Every once in a while, you'll run across something that creates a shift for you. And that happened to me this morning. I was listening to another podcast this morning, and it's a quote from a guy named Ed Mylett.
And he said, "in life, you don't always get your goals, but long term, you always get your standards. You will always ultimately get your standards."
And I had to sit. I had to pause. I had to ponder. Had to let that wash over me resonate.
Because we focus on goals a lot. We focus on the outcome, the destination. The idea of standards shifts the focus to the process and the journey itself.
And it talks about whether or not you have standards in place that would justify the outcome that you desire. And when it comes to your second half success plan, the question you wanna raise is what does the standard need to be?
You're at a point now in your life and you've gotten to where you've gotten based on the standards that you've had or maintained up to this point in time in life. And maybe they've been the same. Maybe they've grown. Maybe they've evolved. But what's also clear is that if you're going to achieve different success or greater success or different results or greater results in the future, your standards are gonna have to change in some way, shape or form.
Now what are the attributes of a standard that you might have to change or modulate in order to result in different outcomes in the future? Standards have three attributes: . One is that they are qualifiable. They are quantifiable and they are verifiable.
Qualifiable means that you can tell what needs to be done and how to do it. Quantifiable means you can define when it is to be done and how often it is to be done. The third one is verifiable. You can tell when it is done or when it is occurring. You can confirm it with your senses in some way, shape or form.
So as you're looking at your desired second half success plan outcomes, are your standards in alignment with where you want to go. And if they're not, then that means one of those attributes needs to change. Either one of the qualifiable attributes needs to change the quantifiable or the verifiable. So what does that mean?
Perhaps you have an outcome for a better degree of health, whatever that is. Maybe you wanna lose 20 pounds something to that degree, but you might need to create a standard around hitting this outcome.
So for qualifiable, maybe the "what" is exercise and maybe the "how" is going to by running. So you have the, what is exercise? The how is running? You're gonna do that. For quantifiable, the, "when" is in the morning the "how often" is three mornings out of the week.
Then verifiable: How can you confirm that you've done it. This goes into tracking. And obviously you'll know if you ran because you will have run and you'll come back and be sweaty. Your shirt will be soaked with perspiration and exhaustion. But there's something about actually tracking it, writing it down, and making a notation somewhere that says, "Yes, I did this thing." And being able to look back on that and notice the progress.
It's been said that Jerry Seinfeld commits to writing at least one joke every day. And when he has done that he'll mark an X on his calendar and it got to the point where he had so many X's that it may not have even been so much about writing the joke. It's just more about keeping the streak going and not breaking the chain of X's on his year and years of calendars.
And that may be what might be required for you. So in all the areas of, of your life, where you wanna see some second half success, take a look at the standards that you have in that area and ask yourself: Do the standards need to change? Do they need to raise? And if so, how do they need to raise? How do they need to change and in which attribute does it need to be a changed?
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