In this episode, we discuss the importance of not lowing your standards.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how a missed mistake lowers the standard. This is a quote from General Ann Dunwoody, the first female four-star general. I was in the Marines for seven years, and I think one of the most valuable lessons that I learned that I needed to have higher standards for myself. That’s how you become the best in the world. When you start missing mistakes, that is when you lower the standard.
In the Marines, it was common for other Marines to call out other Marines for not doing something correctly like having your hands in your pockets or walking while on your cellphone. Those were things that built discipline, which then made you more of a professional.
I know I wasn’t perfect in calling out other Marines for not following protocol because you don’t want to be seen as jerk or I guess I didn’t care that much, but this is a slippery slope, once you let things go by the first time, it just makes doing the right thing harder the next time around. Then comes a point where things are not at the level they need to be at to work correctly.
This doesn’t just happen in the Marines, it happens with your relationships, at work, with your workouts, your career, and basically everything. When you start letting things pass by, your just weakening the foundation and you’ll just become miserable because things are not going your way.
If you’re in a relationship and something is bothering you and you don’t say anything, then you’re just going to cause a bigger problem down the road. It’s like a weed, that has grown too big and now is killing all the other plants surrounding it. If you pull those weeds when they’re small, it’s more manageable because the roots are not that developed. When weeds get too big, it means the roots have gotten bigger and if you just cut off the top of a weed, it will just grow back because the roots are there and it is just a lot more work to remove them.
So you have to look at the life you want and see what type of standard do you want to have in your life. I would recommend that you have higher standards for yourself and your environment because that is how you’re going to get a good life.
Your standards are constantly going to be attacked but the only person that is responsible for your standards is yourself. Don’t expect someone else to have the same standards for yourself because most likely they don’t. So you have to ensure you have the discipline to maintain those high standards. It’s hard and uncomfortable for me to tell someone that needs to be changed because I don’t want to be seen as a nag but it is necessary for me to reach the goals that I have in front of me.
I only have one life to live, so I want to make sure I’m doing things that will help me live my best life and having high standards will do that. If I cheat on my workouts, then I’m not going to get as strong as I need to. If I take it easy on a client, then they won’t be able to become the best version of themselves and society will be a little weaker. If I take it easy on my relationships, then I won’t be able to have a close enough relationship with those around me.
If all of these things happen, then the world won’t be a great place to live in the future. As I said, it is exhausting at times to keep up these higher standards but it is required. If someone is not keeping up high standards around you, then it might be necessary to remove that thing or person from your life. Some people just won’t change and if you constantly have to remind someone to do something, you can either live with it or remove it from your life. The choice is yours but you probably know which decision you have to make.
I had to remove some people from my life because it was too exhausting for me to be around them or their behaviors were starting to affect my behaviors and I didn’t like that, so I decided to slowly separate myself from those people. You can’t save the whole, but you can save a slice of it so focus your energy on the slice that you can save. You’re only one person and can’t do everything.
If you do make a mistake, then don’t beat yourself up, just don’t make the same mistake twice in a row. We all fail, especially me, but I just try to build the self-awareness that I made a mistake and these are the steps that I’m going to do to overcome that mistake in the future. Do this enough and you’ll be on your way to raising your standards and living that good life.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, a missed mistake lowers the standard so make sure you correct mistakes as fast as possible in your life. If you let your environment become a place of low standards, you have to realize that your environment will start to overtake you. So make sure you either change your environment or remove yourself from it but if you can correct mistakes as they happen, that will be better. It will build up your discipline and help others out as well. So make sure you do the right thing today and live up to your high standards.
To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
