You are only as good as your standards

I burned a bra last weekend. Outside, in the fire pit, in broad daylight, the smell of burning plastic likely leaving our neighbours wondering what we might be up to on this casual Saturday.

It wasn’t a feminist statement, despite the obvious symbolism. I burned it because of what it represented: Compromise.

Here was a bra I had been wearing for years — uncomfortable, poor quality, it had never fit me properly. It wasn’t even what I wanted when I bought it. I wanted something quite specific at the time and, because I couldn’t find it, I bought this crap instead.

A compromise from the beginning that I ended up wearing for so many years. 

Last week something snapped. What on earth am I doing? I went out and bought not one, but two, that fit the brief perfectly.

Which raised a question even more uncomfortable than the bra: why did I tolerate this for so long?

It is said that the way you do anything is the way you do everything. Maybe it’s not always quite that neat but it’s clear that small things reveal much about what we are prepared to accept. Not what we say we want, or what we believe our standards are, but what we actually live with day after day.

What we accept becomes our standard.

The bra isn’t a big deal, obviously. There are more significant compromises in life than bad underwear. But that’s why it interests me. Compromise doesn’t announce itself dramatically. It usually begins with something small, something just slightly off, something we tell ourselves is fine for now.

And then “this will do” becomes what we live with. For a week. A month. A year. Years.

At some point, we become so accustomed to the compromise that we forget it was ever a compromise. It becomes invisible. Normalised. We adjust ourselves around it and stop noticing the discomfort at all.

Your standards don’t exist in isolation. You don’t have personal standards over here and professional standards over there. You are the common denominator. The way you decide what is good enough follows you everywhere you go.

If you repeatedly accept something that isn’t quite right in your life, ask where else you might be doing the same. Not as an exercise in self-criticism, but as one of honest observation. Where have you lowered a standard so gradually that you no longer recognise that it’s not what you wanted at all?

This is where it becomes a leadership issue.

Leaders love to talk about high standards: excellence, accountability, ownership, performance. Sure. But standards aren’t found in what you say, they are created by what you repeatedly allow … and when you dive beneath you find way too much evidence of standards that have slipped. Usually when it comes to people. 

A leader can expect directness, but if avoidance is tolerated, avoidance becomes the standard. A leader can say they expect excellence, but if “near enough” is accepted often enough, “near enough” becomes the culture. The stated standard matters far less than the lived one. Everyone knows it, and conforms to it, without instruction.

Our lives are a walking demonstration of the standards we accept. Everywhere you look you can see it — maybe that’s confronting, but maybe it helps you see the opportunity. 

High standards are not about perfection. What I’m talking about is the simple self-respect of noticing when something is no longer good enough and being willing to stop pretending that it is.

Sometimes compromise is necessary. Sensible and mature. Some things really don’t matter. Life and leadership require acceptance. But unconscious compromise is different. That is where the damage happens — when you forget you compromised, stop questioning it, and build your life around something you never really wanted in the first place.

So, this Friday, I’m asking myself where else I may be wearing the metaphorical bra.

Where have I accepted “this will do” for far too long?

And what would change if I decided it no longer does?