Most people would say they listen actively, and many would say they are good at it. Yet people interrupt, sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly. They become visibly distracted. They assume they understand where the thought is going, confidently declaring, “I know what you’re about to say” or finishing the other person’s sentence. And sometimes, they even respond with a complete non sequitur.

What we tend to call listening is often shaped by habit rather than intention. And like most relationship habits, it defaults to what is easiest, not what is effective. If you want a relationship to be the same as it always has been, you can probably get away with your default habits. But if you want better and healthier relationships, you must act differently and with intention. Attentive listening requires both.

ATTENTIVE LISTENING

At its core, I define attentive listening as seeking to understand someone and responding appropriately. It’s an active set of behaviors that is best explained by breaking down the language:

1. seeking: you show a clear desire, motivation, and intention to listen by deploying your full attention to the other person

2. understand: that desire is to grasp the meaning of what is being said, both verbally and nonverbally

3. responding: you avoid the temptation to react (judging, solving, assuming, projecting, concluding, etc.), and instead create space and time for yourself before replying

4. appropriately: perhaps most important, that thoughtful response is aligned with what the other person might want and/or need

These behaviors are sequential, so the most important steps are the first two, seeking to understand. Without those, it’s virtually impossible to respond appropriately. So how does this work in practice?

A simple framework called stop, look, listen.

The simplicity of this framework is what makes it memorable and effective, but it also makes it easy to underestimate. Each step requires a heightened level of self-awareness, a capacity for self-control, and intentional behaviors that put the focus on the other person. Together, the three steps form a standard that helps drive attentive listening.

STOP

In most conversations, people are operating in what behavioral scientists refer to as System 1 thinking. This mode of thinking is fast, intuitive, emotional, and largely automatic. It’s always running in the background and cannot be turned off. When we’re listening, it’s what drives quick reactions, interruptions, judgments, conclusions, and assumptions.

Attentive listening requires a shift into System 2 thinking, which is slower, deliberate, logical, and—most importantly—must be turned on. System 2 allows us to become aware of our thinking. When we’re listening, it’s what drives pauses, thoughtful responses, curiosity, and the need to clarify.

When you shift to System 2 thinking, you put yourself in a position to stop whatever you are doing in the moment. Going deeper, that means you’re able to ignore the distractions - internally and externally - that keep you in System 1 thinking.

Internal distractions are intense emotions, curiosities, intrusive thoughts, worries, and physical sensations: your foot fell asleep, you realize you’re madly in love, your friend hasn’t replied to your text, you wonder if you’ll ever get promoted.

External distractions are incoming stimuli of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches: your phone, the screaming child, someone saying your name out loud, a beautiful sunset, the garbage truck you’re stuck behind in traffic.

Both types of distractions get in the way of attentive listening. So when you build the habit to consciously notice that you’re succumbing to them, you’re able to stop and create a pause that allows you to shift from System 1 to System 2, and pay attention to the other person.

LOOK

Once you’ve created that pause, the next step is to look. It’s not enough to just be physically present; you have to be visibly engaged in a way that the other person can notice. Looking is about directing your visual, physical, and mental attention fully toward the other person. It is highly intentional and observable by them.

The simplest way to do that is by squaring up. This means aligning your shoulders, hips, and knees with the other person so you can actually look at them. It also includes true eye contact, which involves looking primarily at their eyes and face while also taking in their physical orientation: how they’re squaring up in return, how they’re occupying their private space, and how their body is moving.

If this sounds hard, it’s because it must be done intentionally yet naturally, in a way that doesn’t distract the other person from their own thoughts and what they’re trying to communicate.

These behaviors may seem minor, but they communicate something significant. They signal that you are paying attention, that you are engaged, and that the conversation matters. Effort is visible in relationships, and attention is one of the clearest forms of it.

(On video, the same principles apply but require slight adjustments. Keeping your camera on, centering your head and shoulders within the frame, and using full screen all help maintain focus. Being on video also requires being intentional about where you direct your gaze, shifting between looking at the person on your screen and into the camera to simulate eye contact).

LISTEN

The final step is to listen, which is where most people assume they’re already operating effectively. In reality, this is where much of the work happens.

