Standards and Strategy 

Standards and strategy go together. If you do not have a strategy, it is harder to know when you are falling off path. In fact, you might not even be able to see your path at all. 

Having a strategy helps you create your standards. Your standards are a part of your strategy. Unlike a strategy which helps point you in the right direction, standards are something you can use to measure your decisions against to see if they meet the criteria you’ve set out for yourself in your strategy. Having standards is crucial for executing your strategy. They help you determine when you are beginning to go off path and course correct. They can also stop you from straying from your strategy. 

Maintaining Your Standards 

“Be savage or be average.”

Having your strategy and knowing where you're going allows you to make choices. You need to know where you're going and what you can't afford on your journey. What you need to say no to. Standards help you determine this. You can be selective and say, “I will do this but I can't afford to do that other thing in my Game right now. It doesn’t fit my standards.” You must know your standards and start being savage about meeting them to be successful in your Game. 

I do this to people all the time. I say, “Look, I just can't afford to hang out.” When I say it, I mean it on a resource level, not in terms of amount of money. My Game cannot afford me going out on a Saturday night to have drinks with people who don’t support my vibration or who might keep me out too late. I can't afford to mentally fall out of my Game the next morning. Staying out late or drinking can energetically cost me half of the next morning or afternoon. I can’t afford that in my Game. I cannot lose time or energy in my Game. They are such important resources. Anything that costs me these, anything that is not part of any of my strategies, is not worth it. It doesn’t fit my standards.

Using Strategy and Standards to Navigate Choices 

When faced with choices, having strategies allows you to stop and ask yourself the important questions, “What else is available? What supports my standards? What supports my strategy in that area?” 

Strategies allow you to have your plans instead of following others when you don’t know what else to do. Your strategy clearly tells you what to do, step by step. With a strategy and standards in place, you won’t end up going in the direction that everyone else is going. You won’t follow the herd. If you’re following the herd, you don’t have your own strategy in life. You're just accepting what comes to you. 

For example, you may have a job offered to you that pays more than your current job. If you don’t have a strategy, you might accept it. It sounds positive, right? It pays more money. That’s more resources in your Game for you. But what if that job takes you off course? You won’t necessarily know that it is if you don’t have a clear strategy and plan that’s aligned with your vision. 

For example, if you want to set up your own HR company, you’ll need money for the start up. If you don’t have a strategy to get there, getting a promotion with more money might sound attractive. However, if you put a strategy in place, working backwards from your goal to set up the HR company, you might realize that one of the steps must first be acquiring a higher position within an HR department to gain a particular skill set. In this case, your strategy involves a specific type of position and field along the way to starting your agency. Pay is not relevant. The job offered to you involves more pay and is in an entirely different division. Looking at your strategy, you can apply your standards of what you find acceptable to determine what will pull you off course. Accepting this job offer would pull you off course. It’s not going to get you where you want to go. Using your standards and strategies allows you to figure out that you need to say no to this opportunity so you can be available for the right one that aligns with your strategy and standards.