Choosing Right & Realistic Baselines is Critical!

If you don't set a baseline standard for what you'll accept in life, you'll find it's easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that's far below what you deserve

-- Anthony Robbins

Excellent quotation and applicable to all walks of life I believe!

A pretty disappointing fact which I have observed is whenever people discuss about improving anything, may be the things around, people or our own self, either under our direct or indirect control, whenever there is something which requires an effort from their side, it usually ends up in selecting a benchmark of lower quality and say ‘See, we are better than X, Y, Z and so on..!”  Surprisingly, people often take pride in saying/mentioning this.

Why don’t we look up at say A, B and C which are better, refer to them as a baseline, analyze & find out the difference and work towards improving the things around for the sake of better. Constantly refining the baseline and getting inspired by better things around is certainly one of the best and most challenging things to do!

Contrarily, when there is a similar situation but involves something which requires just a critical edge/opinion from person X and there is an effort required from a person/group Y, or something which affects us but there is nothing we may do about it, then we would always set up a baseline, much higher than the initial point, too higher than the point where the things currently are. Of course, it’s good to look for things which are much better but it would be a much better idea to constantly revamp the baseline and encourage someone of achieving the previous perceived level of improvement. This would not only increase the level of motivation but also a sense of achievement in someone who is trying hard to do something good. Small victories are equally important as winning a great big battle as they say to let one keep up the spirit!