“Hold your own, know your name and go your own way” – Jason Mraz

This is post # 14 in my quest for 30 in 30.

Setting high standards for yourself is about no longer compromising your own best interests in order to serve another’s agenda. In fact, I’ve often said that if you fail to live by your own standards you are doomed to live by someone else’s.

Living by someone else’s standards is a poor way to live.  For starters, no one else is ever going to have your best interests at heart 100% of the time. Anyone who tells you they aren’t is either not telling you the truth or not in touch with reality. The truth is, there is only one person who is going to look out for you all the time and that’s you. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that one’s standards is a very personal thing. If you live solely by what someone else standards then you’re living in a way that best serves them and not you.

I once worked for one of the most inflexible people I’ve ever met. He owned a shop in Chicago and was extremely particular about how things were done in his place.  I was not a happy person while working for him but was he to be faulted for making me so miserable day in and day out? At the time I blamed him completely for my unhappiness but really, I wasn’t unhappy because of him.  I realized later that it was because I was trying to work according to the standards that he set which were often at odds with my own. It was his shop and he had every right for it to be run the way he wanted. I could have quit any time. I could have left and went to work for someone who’s standards and ideals were more in line with my own but at the time my standards hadn’t been really solidified yet. Though I wasn’t fully aware of it then, it was my own lack of standards that was making me unhappy. Had I been firm in what I believed and stood for I would have left soon after realizing that we didn’t fit and spared myself over a year and a half of anguish.

Setting our own standards and being resolute in accepting nothing less is the only way to ensure that you are living your life in a way that serves you well. Fail to do this and you are at the mercy of what everyone else sees as your place in the world. I can guarantee that no one else can see or seize your future as well as you can.

Thank for being here. Talk to you tomorrow.

-JB

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Today’s Music: Details in the Fabric

by: Jason Mraz

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