Given the opportunity to do something
how do you approach it?
My son came home from school
complaining about a 'stupid rule' his school recently established.
After hearing the rule, I agreed that for a child like my son, the
rule was stupid. However, I explained to him that the rule was
enacted because they had to create a bar. A bar is a minimum standard
of acceptance. This bar (which is set very low), is a bar that a lot
of the students will use as their maximum code of behavior.
Think
of an elementary school child told to read 15 minutes a day. The ones
that need it the most will start getting antsy ten minutes into their
reading session. By they time they reach fourteen and a half minutes,
they're already beginning to close the book. To get them to read for
fifteen minutes, the bar has to be set higher.
Or, you tell
your child to take out the trash. "But it's not full is the
response" No, but the rotten milk container in the trash makes
it stink." Because his bar is set to react only when the trash
is full, a rancid smell is not included in his trash bar so the
stinky trash will sit.
See where I'm going?
There are
bars set in society in an attempt to set a minimum standard of
living. These bars, are not necessarily set very high. How do you set
and react to the bars in your everyday life?
I was recently
commissioned to write short articles for a client. I was given a few
hundred titles to write. Not knowing how many I could get done in a
week, I allowed myself the luxury of 1 a day 5 days a week. It was
agreed I could submit 5 articles weekly. Good. Bar is set.
After
a few weeks of becoming well versed on the topic, I realized I could
complete 3 times as many articles within the same time frame. Should
I keep this low bar as my maximum? Should I raise my bar to commit to
15 articles rather than the original 5? Why push myself? Why reset
the bar and expect more of myself.
I decided to reset the
bar. Why not develop, expand and challenge myself? It's a win-win
situation. My client gets more of what he wants, and I not only rise
to the occasion (a small victory for me), but I also earn additional
income.
This made me look at other areas of my life. Do I
need to adjust a bar here or there? I've found that people with low
expectations tend to look at everything as near impossible rather
than something to grow from and overcome. Raise the bar just once,
and you may raise it twice. After raising your bars a few times, it
might become a habit. You'll start to look at everything differently,
When you make it a habit to raise your bar, other people tend
to look at you as "you're so lucky, look what you've got".
It's not luck. It's called raising the bar. Expect more from yourself
and you get more.
Celebrate your victories and move on.
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