It begins with staying quiet. This does not simply mean not speaking; it means giving the other person time to complete their thoughts without interruption and resisting the urge to insert your own. You can still support the conversation through nonverbal signals (nodding, smiling, mirroring) or paraverbals (non-word sounds we make when listening, such as um, hah!, ooooh, hmm, uh-uh, and ahhh) without taking control of it.

Using silence enables you to listen at a deeper level. Silent pauses are often awkward for people because they don’t know what they signify, but they can be powerful ways to show that we’re listening attentively. To make them less awkward, you can actually acknowledge that you want to reflect on what they’ve said, tell them you want to digest their thoughts, or simply let out a contemplative sigh or similar paraverbal.

Attentive listening also requires accepting what the other person is saying and expressing. This does not mean agreement, but it does mean allowing their words, perspectives, and emotions to be expressed without judgment or correction (see my article on unconditional positive regard).

Most people move through conversations making quiet assumptions, forming interpretations quickly, and believing they understand more than they actually do. Interpreting and believing are obstacles to attentive listening; understanding and clarity help achieve it.

You can build understanding and clarity in different ways:

• Validate what you’re hearing with language such as “sounds like,” “seems like,” or “looks like,” which signals that you aren’t jumping to conclusions or making assumptions about what they mean, and are giving them an opportunity to correct you.

• Paraphrase what they have said to check your understanding and whether you are interpreting their words accurately. This can be done by starting with, “If I heard you correctly…” or “So what you’re saying is…” or “Tell me if I understand you correctly…”

• Use clarifying questions and statements. This can be done by saying things like, “Tell me more…” or “Can you please clarify…?” or “What do you mean by that?”

These behaviors and language reduce the likelihood of misinterpretation, helping you listen attentively. At the same time, you show curiosity.

Rather than making assumptions or drawing conclusions too quickly, you ask clarifying and open-ended questions that help deepen your understanding and build empathy. This requires staying with the other person’s perspective longer than is comfortable, rather than rushing toward your own. Most people don’t practice this deliberately, and as a result, they default to reacting instead of understanding.

We also return to an advanced level of the looking step while listening. It’s essential to go beyond the other person’s physical orientation to include noticing nonverbal cues such as vocal pace, tone, gestures and movement, pauses, changes in eye contact, as well as paraverbal cues.

Throughout all of this, your orientation remains consistent: you are seeking to understand before responding. That distinction—between listening to respond and listening to understand—may be small in phrasing, but it’s significant in impact. The more you listen to understand, the more empathy you build, the better the conversation is, and the healthier the relationship becomes.

THE STANDARD

Stop, look, listen may seem like a simple standard, but meeting it consistently is not easy because it runs counter to how most conversations naturally unfold.

Active listening asks for something different. It asks you to turn on System 2 thinking when it would be easier to remain in System 1. It asks you to remove distractions when it would be easier to keep them. It asks you to stay quiet when it would be easier to speak. It asks you to observe and clarify when it would be easier to assume. It asks you to put in effort, and the type of effort that is visible to other people.

That willingness is what elevates active listening beyond a technique. It reflects a standard for how you engage with other people. The quality of your relationships is shaped, in part, by the standards you hold, and listening is one of the most visible expressions of those standards.

When you listen this way, the difference is noticeable. People can feel whether you are present or distracted, whether you are waiting or understanding. They can feel whether they are being heard or whether they have to work to be understood. People may not remember every detail of what was said, but they will remember how the interaction felt, and whether they felt understood.

Active listening closes that gap. It improves clarity, reduces misinterpretation, and strengthens the quality of conversations and relationships over time. Relationships deepen not just through frequency of interaction, but through the quality of those interactions, and listening is central to that quality.

And like any standard, its value is not in simply knowing it, but in consistently practicing and meeting it.

Between the drives, hours at the various ballparks, and the stretches of time in between games, I spent virtually the entire week in solitude; the only meaningful time I spent with someone was an evening game with a longtime friend from my college days. For many people, that much time alone might sound isolating. For me, it was energizing.

In recent years, solitude has become one of the most important practices in my life. While I have always craved it and embraced it, I became aware of how essential it was to me after leaving my hometown of Chicago in 2021. That’s when I made the decision to spend an indefinite amount of time traveling across the country, given that my business had gone fully remote during the pandemic.

