Raising Your Standards
Sometimes you need to raise that bar again. There’s a time in life when good enough is not going to be good enough to get you through that final push.
If you’re attempting something major, you need to put in major effort, not a little bit of effort or an average amount of effort; you need to do more.
There’s a time when you need to look at what you’re doing, not at what you think you are doing, but looking at what you’re actually doing. Not at what you’re telling yourself. You need to reappraise the effort you’re putting in, look at the standards you’re accepting, and ask yourself: is it good enough?
If you aim for average, you get average.
The phrase ‘raise the bar’ means exactly what it sounds like. Set higher standards. Expect more from yourself. Push beyond what you previously thought possible. Get out of your comfort zone and reach for something better.
That extra bit of effort, that willingness to push just a little further than you did yesterday, that’s the difference that makes the difference. That’s what separates people who transform their lives from those who don’t.
Two Ways to Raise the Bar
You can raise the bar in two ways. Specific or general. Ideally both.
Specific means a particular achievement. A qualification you’ve never had. A goal you previously dismissed as impossible. Running a marathon when you’ve never run more than two miles. Getting that promotion when you’ve spent five years stuck at the same level. Learning a language when you’ve always told yourself you’re not good at languages.
This is raising the bar in concrete, measurable terms. You’re setting a target you haven’t hit before. You’re committing to something that scares you because it feels just beyond your current capability.
This tracks decades of research by Locke and Latham: specific and difficult goals reliably produce higher performance than vague or easy ones — provided the goal is genuinely attainable, you get feedback on your progress along the way, and you’re actually committed to it rather than having it imposed on you. Skip those conditions and a hard target just produces stress instead of performance.
General means a shift in attitude and standards. A fundamental decision to do better, to grow as an individual, to set higher expectations for yourself and everyone around you. This isn’t about one specific achievement. It’s about becoming someone who doesn’t accept mediocrity in any area of their life.
When you raise the bar generally, you start noticing where you’ve been coasting. Where you’ve been accepting ‘good enough’ when you’re capable of excellent. Where you’ve been tolerating poor performance from yourself because nobody’s watching, and it didn’t seem to matter at the time.
But it does matter. Every time you accept less than your best, you’re training yourself to be someone who settles for less, and over time that becomes who you become.
Why Most People Don’t Raise the Bar
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: nobody gets what they want just by dreaming about it. Wanting isn’t enough. Wishing isn’t enough, and even having goals written in a journal isn’t enough just by itself.
People who achieve do it through consistent hard work and sacrifice. They get uncomfortable. They do things that scare them. They push when it would be easier to stop.
Yet the majority of people won’t do this. They’ll tell themselves they want more, but they won’t do what more requires. They’ll complain about their circumstances and blame others whilst refusing to change their behaviour or improve themselves. They’ll wait for motivation rather than create discipline in their lives to routinely get things done.
Some people feel this way because they’re not happy with their everyday life. There’s a grey, familiar feeling that something’s missing. Something empty inside that gnaws away until the discomfort becomes too much. Yet that discomfort is trying to tell you something.
It’s telling you to raise the bar. To take yourself away from mediocre to something much better.
The Transition Point
There’s a moment when the discomfort of staying the same outweighs the fear of change. That’s your transition point. That’s when you stop tolerating average and start demanding better, and there are times in your life when the only option is to do this.
Maybe you’re at that transition point right now. Maybe you’ve already made it, and you’re looking for the next level. Either way, you need to understand a fundamental point.
You are the only person who can change your life. Not your partner. Not your boss. Not your parents, your friends, or some magical future circumstance that makes everything easier. It’s you.
When you truly accept that, when you stop waiting for external rescue and start taking control, that’s when you proactively raise the bar, that’s the mental step you need and when further transformation becomes possible.
What Raising the Bar Actually Requires
It requires you to stop thinking in ordinary ways. Your current thinking created your current results; if you want different results, you need different thinking.
