Lowering your expectations?... hell no!… Raise your standards!

We’re living through an age of homogenisation.

Cities are beginning to look the same. Cafés look the same. Hotels look the same. People dress the same, photograph themselves in the same places, buy the same things and increasingly aspire to the same version of a good life.

Somewhere along the way, individuality became risky.

Algorithms show us what everyone else likes. Trends tell us what everyone else is wearing. Culture gives us a ready-made template for what success, beauty and happiness are supposed to look like.

And without noticing, we can start lowering our expectations to fit what’s available. But there’s another option.

Raise your standards.

Not in the sense of demanding more from everyone around you. In the sense of becoming more discerning about what belongs in your life.

What do you actually find beautiful?

Where do you want to live?

How do you want to dress?

Who do you want around your table?

What kind of work deserves your time?

What makes you feel alive?

When you stop taking your cues from what everyone else is doing, you start setting the bar yourself. And that changes things. You stop choosing from the life that is presented to you and start carving out one of your own. Your standards become increasingly specific. Your taste becomes more developed. Your choices become more intentional.

You become harder to homogenise.

Don’t lower your expectations to meet the world as you find it.

Raise your standards and create the world you want to live in.