What began as a loose plan to see different parts of the U.S. gradually evolved into nearly three years of road trips, extended stays in unfamiliar places, and long stretches of time spent entirely by myself. In total, I likely spent approximately 20,000 hours (!) alone during that period.

At first, that time was merely a byproduct of traveling. Over time, however, it became something else entirely: a laboratory for self-reflection.

It was during those long stretches of solitude that I began to recognize something about myself: I need time alone in order to think clearly, to reflect deeply, and to grow intentionally. I always knew that, and created space for it around my life’s responsibilities (work, family, house, and so on). But I had never recognized how much I really needed.

Solitude, for me, functions like oxygen. It creates the conditions in which I can fully concentrate on what I want to examine - my thoughts, my emotions, my decisions, and the standards by which I want to live.

Solitude vs. Loneliness

One of the questions I heard a number of times during my travels was, “Don’t you get lonely?” My answer was always, “No.”

When it comes to solitude, it’s important to distinguish it from loneliness because, while they are often spoken about as if they are the same, they are fundamentally different experiences.

Loneliness is not simply the state of being alone. It is the feeling of being disconnected.

In psychology, loneliness is often described as the gap between the connection we desire and the connection we experience.1 That gap can show up in obvious ways, such as the absence of close relationships, but it can also exist in far more subtle forms: when we feel misunderstood, unseen, or unable to fully relate to the people around us. In that sense, loneliness is less about how many people are present in our lives and more about whether we feel connected to them in a meaningful way.

Researchers often point out that loneliness is a subjective experience. It is not determined by how many relationships we have, but by how those relationships are perceived.2

That is why someone can be surrounded by people and still feel alone, while another person can spend long stretches of time on their own and feel completely at ease.

Because of this, loneliness is rarely something we choose. It is something that emerges. It reflects the conditions of our lives, our relationships, and our sense of belonging within them. In some cases, it may point to a lack of meaningful connection. In others, it may signal that the connections we do have are not fully aligned with who we are.

Solitude, by contrast, is something we choose.

It is the intentional decision to spend time with ourselves, not because connection is lacking, but because attention is needed. In contrast to loneliness, which is often studied as a state of perceived social disconnection, solitude is simply the condition of being alone; one that, when chosen, enables reflection, restoration, and personal clarity.

Where loneliness carries a sense of absence, solitude carries a sense of presence. It is not defined by what is missing, but by an awareness of what is here.

This distinction becomes clearer in practice.

In my own experience, time spent in solitude does not feel empty. Whether it is part of a morning routine, a long walk, or a few hours spent reading or writing, those moments tend to feel full…occupied by thought, reflection, and quiet engagement with myself. It’s almost as if my mind begins organizing itself by revisiting experiences, processing emotions, and making sense of things that I couldn’t examine while with other people.

Even during periods of extended time alone, such as my recent trip to Arizona, I did not experience loneliness in any meaningful way. There were moments when I felt a sense of distance from people who matter to me, but that feeling was not one of disconnection. It was simply an awareness of physical separation, one that could be softened - or even erased - with a conversation, a message, or a brief exchange that reminded me those relationships are very much intact.

That difference has become increasingly meaningful to me.

Solitude does not require the absence of relationships, nor does it weaken them. If anything, it creates the space in which we can better understand the relationships we have: what they mean to us, how we show up in them, and what we may want to change or deepen over time. It allows us to return to those relationships with greater clarity, rather than moving through them on autopilot.

Loneliness points to something unresolved. Solitude creates the conditions in which something can be understood.

And over time, learning to recognize the difference between the two begins to change how we experience being alone.

Solitude and Self-Awareness

Much of my professional work centers on emotional intelligence and self-awareness. In my framework, self-awareness is built on several interconnected capacities: emotional awareness, self-image, self-confidence, and personal clarity. While these concepts can be discussed in classrooms, workshops, or conversations with others, I have come to believe that they cannot truly develop without solitude.

Consider emotional awareness. In order to understand our emotions - what we feel, why we feel it, and how those emotions influence our behavior - we must be able to observe ourselves with sustained attention. Research in psychology has shown that even short periods of intentional solitude can reduce high-arousal emotions like anxiety and help people emotionally “reset,” lowering stress responses and increasing calmness.3 That observation becomes almost impossible in the presence of stimulation from the outside world.

