The Power Of Standards.
Only one thing stands between you and your goals.
Drift.
Drift is the distance between where you are and where you want to be. It can be measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months. You can drift for days, or you can drift for a lifetime.
The opposite of drifting is thinking—becoming aware.
One of the hardest parts of drifting is that it's so easy to rationalize. We exist in a world that wants you distracted, dumb, and doubtful. There are a million ways to justify your drift. The key is in setting a new standard that will allow you not to.
Standard becomes the bulwark against drift.
Standard is a description of the things you will and will not accept. It's an internal promise to yourself to hold yourself to a certain level of performance. Brushing your teeth every day is a standard. Making your bed in the morning is a standard. Following up three times with every customer is a standard. Never losing your temper is a standard.
When you master standard, you change everything.
The urge to upgrade your standards must come from within. A great coach can help you see a higher standard, and help you stay accountable to that standard, but for long-term success to remain permanent: standard must originate within you.
There are only a few things preventing this.
The first is that you look to the outside world for direction: in other words you think from the outside in. You have an external locus of control: which means you are controlled by the outside environment rather than charting your own course.
Everyone has a standard. You originate one, or you are given one.
The best thing you can do for yourself is take 100% responsibility for upgrading your standard. Top performers, the elite of the elite, know that coaching not only makes this process 1000x easier, it—by definition—encourages the set point of standard to be orders of magnitude higher than if an individual set the standard on their own.
Why is that? Because of our conditioning. Our mental & biological programming. Our paradigm. We were raised in a particular environment that gave us particular way of showing up in the world. Things you might assume are universal behaviors, are really just behaviors limited to yourself and your environment. For example, you might wake up at 8AM, whereas another person cannot starting the day after 5AM. That person, by dint of how they were raised, has a standard in which they get three more hours every day than you do. All that was different is that you were raised in an environment where waking up later was normal and accepted.
Conditioning can impact us in literally any area of our life. But it's not permanent. It can be molded, shaped, and changed. You can give yourself new programming that will turn hard things into routines that are harder not to do than to do.
Imagine it now: something you dread doing, something terrifying, could be as easy and relaxed as brushing your teeth before bed.
That is not some crazy pipe-dream idea, that is the core result of proper conditioning. The best way to condition your behavior is through repetition which codifies into standard.
The first key is in realizing that your standard is non-negotiable. You can, at any time, make an all-in committed decision to never turn away from a particular standard again. A personal example: many years ago I decided I would no longer work for anyone else. This became a standard. A non-negotiable commitment. Were there times where it wavered? Absolutely, but I always got back on track and held to that standard.
The second key, as mentioned previously, is that it must authentically come from inside of you. It can be someone else's standard for some time, but eventually it must become yours. I often tell clients, if they need belief they can borrow mine. And this absolutely works. But my goal is not to create long-term dependence—it's to be a catalyst for your constant and endless transformation. That can't happen if anytime you aren't around me you are reverting to your old programming.
The third key is learning to take direction from within. You are, at any time, able to give yourself a command and follow it. This is one of the most powerful ideas on the planet so it's worth repeating. You can give yourself commands and follow them. You are above all distraction, failure, and defeat. The reason we imprison criminals is because we know, deep down, that they have violated this rule and acted in a way that is contrary to the good. Our justice system would not work the way it does now if people were not responsible for their actions.
Rather than seeing yourself as a system of competing desires, impulses and base instincts (which is no way to live) see yourself as Awareness, in total command of your internal dialogue and actions. You are the captain of your fate. You are at the wheel. That is not to say that there will not be tempests and squalls, the seas will—indeed—be rough sometimes. But you cannot even entertain the possibility that there exist primary causes outside of your own mind that prevent you from holding your standard.
Shrewd readers will grasp the enormous gravity of what I just said.
In essence, I just told you to reject all ideas contrary to the idea that you are 100% responsible for every thought and action in your life. Which means that other factors, like diet, sleep, etc. no longer take a front row seat. Are they important? Absolutely. But—as my mentor used to say—elite performers have great attitudes (and bulletproof standards) even at their lowest moments.
Think of David Goggins, the retired NAVY Seal. He turned himself from a weak, insecure, wretch of a person, into a locked-in physical monster by deciding, once and for all, that he was in control of his mind. His standards are about as high as a human being can have when it comes to physical endurance. I'm not suggesting in any way that you need to become an Ultramarathon runner like Goggins, but if he can hold himself to those insane physical standards—the stakes are much lower for us, especially in the business world.
As Dan Koe says, since we're no longer in a battle for day-to-day needs like food, water, and shelter (for the most part) we now fight for our survival on the conceptual plane.
The modern battle takes place in our mind. And my observation, like Dan's, is that it's all simulated. You can, at any point, simply reframe your awareness—your state of consciousness—to see the world a different way. If you could fully understand and embody the previous sentence there is literally nothing that could stand in between you and your goal. As Neville Goddard used to say, life is the progressive realization of that truth; that (in a healthy and functional mind) there are no true secondary causes outside of our own consciousness. We determine our reality and our frame of reference.
Therefore: your standard is 100% your responsibility and is 100% possible.
One last piece of advice, if your standard is miles off of where you want it to be, rather than seeing this long and continuous journey of two steps forward and three steps back—which invites failure and compromise—see yourself as all-in committed and faithful to your standard in the same way you would be faithful to a spouse.
Keep the promises you make to yourself.
Failure to keep promises with yourself is the root of all your problems. Deep down, the part of your subconscious mind that watches and keeps score knows you are not achieving your potential and knows you don't keep promises to yourself. It's my belief that most depression and anxiety is a direct result of a person breaking integrity with themselves by violating their own standards of excellence. Whether it be a goal you know you should be pursuing, or an action you should have taken that you backed down from—deep down you know that you are in violation of the standard you want to uphold.
My exhortation to you is simply this: shortcut that process. Stop compromising. Realize that the willpower that exists in other people, their seemingly superhuman commitment to standards that might make you quake, also exists within you. If they can do it, you certainly can. You must erase all ideas to the contrary from your mind.
Simply decide, which means: to cut off from, that you are all-in on realizing a particularly standard of performance and bring it into reality.
Life will pay any price you ask of it, so aim as high as you possibly can.
It's the wisest thing you can ever do.
Looking For More?
Check out this free sample chapter of our upcoming book: The Death of Average — How Tor Thrive In The Era Of Hypercompetition.
MXW Group: Think Big. Move Fast. Stay Focused.
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Confidentiality Notice: At MXW Group discretion is paramount. Names and events in these stories have been changed where necessary to protect the anonymity of our clients while preserving the spirit of their accomplishments.
