Lower Your Bar
Reach for the stars!
Raise the bar!
Push yourself harder!
What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger!
The above phrases are probably something you’ve said to yourself or someone else has said to you at one time or another. Certainly when you are moving toward a goal or have a specific outcome in mind, pushing yourself can be helpful.
However, I talk with people regularly who are trying to reach an imaginary bar and failing. They feel awful, even worthless, because they can’t reach their bar. They feel like failures.
Have you ever been in a relationship where someone (a partner, parent, friend or boss) kepy raising the bar? Maybe you worked hard to complete a project only to be told it was time to start the next one. Maybe you studied hard to get an A- and were told it wasn’t good enough. It can feel demoralizing to strive for something and then be told it’s not enough!
Are you raising the bar on yourself? Maybe you won’t feel good unless you can check 20 things off your to do list every day. Perhaps you are comparing yourself to someone else and feel like you “should” be able to do as much as she does. Any time you hear yourself saying “I should…” it is probably time to lower that bar. Lowering the bar doesn’t make you a “loser.” Lowering the bar means you have accurate ideas about what you can and can’t do during a day. If you lower the bar you are more likely to meet it and you are more likely to feel good about yourself. If you feel good about yourself then you will have more energy to do the things that are most important to it. You might actually “accomplish” more by lowering the bar because feeling bad about yourself takes up a lot of time and energy!
Still nervous about lowering that bar? You don’t have to do it forever. You don’t even have to do it for every area of your life. You can still reach for the stars in your career and lower the bar with housework. You can shoot for the moon in terms of loving your partner and lower the bar with trying to take care of everyone around you.
Take an inventory of what is most important in your life. Truly. What is important to YOU? Are there things you are doing that don’t really matter to you? Perhaps you can lower the bar in those areas. Are there parts of your life that make you feel worthless or like a loser? Perhaps in those areas you’ve placed the bar out of reach. Do yourself a favor and make your life a little easier. It’s OK to feel good about yourself.