Conversations, responsibilities, technologies, and the subtle social pressures of everyday life continually pull our attention outward. When we step away from constant social input, the mind begins to wander and form unexpected connections. This mental state—often occurring during walks, showers, or quiet drives—has been linked to creative insights and “aha” moments.4

Solitude reverses that direction. It creates the conditions in which attention can move inward.

When I am alone, I can examine my emotional responses with greater clarity. I can ask questions that rarely surface in the middle of a busy day: Why did that conversation affect me the way it did? What exactly am I feeling right now? What belief or expectation sits beneath that emotion? Those kinds of questions require patience, quiet, and uninterrupted thought.

The same is true when reflecting on self-image. How we perceive ourselves - our strengths, our weaknesses, and the way we believe others see us - is shaped over time through experience and feedback. Yet making sense of that feedback requires distance. Without time alone to process what we hear from others, those impressions remain scattered and unexamined.

Self-confidence also grows in solitude. Confidence is often misunderstood as something that emerges solely from external success, but much of it is actually cultivated internally. It grows when we reflect on past experiences, when we revisit moments of resilience, and when we strengthen the internal dialogue that guides our behavior. Those processes occur quietly, often without witnesses, in the moments when we are simply thinking.

And perhaps most of all, solitude plays a critical role in developing personal clarity. In my opinion, personal clarity is achieved when we articulate our values, define our purpose, and live our life accordingly. It is where we attempt to answer the most fundamental questions of a life: What matters to me? What kind of person do I want to be? What kind of relationships do I want to cultivate? What is my reason for existence at this stage of my life? Why am I here?

Every meaningful attempt I have made to answer those questions - writing personal mission statements, crafting values statements, reflecting on how I want to be remembered - has taken place in solitude. These are not conversations we can outsource to other people. They are reflections that must be wrestled with privately, often slowly, until something meaningful emerges.

Learning from Thoreau

Few writers have explored solitude more thoughtfully than Henry David Thoreau. In Walden, Thoreau recounts the two years he spent living in a small cabin near Walden Pond, an experiment designed to simplify his life and deepen his understanding of it. His famous line - “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately” - captures the essence of that experiment.

Thoreau was not simply seeking isolation for its own sake. Rather, he believed that stepping away from society could help clarify what truly mattered.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Walden Pond myself while driving through Massachusetts. Walking along the path that circles the pond, I found myself reflecting on Thoreau’s experiment and the influence his writing has had on generations of readers.

What struck me most was the intentionality of his solitude. Thoreau did not retreat from the world permanently; he stepped away long enough to observe it more clearly. His time alone became a tool for understanding life rather than escaping from it.

Solitude and the Standards We Set

My writing over the past several years (captured in this Substack) has focused heavily on the idea of standards, particularly how they differ from expectations.

In most cases, expectations are directed outward. They are beliefs about what we think other people will do, should do, or how we think situations should unfold. Standards, by contrast, are directed inward. They are commitments we make to ourselves about how we want to behave and how we want to live.

What I have come to realize is that solitude plays a vital role in the formation of those standards.

Standards are not discovered casually. They emerge through reflection. In order to define how we want to show up in our work, in our friendships, and in our partnerships, we must first understand our values and priorities. That understanding cannot be rushed, nor can it be developed entirely through conversation with others.

It requires time alone.

When we step away from the noise of daily interaction, we gain the ability to examine our own behavior more honestly. We can revisit moments when we felt proud of how we acted and moments when we did not. We can ask ourselves whether our behavior truly reflects the person we want to become. Over time, those reflections begin to crystallize into personal standards - guidelines that shape how we approach our lives and relationships.

In this sense, solitude strengthens not only our relationship with ourselves but also our relationships with others. The clearer we become about our own values and standards, the more intentionally we are able to show up for the people around us.

Solitude and Deliberate Practice

Solitude also plays an essential role in deliberate practice, a concept from psychology and performance research.5 Deliberate practice refers to the focused effort to improve specific skills by working directly on areas of difficulty. It requires intense concentration, repeated self-correction, and sustained attention to detail. Most relevantly, the science found that it is only when we are alone when we can truly engage in deliberate practice. Coaches and mentors can help or guide the process, but our ability to go precisely where practice is needed is only possible when we’re alone.

