Your best result is not your standard. Your worst result is your standard

 

The standard you aspire to is NOT your standard; nor any other standard on that matter

You should only aspire up

The moment you don’t aspire up — you aspire down

 

Your worst result is your standard

Your worst result is the least you can consistently deliver

 

If you view your best result as your standard — you are deluding yourself, and others

Your best result you obviously can’t deliver consistently — therefore it is not your standard

 

Our problem is that we fail to see that your best results are merely fortuitous

Those best results may one day be your worst results — and therefore your minimum standard

But today those are your fortuitous best results — and therefore not something you’re really capable of — something you’re only capable of when you get lucky

Your worst result is your actual standard

 

This is not a trivial problem because it is so ubiquitous; It skews your long term game

You can’t escape your actual competence with wishful thinking

You can however make costly errors by overstating your ability

Therefore this confusion is a major problem which will cripple you and your results

 

It’s not only results but also motivation

You need steady improvement and steady rewards to stay motivated

And you need realistic long term expectation for this sustainable long term motivation

Since you overstate your expectations you fail to deliver — therefore your path is failure-laden and unpleasant

And not unlikely you give up entirely, at some points, because you just didn’t understand the nature of the game, didn’t understand what was a realistic expectation

And you didn’t because you liked the image of yourself already performing on a high standard

 

…you liked the image of yourself already performing on a high standard more then you did the joy and fun of exploration

Exploration and expansion and development

If you cherished every little success and every little step that you made — you would not run out of motivation, and you would not run out of dopamine, and you would love the entire journey

 

Therefore step down your standards

While unleashing your aspirations

Your STANDARDS are the unromantic WORST that you can do

Whereas your aspirations — those ought have no bounds — or else eventually you hit that fucking ceiling — and that will be the end of it

Focus on LOVING what you do and making it a little bit better every day

Without creating an ego around it and without deluding yourself to what you can do