Most people think in limitations. ‘I can’t do that because…’ ‘That’s not possible for someone like me.’ ‘I don’t have the time, money, connections, talent, education.’ They’ve built an identity around their limitations, and they defend it fiercely.
Raising the bar means dismantling that identity. It means questioning every ‘I can’t’ and replacing it with ‘How could I?’ It means looking at people who’ve achieved what you want and studying what they did instead of explaining why their success doesn’t count or doesn’t apply to you. You need to start being the successful version of yourself that you wanted to be.
It also requires action. Consistent, daily action. Not motivation. Not inspiration. Not waiting until you feel ready. Action when you don’t feel like it. Action when it’s hard. Action when no one’s watching and there’s no immediate reward.
That’s where most people fail. They raise their expectations but not their effort. They want the results that come from consistently pushing themselves, but they’re not willing to push themselves consistently.
Attitude Determines Altitude
Zig Ziglar said, ‘It’s your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude.’ He’s right. Your natural talent matters less than your willingness to work.
I’ve seen incredibly talented people achieve nothing because they relied on their talent rather than their effort. And I’ve seen people with average talent achieve extraordinary things by refusing to settle for average results.
The difference is attitude. One group raised the bar and worked hard. The other didn’t.
If you want to fly, if you want to rise above where you are now, you need both. Higher goals and a fundamental commitment to excellence in the things that matter most.
Stop being ordinary. Stop accepting ordinary results. Stop surrounding yourself with people who accept ordinary results.
The Risk of Reaching Higher
Here’s what nobody tells you. When you raise the bar, you might fail. You might reach for that higher standard and fall short. That possibility stops most people before they start.
But here’s what else nobody tells you. Even partial success at a higher level beats complete success at a lower level. Also you’ll probably believe more is possible the next time you try.
If you aim for a promotion to senior management, you might only reach a lesser role, but it might be still a lot better than staying where you were. If you aim to run a marathon, you might start with running half-marathons first, and that’s still better than sitting on your sofa telling yourself you’ll start getting fit tomorrow.
The real risk isn’t failure, the real risk is never trying. Spending your whole life wondering what you could have achieved if you’d actually pushed yourself a little more. That’s what should terrify you.
From Humdrum to Dancing to Your Own Drum
There’s nothing wrong with a quiet, comfortable life if that’s genuinely what you want. But if you’re reading this, it’s probably not.
You’re reading this because some part of you knows you’re capable of more. You’re restless. You’re dissatisfied. You’re tired of living on autopilot, going through the motions, pretending you’re content when you’re actually slowly dying inside.
So stop pretending. Acknowledge the discomfort. Use it. Let it drive you to raise the bar, to set higher standards, to demand more from yourself.
Go from humdrum to dancing to the beat of your own drum. Stop letting other people’s expectations or other people’s definitions of success dictate your choices. Decide what you actually want, not what you think you should want.
Then raise the bar. Set a target that genuinely challenges you. Make it specific. Make it measurable. Make it something you’re not certain you can achieve.
And start working toward it today. Not tomorrow. Not when you feel ready. Today.
Remember this. Average is easy. Average requires nothing. You can coast into average with your eyes closed, as most people do.
But you didn’t start this because you want to be average. You want more. You want better. You want to look back on your life and know you pushed yourself, challenged yourself, and became someone you’re actually proud of.
That requires raising the bar. Higher goals. Higher standards. Higher expectations for yourself.
It won’t be comfortable. It won’t be easy. But it will be worth it.
“I’m intimidated by the fear of being average.” — Taylor Swift
Raising your standards is a decision. But to execute on it consistently, you first need to know yourself honestly — your triggers, your blind spots, and the patterns that have been holding you back. That is what the next article is about.
Further reading
- Ziglar, Z. (2000). See You at the Top: 25th Anniversary Edition. Pelican Publishing.
- Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705–717.