just doesn’t seem to want to happen. It is just a dream.
When you set higher standards and you expect more out of yourself. You are going to produce more in your life. The more quality of life you produce for others, the more they raise you. So when you raise your standards you raise others and those people can help you achieve your dreams. They may pay you money or access to people who can help you achieve the dream of that house on the hill or that dream car, or maybe that hot wife that adores you and pushes you to be the best.
Easier at Making Decisions
When you sit down for breakfast, What do you have? Maybe it is a bowl of sugar and corn or maybe it is bacon and eggs with a ham steak? No matter what your standard is, your morning routine helps show it. You have the opportunity to make a decision about when you get up and what you eat. If you think your standard is a bowl of cereal you will have a bowl of cereal, You would even think of the opportunity of having ham and eggs with some wheat toast.
Do you do what goes against your standard? Not easily. Your ability to make decisions becomes easier when you know what your musts are. Your expectations help you in deciding the who, what and where of getting things done.
More self-confidence.
With action comes more confidence. The more confidence you have the easier it is to hold to your standards. The higher the standard, the higher your confidence in yourself and in others becomes.
Many times we don’t know what to do. We struggle with worrying about how others will perceive us if what we do will make or break us. We don’t have the confidence in ourselves to easily make decisions that come our way. When you raise your standards and identify with who truly you are. You will make many decisions with more confidence and ease. I’m not saying that they will be easy but the answers will come easier.
Now in closing, anytime you are finding yourself irritated or frustrated look into yourself and see what you are tolerating and why you are tolerating it. This is a big indicator that you are trying to play it small again. You are not living up to your standards. Stop looking and understand what it is that is holding you back many times. It isn’t someone else, it is you. If you want help raising your standards and living life on your terms then please join my Men’s Group The Brotherhood of Men.