A tennis player may receive instruction from a coach during a lesson, but the most demanding work often occurs in the moments between strokes - when the player rehearses the movement internally, corrects a flaw in their footwork, or mentally prepares for the next shot. That internal dialogue cannot be outsourced. It happens inside the tennis player’s own mind.

The same dynamic applies to many aspects of personal growth. Skills such as emotional regulation, empathy, communication, and leadership can certainly be learned through interaction with others. Yet improving those abilities often requires private reflection beforehand and afterward. We replay conversations in our minds, examine where we could have responded differently, and mentally rehearse how we might handle similar situations in the future.

Those quiet moments of reflection are a form of deliberate practice. Studies suggest that solitude improves the brain’s ability to reflect on decisions, recognize patterns in behavior, and evaluate one’s own thought processes—key elements of self-awareness and learning.6

A beautiful coincidence is the relationship between this modern scientific concept and Thoreau’s line from Walden - “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately” - that came more than 150 years earlier. It can thus be argued that Thoreau was seeking to practice how to live in a deliberate way.

Solitude as a Practice

Modern life is filled with constant stimulation: messages, conversations, responsibilities, and distractions that fill nearly every available moment. Parents talk about children being over-scheduled. White-collar professionals strive for work-life balance. Adults and children alike lament their use of social media and doomscrolling. Weekends zoom by because of binge-watching.

One of the most important lessons I have learned over the years is that solitude rarely happens by accident. If we do not intentionally create time for solitude, that time will tend to disappear.

That is why I have come to view solitude not merely as a circumstance but as a practice. Like exercise or journaling, it is something we must choose deliberately. It may take the form of a long walk without devices, a quiet hour spent writing or reflecting, hours alone in the car, or a period of time dedicated to reviewing the direction of our lives.

Sometimes the reflection is informal. I might simply think about how I am performing in different roles - whether as a partner, a friend, a parent, or a professional. At other times, the reflection becomes more structured: writing in a journal, revisiting personal values, or examining larger philosophical questions about the direction of my life.

The purpose may vary, but the practice remains the same: carving out intentional space to turn inward.

The Relationship with Ourselves

Ultimately, solitude strengthens the most fundamental relationship we have: the one with ourselves.

Every interaction we have with other people is influenced by how well we understand our own thoughts, impulses, emotions, values, and intentions. When that internal understanding is weak, our behavior tends to be reactive. We respond without thinking, often guided by habits we have never fully examined.

When that understanding becomes stronger, our behavior becomes more deliberate.

The time we spend in solitude is not separate from our relationships with others. It is preparation for them. The clarity we develop while reflecting alone eventually shows up in the world through our decisions, our words, and the standards we hold ourselves to. Studies examining “self-determined solitude” show that when people choose to spend time alone for meaningful reasons, they report stronger feelings of autonomy, competence, and personal satisfaction.7

In that sense, solitude is not withdrawal from life. It is one of the ways we can lean into it.

The phrase is most commonly associated with Carl Rogers, an American psychologist who (along with Abraham Maslow) was one of the founders of humanistic psychology, which “focuses on individuals’ capacity to make their own choices, create their own style of life, and actualize themselves in their own way…its emphasis is on the development of human potential.”1

Rogers used unconditional positive regard (UPR) to describe a way of relating to another person that is grounded in acceptance rather than evaluation. In his work, UPR meant valuing and respecting another person without reservation: meeting them where they are, accepting their experiences and stories as real to them, and creating space for exploration without judgment.

In theory, many people support this and may even preach it; in practice, they discover that it’s harder than it sounds. And based on my personal experience with UPR, and dozens of conversations with others, it is quite difficult to put into use.

Most of us move through relationships making quiet assumptions. We draw conclusions quickly. We judge other people. We over-rely on our “gut” and intuition. We interpret other people’s behavior, believe we know their motives, and decide what their behavior or language really means.

Sometimes we do this to protect ourselves. Sometimes we do it because certainty feels more comfortable than curiosity. Sometimes we do it because of jealousy. And sometimes we simply give ourselves more credit than we deserve…and others less credit than they deserve.

Unconditional positive regard interrupts that pattern.

It involves something different: accepting the person as they are, in a positive light, without assuming, judging, or concluding.

This does not mean agreeing. It does not mean trusting someone automatically. It does not require closeness, friendship, or access to our life. Acceptance and proximity are not the same thing. We can accept someone fully while also choosing distance or limiting what we share with them.

