We’ve all been there. You stare at another half-assed project you rushed to complete, another “good enough” relationship you’re tolerating, or another day where you promised yourself you’d finally start that thing—and didn’t. Then comes the familiar internal monologue: “Next time will be different.”
But will it? Not unless you change the standards you hold yourself to.
Why We Keep Accepting Our Own Mediocrity
We’re fantastic at lying to ourselves. We claim to want excellence while consistently choosing convenience. We dream of extraordinary outcomes but maintain ordinary habits.
The problem isn’t knowledge—you already know what “better” looks like. The problem is that you’ve negotiated a peace treaty with your own mediocrity.
This isn’t about perfectionism (which is its own special form of self-sabotage). It’s about the gap between what you claim to value and what your actions actually demonstrate you value.
Audit Yourself:: Where Are Your Standards Actually Low?
Before you can raise standards, you need to acknowledge where they’re currently in the gutter. Ask yourself:
- In your work: Are you creating things you’d genuinely pay for? Or just meeting minimal requirements to avoid getting called out?
- In your health: Are you treating your body like the only permanent home you’ll ever have? Or like a rental car you can trash because someone else will deal with the consequences?
- In your relationships: Are you bringing your full presence and best self? Or showing up with whatever emotional scraps remain after you’ve given your attention to everything else?
- In your personal growth: Are you actively seeking discomfort and challenge? Or endlessly consuming content that makes you feel like you’re improving without actually doing the work?
Your answers reveal your actual standards, not the aspirational ones you tell yourself you have.
How to Actually Set Higher Standards (Without Burning Out)
1. Get Specific About What “Higher” Means
Vague aspirations create vague results. “I want to be better” is meaningless. “I will give my best all the time with a positive attitude” creates an actual standard.
For each area of your life, define what excellence specifically looks like—not in outcomes, but in process and attention.
2. Build Ratchets, Not Resolutions
Willpower is overrated. What you need are ratchets—mechanisms that prevent backsliding once you’ve moved forward.
Make it harder to fail your standards than to meet them:
– Delete apps that waste your time
– Prepay for commitments you want to keep
– Create public accountability where backing out would be more painful than following through
– Design your environment to make your higher standards the path of least resistance
3. Embrace the Suck of Higher Standards
Higher standards initially feel worse, not better. They mean:
– More short-term discomfort
– More frequent feelings of failure
– More resistance from others who prefer your old standards
– More decisions that prioritize long-term over immediate gratification
This discomfort isn’t a sign something’s wrong—it’s the feeling of growth. The initial pain of higher standards is the tax you pay for future excellence, and it’s going to be worth it
4. Audit Your Circle
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with—including in their standards. If you’re surrounded by people celebrating mediocrity, your “higher” will still be someone else’s “bare minimum.”
Find people who make you feel slightly uncomfortable with how much better they are at the things you care about. Their baseline becomes your stretch goal.
The Counter-Intuitive Truth
The great paradox is that higher standards—while initially demanding more—ultimately require less.
When excellence becomes your baseline, you:
– Waste less time redoing subpar work
– Experience less internal conflict about half-measures
– Spend less energy managing the consequences of low-quality decisions
– Need fewer external validation fixes for your self-worth
Higher standards don’t drain energy—they redirect it from managing mediocrity to creating excellence.
Are higher standards worth it?
Only if you’re interested in becoming the kind of person who doesn’t need to constantly promise yourself that “next time will be different”—because this time already is.
The question isn’t whether you can afford higher standards.
It’s whether you can afford the cumulative cost of continuing to accept your own bullshit for another year.
Your future self is watching your choices right now. What standards are you setting for them?
Joe DiAndrea 