Thrive Wherever Life Takes You #10

Standards, Goals, and the Courage to Keep Showing Up

A few weeks ago, I was out on a run listening to a podcast. The host said something to the effect of: "We only live up to the standards we set for ourselves." The podcast went on to talk about how standards are different from goals, and laid out the thesis that most people focus too much on goals and not enough on standards. As the host went on, I found myself nodding my head, silently agreeing, and even verbally exclaiming an excited “yes” to the empty heat soaked running path I was on.

This resonated deeply with me as both a psychologist and an ultra-endurance athlete. Recently I’ve found that many of my conversations with clients have drifted toward this topic of goals, either toward defining new goals, checking in on previously set goals, or some combination of both. Goals are outcomes, they are the bigger vision, a checkpoint or endpoint we are moving toward. I’ve found that most of my clients are, in fact, pretty great at identifying goals. A few goals mentioned by clients just this week include: running a 100-mile race, receiving a promotion, feeling more connected and present in relationships, building a successful start-up, and loosing weight.

Where the conversation usually loses its momentum is when I ask clients to share the steps they believe they should take to reach these audacious goals. What are the choices you’re going to make and the actions you’re going to take every day that move you toward those goals, or away from them. These choices, these small actions and behaviors, are standards. Standards look like being in bed by 9p every night to optimize sleep, being in the office by 7a to give yourself uninterrupted working time, eliminating screens at dinner to increase quality time with your partner, consulting an expert for advice instead of giving up, or cooking dinner at home to maximize nutrition. Most of my clients have spent far more time visualizing, or obsessing, over a goal than thinking about the daily, consistent, actions they will take to get there.

We Can Achieve Our Goals and Still Feel Disappointed

Here’s a riddle that helps illustrate the distinction between goals and standards. A few months ago I was speaking to an athlete who crossed the finish line of a goal race, with a significant PR, feeling disappointed. As we unpacked what happened, the athlete shared that despite completing the race, and pushing to a new PR, he hadn’t performed the way he believed he was capable of. He shared that there were many times throughout training were he “let himself off the hook”, by staying up late to watch tv instead of choosing sleep, doing an easy run instead of a workout because he wasn’t feeling motivated, and skipping mobility and strength because they bored him. He knew he did not consistently execute the training to his standards, which left him with a lingering disappointment because he knew he could do better. Importantly, his disappointment was not necessarily rooted in a belief that he could have or should have achieved a better result (race time), it was rooted in the belief that he did not give his best during training. He shared that had he come away with the exact same result (race time), but consistently executed these actions throughout his training, he would have crossed the finish line feeling proud of himself, knowing that he did his best throughout the entire process. In short, he would have felt proud of the exact same race time, if he had felt that he lived up to his standards during training.  

How to Use Discomfort

These types of realizations tend to sting. Society – and mental health providers are not immune to this – often encourages us to avoid discomfort. If something hurts emotionally, people are encouraged to explain it away, rationalize or justify it, distract ourselves from it, or convince ourselves it didn’t really matter all that much.

But discomfort isn't always the enemy. Discomfort is information. Sometimes discomfort is evidence that something genuinely mattered to us. Sometimes discomfort comes from the dissonance of knowing we didn’t do something we said we would do. Sometimes the discomfort of falling short is what propels us to achieve the goal next time.

One of the lessons I've learned through endurance sports is that discomfort itself is not inherently bad. No one signs up for an ultramarathon expecting comfort. At some point, your legs will hurt. Your feet will ache. You'll question your decisions. You'll wonder why anyone would voluntarily spend an entire day running through mountains. Believe me, I’ve been there.

Yet I’ve found that sometimes those difficult moments become the most meaningful parts of the experience. It’s not the suffering is inherently noble –  another belief I’ve tried to dissuade many clients from holding – but because challenge has a way of introducing us to ourselves. When life is going perfectly, we don't learn much about our resilience, character, or what we’re capable of overcoming. It is the moments of discomfort, when we come up short, encounter setbacks, or face uncertainty, that we have the potential to discover something wonderous about who we are.

It is important and valuable to allow ourselves to feel discomfort, but it’s equally important to examine your relationship with what you believe discomfort means. This is where I see many clients struggle. The discomfort of a setback becomes evidence that they're incapable, a failed attempt becomes proof that they aren't talented enough, a difficult interaction becomes a verdict that they will never be a charismatic leader. In psychology, we call this overgeneralization: taking one event and allowing it to define your entire story. Missing a goal does not make you a failure. Having a bad race does not make you a bad runner. Making a mistake does not make you incompetent. Coming up short says something about a moment in time. It says very little about your worth as a person or what you may ultimately be capable of achieving.

In fact, evidence suggests that people who tend to be considered the most successful in their given fields are those who are willing to feel the discomfort of disappointment without allowing it to define them. They possess an ability to sit with the discomfort, learn from it, adjust, and keep moving forward.

Celebrating the Wins Does More Than Promote Mental Health, It Creates Better Outcomes

There is another side of the discomfort equation that predicts success, performance, contentment, well-being, and longevity in career field – celebration. Most of my clients – athletes, professionals, and students – are surprisingly good at criticizing themselves when they miss the mark, although many of them engage in the unhelp overgeneralization I describe above. What they are far less skilled at is celebrating themselves when they live in accordance with their standards and achieve their goals. This is not only unfair to yourself – after all, if you're going to be honest about falling short of your standards, you should be equally honest when you meet them – it’s unhelpful.

We are hardwired to repeat behaviors that feel rewarding. Research on motivation consistently shows that reinforcement strengthens future resolve, motivation, and behavior. Allowing yourself to feel good about meeting your standards is not a luxurious form of self care, it is actually accretive to future performance. Imagine coaching a child, employee, athlete, or friend this way. No acknowledgment. No celebration. No pause to appreciate the effort. You can probably recognize how demoralizing that would be. Yet many of us do it to ourselves every day.

One practice I recommend to many clients is to intentionally celebrate when they live up to their standards, regardless of the outcome. Did you execute the training plan consistently? Did you show up when you didn't feel like it? Did you act in alignment with the person you want to become? If the answer is yes, take a moment and appreciate that. Doing so will help your brain reinforce that those little behaviors and actions matter, and that doing them will be rewarded and will feel good.

The questions I want to leave you with today are “what standards have you chosen for yourself” and “when was the last time you gave yourself permission to celebrate living up to them”? I believe growth requires vulnerability, honesty, and compassion. The vulnerability to set standards for ourselves, the honesty to acknowledge when we've fallen short, and the compassion to recognize that our worth is more than a list of outcomes.