And when we find ourselves moving in this direction, we increasingly tap into our human potential…as Rogers and Maslow believed we could.

Acceptance without Agreement

One of the places UPR can be highly appropriate and effective is when someone behaves in a way we dislike or distrust.

If someone lies, exaggerates, or acts in an unbecoming way, unconditional positive regard does not require pretending it didn’t happen. It means accepting that this is where the person is right now. Their behavior may reflect fear, insecurity, or self-protection. They may not even realize they are being dishonest with themselves.

In this scenario, practicing unconditional positive regard helps us move toward acceptance.

Instead of assumption or accusation, we use curiosity. Instead of conclusions, we use clarifying questions. With people we are close to, this may mean asking permission to go deeper rather than confronting immediately. The goal is not to expose or correct or agree, but to understand and accept.

This mirrors how therapists often work. A client might describe loving a partner one week and hating them the next. The therapist does not rush to resolve the contradiction. They continue asking open questions, allowing the person to explore what changed and why. The acceptance creates safety, and safety allows honesty.

Compassion and UPR

Compassion and unconditional positive regard are related but not identical.

Compassion often arises in response to suffering. Unconditional positive regard exists even when suffering isn’t visible. It assumes there is real goodness present, even if it is not immediately apparent. It is less about feeling for someone and more about how we choose to see them.

This perspective changes everyday interactions.

In transactional environments, like buying a car, it may simply mean recognizing the complexity of the other person instead of the simplicity of their role. In social settings, it might mean redirecting an intrusive question rather than reacting defensively. With a partner or close friend, it may mean accepting silence instead of wondering what’s wrong.

Unconditional positive regard allows people to be as they are without requiring them to perform in order to be accepted.

Expectations and Understanding

There is also a relationship between UPR and expectations.

The more expectations we carry into an interaction, the harder it becomes to meet someone where they are. And the more we practice the standard of unconditional positive regard, the fewer expectations we tend to have.

When we have expectations about someone, we believe they will act in a way that aligns with our hopes and desires. As many of us know, that rarely happens, leaving us disappointed, frustrated, annoyed, maybe even angry. We’re not meeting them where they are; we’re expecting them to meet us where we are. Following the standard of UPR, we can lower (or perhaps eliminate) our expectations by focusing on understanding.

When we evaluate, judge, or assume, understanding someone is difficult. We skip past the process of showing curiosity and asking questions because we believe we already know the answers. But when we practice unconditional positive regard and “seek first to understand,”2 we extend grace to the other person.

Turning It Inward

The same practice applies internally with ourselves.

After mistakes, many of us may default to harsh self-talk. Judgments, assumptions, and conclusions appear quickly: “I should have known better. I always do this. How could I be so stupid?”

Unconditional positive regard toward yourself interrupts that spiral. The reminder becomes simple: I’m still good, I’m still learning, I can’t control all the circumstances. The goal is not to avoid responsibility but to remove unnecessary condemnation. It’s an act of self-compassion and self-understanding, enabling you to develop your full potential and leading to higher self-assuredness, self-confidence, and self-regard.

Being on the Receiving End

Speaking of yourself, think about all the times when others judged you, made assumptions about your intentions, or reached conclusions about your life. Reflect back on how many times you felt sadness, frustration, confusion, anger, ire, hopelessness, or isolation because someone didn’t accept you for who you were in that moment.

Whether it was a parent, best friend, spouse or partner, neighbor, or a complete stranger, you were probably dumbfounded. “Where did that come from? How was I so misunderstood? How could they assume that about me? Why didn’t they just ask me?”

One of the most effective ways to learn a difficult relationship practice is to imagine how it might feel if we are on the receiving end of that practice.

Imagine being the recipient of unconditional positive regard. Imagine being accepted for who you are in each moment. Imagine being asked questions and being listened to. Imagine not being judged behind your back, not having your friends and family assume they know what you mean, and not drawing conclusions about your what you say or what you do.

If you can feel in your body what that might feel like, if you find yourself exhaling, or if you notice tears welling up in your eyes, that’s what practicing UPR could do for the people you hold dearest in your life.

Practicing the Standard of UPR

To change relationships, unconditional positive regard must be less of a belief and more of a practice. It shouldn’t have to wait for the big, hard conversations. Instead, it’s most useful in small, non-transactional moments like brief discussions, everyday interactions, and ordinary misunderstandings.

