Expecting More From Yourself

One of the most destructive things kids learn in traditional schooling is that very little is expected of them.

Getting an A grade at school requires very little effort for an intelligent kid or young adult. It does not require any real creativity, critical thinking, or perseverance, and getting passing grades requires even less.

Beyond the ease, everything you do is almost completely pointless, so why would you care to do your best?

So kids show up and do just enough to avoid bad marks or angry parents, 12 or 16 years later they get out of the school system with a deeply ingrained habit of doing just enough to get by.

As adults, even when they decide to do something, the thought of really giving it their all doesn’t occur to them. They show up and do what’s expected without even considering the space they have to do better.

But doing enough to get by is not a recipe for personal fulfillment. Every person knows when they have more to give, and watching yourself not give your best day after day comes at the cost of your self-esteem.

It is also not a recipe for creating the type of life that most people want. People notice when you show up and half-ass it. People notice when you have more to give, and you don’t.

Our culture reinforces the idea that being mediocre is a perfectly fine way to live. That having your dreams go unrealized, and your potential go to waste is a normal part of life. People get comfortable with you the way you are, so no one is going to demand that you show up and expect more from yourself.

But if you choose to expect more from yourself everything could change. You’d notice you feel more confident taking on new challenges, people would start to trust you more and rely on you, new opportunities would present themselves, and your vision of a better future would start to become clearer and clearer.

More importantly than all of that though, you wouldn’t have to run away from the knowledge that you are wasting the best of yourself. Because no matter how much we tell ourselves that not giving our best is fine, the truth is that it always feels better to be a better version of yourself.