raise-standards

How to Raise Your Standards as a Man

How do you raise your standards in a world that does everything it can to motivate you into lowering them? If you are anything like me, you have had victories and you have crashed and burned; however, I always want to do better for myself and for my family. That’s why we’re here. The standards that society sets is always a fluid thing and depends on the mood and leadership at any given time. A man can’t look to society for his standards.

A man can’t look to society for his standards.

In basketball, Michael Jordan refused to settle for anything less than excellence. He said, “You have competition every day because you’ve set such high standards for yourself that you have to go out every day and live up to that.” We should apply the same standards as men to our entire life. In that spirit, here are 3 keys to raise your standards as a man.

Listen To Your Conscience

C.S. Lewis makes the argument in his book, Mere Christianity that there is an unwritten and universally understood law of nature regarding our standard of behavior. There may be small differences across cultures and faiths, but when you boil it down there is a basic moral code we intuitively know. His point is that this instinct is born within us and provided by a Higher Authority. Ignoring our instinct of what is right and wrong leads man to disastrous consequences. We tend to try and justify our actions when our conscience tells us we are wrong. When we do that our conscience begins to dissolve; however when we take responsibility for our wrong actions and the pain we cause, it strengthens our character.

Measure Against The Right Standard

What standards are we setting in our personal and professional relationships? The world has a lot to say about all of these things. And if challenged, it will do whatever it takes to get us to fall in line. We absolutely must question what is influencing the standards we are setting. For instance, in Nazi Germany, a citizen was told to adhere to the standards of that time and no debate was allowed. Obviously, that led to the total destruction of the nation and the loss of human life. The method of achieving that society was through propaganda. Again, we can’t look there for our standards.

The Standard-Setter

I submit that society is always in a state of revolution. We, in America, have been in a constant state of revolution since our inception. Born from the desire to escape the traps of those scoundrels before, America was conceptualized as man’s first chance to rule himself, guided by a rigid standard of rights not given to him by man, but by God. That’s the bill of rights. The distinction of God-given rights is highly important and widely overlooked. It prevents any human from having the authority to ever remove them. Before the ink was dry, men (scoundrels) began plotting to take back that authority. It goes right back to the point C.S. Lewis was making. We instinctively know that a higher authority sets the standards of what we are to be and that is where we must look — nowhere else. We all need to reach much higher.

Huddle up with your kids and ask, “What do you think makes a good leader?”