• It begins by noticing judgments in real time and pausing before acting on them: creating the space between what you see/hear and what you think/say.

• It continues by replacing assumptions or conclusions with curious, open-minded questions.

• It concludes by accepting the person based on what you hear from them.

A helpful starting point is carrying a simple thought into your interactions: There is good here, even if I don’t see it yet.

Over time, practicing UPR changes how relationships feel. People become less like problems to solve and more like humans to understand. Conversations deepen. Defensiveness decreases. And the same acceptance that you extend outward becomes available inward as well.

Unconditional positive regard does not mean lowering your standards or ignoring reality. It actually means the opposite: choosing a higher standard of accepting another’s reality. It means choosing to see people as they are and meeting them where they are.

And from that place, you begin fulfilling the promise that Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow envisioned in so many humans: making your own choices and developing your own potential.

After all, true friendship doesn’t happen by accident; it happens with effort, intention, and reciprocity.

What I’ve learned is that the missing piece isn’t just meeting new people or meeting more people; it’s having clear standards about what matters to you, and then living those standards. Standards focus your effort, signal what you value, and make mutuality - the engine of real friendship - possible.

SITUATIONAL VS. INTENTIONAL

Virtually everyone has made friends at school, in their neighborhood, at their workplace, at the gym, through a running club, with parents whose kids go to the same school, and so on. Such friendship is often situational, based on circumstances and maybe even coincidence. It “just happens.”

The alternative is intentional friendship: a conscious, active practice of meeting people and building relationships. It doesn’t “just happen”…you make it happen. And the beauty is that it can develop into a habit and a repeatable process…especially when standards are put into place (more to come on that later).

I’ve cultivated this idea of intentional friendship through my own experience and by talking with people who are trying to make new friends. As a consequence, I realized that there are three reasons (so far) why people pursue intentional friendship.

1. Life transitions. Whether it’s moving to a different city, changing careers, becoming an empty-nester, or getting divorced, such transitions expose a new reality: the need to meet new people in order to make new friends.

2. Widening mismatch. Some people reach a point where they discover that established relationships just don’t cut it. Either side has grown in different ways, taken on new responsibilities, developed new values and interests, adopted different beliefs, found a life partner, etc. As a result, they decide they want new friends.

3. Desire for depth. I’ve not only heard about this from other people, I’ve also experienced it. We don’t want friendships that are based on shallow conversation, small talk, memories of the past, or just doing things together. We want friendships rooted in personal connection and deep conversation. Sometimes this means the desire for closer relationships with current friends, and other times (see #2 above ;-) it means new friendships.

WHY STANDARDS MATTER

Standards are lines in the sand you draw for yourself about how you’ll behave and what you’ll accept from other people. They are not expectations and they aren’t rigid morality. Your standards are measures of how you define quality, what you believe is important, and how you make decisions.

Two dynamics show why standards are so powerful when it comes to friendship.

1. First, standards focus effort. Building relationships takes time; standards help you spend that time intentionally by doing the work on those relationships that actually have the potential for better friendship.

2. Second, standards focus selection. By clarifying what your standards are (prompt responses, one-on-one time, reciprocal vulnerability), you can identify who’s worth investing in. And if you have the courage to signal or explicitly state those standards, you can discover who has aligned values and interests, making the relationship-building process go smoother.

STANDARDS PEOPLE ACTUALLY FOLLOW

Across the conversations and workshops I’ve held on friendship, people have shared practical standards that made a real difference when building their highest-quality friendships:

• Conversation: “I prioritize one-on-one time.” Group events are great for meeting people; they rarely create the time and space for deeper and wider conversation. When you set a standard for one-on-one hangouts like hikes, coffees, car rides, and dinners, you accelerate closeness because such interactions create space for conversation, the true driver of friendship.

• Responses: “I respond promptly and only want friends who do the same.” Promptness is less about specific timing and more about how someone prioritizes reciprocity. If someone ghosts repeatedly, it’s a clear signal about their priorities. And if they do respond within an “adequate” timeframe and/or acknowledge any delays in doing so, it’s also a clear signal about their priorities.

