It's Time to Define Your Own Finish Line.
If you don’t decide, you’re following someone else’s map and missing your own way.
We are enveloped in other people’s standards of better. Social media presents us with an endless reel of coaches and influencers promoting their brand of happiness. The whole world tells us what to value: money, status, beauty, power. Psychology warns us about this. Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) says there are three keys to true motivation: competence, relatedness, and, most importantly, autonomy, the freedom to chart your own course. Without it, you can achieve everything and still feel empty. Borrowed standards are a race run without knowing who set the finish line.
The Cost of Outsourcing Your Definition of Better
When you let others define “better,” the results can be impressive. Promotions. Followers. Financial stability. But these outcomes often hide a deeper misalignment. Sociologist Erich Fromm called this “the marketing orientation,” where people treat themselves like products, bending to meet outside expectations. The problem is, the standard is always shifting. Another level of wealth, status, or achievement always claims to be “better.” This endless pursuit leads to what psychologists describe as the hedonic treadmill; no matter how much you achieve, you quickly land back at your baseline, hungry for the next validation. If “better” is someone else’s standard, the goalposts forever move.
Choosing to Define Standards for Yourself
I’ve thought deeply about standards, enough to write a playbook called The Standard of Consistency. I argue that real excellence comes from consistency, not bursts of motivation. But let me also be honest: I’m still learning. My standards shift as I grow, as a human, father, and leader. What seemed non-negotiable in my twenties feels irrelevant now. New standards, shaped by experience, have taken their place. This evolution is the point. Standards are meant to be authored, not fixed. The line between living freely and living trapped is whether you follow a standard you chose or one imposed on you.
A Galton Board View of Life
Think of life as a Galton Board — a device where balls drop through rows of pins, bouncing until they settle into slots at the bottom. Each bounce seems random, but most balls cluster in the middle. That’s society. The default path. If you never question your standards, you’ll end up in the middle with everyone else. But if you change the placement of your own “pins” — your decisions, your standards — you shift the odds. You won’t control every bounce, but you can tilt the system. You create a path that leads somewhere different. Life may be random, but standards author the rules of the board we’re on.
The Courage to Author Your Own Blueprint
Defining your own standard is hard. It takes clarity, courage, and a willingness to be misunderstood. But the alternative is worse: a life tailored to someone else’s values, a ladder climbed against the wrong wall. A shelf full of self-development books without full clarity. Standards will define you whether you choose them or not. The only question is — will they be yours? ‘
Maybe the real measure of “better” isn’t higher, faster, or richer. Maybe it’s whether the standard you’re living by is one you can look at honestly and say, “This is mine.”'
Life is lived
- Willy