When people refer to their standards they are often referring to their romantic interests, but what about standards for success? Why is it so hard for us to set standards for success in our lives? Even when many of us do set standards, we quickly let them fall to the waste side when life gets hard or when we get bored. The difference between success and failure could be your standards though. When you set standards, and you mean it they become nonnegotiables. They are not things you change every day; they are commitments to yourself and your dream.
Why Do You Need Standards for Success
You need standards because life is hard! Life is going to punch you in your mouth, and when it does, you are going to want to run to mommy and curl up in a ball and weep. The only thing that will stop you from doing that and giving in to the pain of life is the standards for success that you set.
The reason people set standards for a romantic partner is so that when you are desperate and have had a few drinks, you don’t just give in and marry the first person that will give you any attention. In the long run, you know that is a bad idea, but in the short run, it would be gratifying to do so.
Standards for success help you to stay focused on the long-term vision you have set for your life. If you want to drive that car or buy that house, it is going to require certain sacrifices and standards. If you meet those, you will eventually succeed, and if you do not, you will fail. The key is figuring out what those standards are.
How Do You Set Standards for Success
To set standards, it requires reading, learning and listening to your gut. When I started 9INE POINT Health, I knew it was going to be one of the harder things I had ever done in my life. I made sure to read as many books as I possibly could to prepare myself. What I wanted to do was learn from those who have been successful before me and understand their standards for success.
There are some ingredients that your standards must have:
- You must believe each standard will make a difference
- Each standard mush push you out of your comfort zone
- You can’t change them just because other people don’t like them
- Try to have between 3 -10 Standards
Those are the three rules you have to follow. The first is because if you set a standard to stop eating sugar, but you don’t think it matters whether you do or not, then you will not be driven to uphold it. The second is because it cannot be easy, it should be hard, and every day you should want to break the standard. The last rule is because standards make others feel bad about themselves because you ae holding yourself to such high expectations.
When you start reading and learning from people who have succeeded at things you want to accomplish, you will quickly begin to notice the same reoccurring themes over and over. People have stories with different details but things they do to get their breakthrough to end up being the same. The ones that jump out to you should become standards.
What Happens When You Break Your Standards for Success
If you have chosen excellent standards and you want to succeed you should feel guilty when broken. No one will tell you too. Matter of fact all of the people around you will say to you that your standards are too high. People will always ask you to take it easy. Again they see your standards, and it makes them uncomfortable, and they would love for nothing more than for you to drop them.
When you break your standards, you have an opportunity to prove to yourself that you are resilient. When weak minded people break their standards, they take it as a sign that they cannot do it and they give up altogether. You are different though. You are strong! When you let your standards slip you feel the guilt inside, and you make sure that it does not happen again. You get back on that horse, and no matter how many times you fall short you get back up again.
How to Make Sure You Keep Your Standards for Success
Hang Around People With High Standards
In life your environment is everything. Hang around people who hold themselves to a higher standard because they are serious about success. Many people talk about achieving a lot, but they don’t want it. They like the idea of being successful, but they don’t like the work that it requires. Run far from these people!
You know people have high standards when they are not surprised by yours. When great people hear your standards, they will want to adopt some of your standards and they will encourage you to keep them up.
Get Your Close Family Members on Board
For some people, it may just be a spouse. For others, it may be roommates or multiple family members. Whoever you live with needs to be on board with what you are trying to achieve. If they do not understand they will continually be in your ear trying to get you to stop. It will build resentment in the relationship.
Track Your Progress With Way of Life
Way of Life is a great app that I got from Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss. The app allows you to track wether you did something or not every day. You develop streaks and records and allows you to look back and see how you have done.
The app is a great help because it gives you something to check off every day and make sure that you are doing what you said you are doing. To be great, you have to get these little things right at leat 90% of the time.
Use a Key Metric Related to Your Overall Goal
If your goal were to lose weight, your metric would be your weight. If it were to make more money, it could be business revenue. Whatever it is, you have to track something that lets you know whether you are doing good or not. This will keep you motivated and help you remember why you are doing this to yourself.
Personal Standards for Success
The Day Will Start Before 5 AM
Eric Thomas has had me getting up at 3:10 AM for a while. Out of all my standards, this is the one I feel the worst when I break. I often wake up pretty tired, but it takes a lot of mental fortitude to not get back in bed. I have to think about what I want in the future and the guilt builds and keeps me up.
Getting up early has been an enormous blessing to my life, and I noticed it has blessed many other entrepreneurs. The people who were not early risers would stay up late. One way or other people succeed by finding ways to get in more work.
Starting the day early is beautiful because you start the day on your terms. I don’t need to rush, I read and take my time getting my first tasks done.
Learn for Two Hours a Day
Learning is a must because the world is always changing and it is changing faster because of technology. The only way to keep up is to keep your brain fresh with new ideas and techniques of approaching old problems. It is effortless to be busy and never take any time to read. You feel like you get more done, but in the long run, you lose.
Reading for a minimum of two hours a day has kept my perspective on life fresh. Obstacles seem smaller when I read. Complaining seems pointless, and work seems much more straightforward because reading helps me to approach life with the correct mindset.
Review Goals Daily
You have to look at your goals every day to remind yourself of what you have set these standards for success. You are not placing them to make your life harder. You set them because there is something you want to achieve and you will not stop until you do.
Workout in The Morning
The morning workout is what gives me the energy to thrive during the day. Breaking a sweat and working hard makes my brain work better, I feel more confident, and I push myself. All of those things help to succeed in any endeavor.
Meditate Daily
When I read books, I learn just how many people meditate or do some form of mindfulness on a daily basis. I started this without knowing the benefits. I did it because other successful people do it.
Meditation feels great because it gives the mind a bit of time to slow down. Instead of starting at the computer or worrying about bills it is just a chance to think about the thing you intentionally want to focus on.
Focus on One Thing
The focus is one thing that not many people have, and I had a huge problem in this area. I love new ideas, and I always want to start a new endeavor and do something different. The problem with this mindset is that you get nowhere. I made an Olympic team after training for 16 years, and I needed to apply that same mindset to everything that I did.
Focus brings intensity, and it allows you to set up the dominoes right. When you push the first dominoes, it will knock 1000 others lined up behind it. That is how you succeed by focusing on one domino at a time until you get to the destination. Focus helps you to say no to all the distractions in your way.
Don’t Be Deterred by Short-Term Obstacles
Short-term thinking ruins more dreams than anything else. The reason is that when you get focused on what is happening right now, you make choices based out of fear and panic. When you think in the long run though you know that obstacles tend to work themselves out and go away if you do not give in.
When I did my reading, I found this to be a standard for many successful people. They would see short-term obstacles as jokes because they always focused on what they wanted in the end.
Take Ownership
The last of the standards of success is easy to explain. If something happens in my life, it is my fault in some way or another. I got fired from my job, and it forced me to put mine all into 9INE POINT Health. It was not because of my boss or any other person. I got fired because I did not do a great job! Period! There is never anyone to blame but me.
KHO Health was acquired by was acquire by 9INE POINT in the summer of 2019 and is now referred to as 9INE POINT Health.