• Reciprocal vulnerability: “I’ll be open; I want similar openness in return.” Vulnerability begets vulnerability. If you’re comfortable sharing, but the other person never reciprocates, that mismatch is a usable filter: you can preserve your energy for those who do meet you halfway. Many people commented that their best friendships are with those who are comfortable opening up because of mutual trust.

• Effort & follow-through: “If we make plans, we commit.” Relationships require logistics: scheduling, following up, showing up. When the investment is consistently one-sided, friendship stalls; standards make that visible. People who have this standard talk about not becoming friends with people who say, “We should get together” or “Let’s meet up sometime.” Instead, they prioritize friendship with those who say, “When is good for you?” or “How about lunch next week?”

• Permission for advice: “I ask before I give advice.” One of the potential downsides of vulnerability is that some people misread opening up as a request for advice. Not everyone is looking for their problem to be solved; some just want to be heard, and others may just want some support. This standard of asking permission respects autonomy and keeps conversations collaborative. And it can set the tone for requesting that the new friend also asks permission.

• Negativity & hijacking: “I won’t let conversations be dominated by chronic negativity or one-upping.” That kind of behavior drains connection; naming it as a standard preserves the quality of your interactions and helps you draw a line in the sand of what you will and will not accept.

• Interruptions: “It’s frustrating when I can’t finish a thought.” Like negativity and hijacking, this too drains energy for many people. Chronic interrupters ask probing questions that change the direction of a conversation; without asking, they share why and how they can relate, making the conversation about themselves; and they prove that they’re not really listening but instead thinking about what to say next.

HOW TO MAKE STANDARDS PRACTICAL: CREATING THE PLAYBOOK

Standards only work if you translate them into behavior and then follow that behavior consistently. When that happens, relationship-building becomes a habit. Below are three simple ways to start creating a playbook that moves you in this direction.

1. Reflect upon and write/type out your most important standards. This enables you to get clarity on what matters to you. Perhaps your standards are one or more of the above items. Perhaps you can be inspired by what you experience from other friends. Or perhaps you can simply brainstorm what a “perfect” friend would be like for you. Regardless of how you identify these, start small: I recommend 3-5 standards to begin with.

2. Share your standards. Bring up the topic of friendship standards with those closest to you. Ask them what they think about the idea of setting standards in general, and having specific standards for the relationship the two of you have. In that conversation, share the 3-5 initial standards you’ve come up with and ask them for their thoughts and opinions. And if you sense their openness to what you’ve shared, ask them about standards they may have as well, or would want to have.

3. Ask for agreement. This one takes a bit more courage. For each person you share your standards with, ask if they are comfortable with trying to meet them. It’s possible they may ask you the same with the standards they shared, so be prepared!

STANDARDS AS A COMPASSIONATE FILTER

There’s a misconception that standards are cold or exclusionary. They aren’t. They’re a compassionate filter: they help you invest in people who are aligned with your values and preserve time for those relationships to grow. Furthermore, setting standards for friendship - and holding yourself to them - is an act of self-compassion.

Compassion isn’t staying friends with those whose values are diverging from yours; after all, friends like that are likely experiencing frustration as well. Compassion is recognizing that you have friends whose standards may be similar to yours, and want similar things from the friendship as you do.

In the workshops I’ve held, people described standards as clarifying, not punitive. They let you say yes to deeper connection and no - with kindness - to what drains you.

FINAL THOUGHT

If you want different friendships, set different standards and meet them. Standards turn messy social signals and expectations into a clear path: one that is rooted in honesty, candor, and care. When you stop hoping and instead start setting clear standards, your friendships don’t become colder…they become better.

In my experience, people say this when they encounter an opinion, definition, or thought different from their own—often reacting with apathy, distaste, or even indignation. By saying, “It’s just semantics,” they dismiss the idea that words matter.

The irony is that, when they say it, they’re right!

Semantics literally refers to “the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning.’” Yet, when people use the phrase dismissively, what they’re really implying is that words don’t matter - only their meaning does.

The Semantics of Standards

As I’ve continued to think, write, and speak about standards, I’ve become increasingly aware of the language many people use when describing theirs.

Boundaries. Rules. Protocols. Laws. Specs. Specifications. Morals. Values. Norms. Requirements. Preferences. Measures. Agendas. Regulations. Principles. Instructions. Policies. Procedures. Processes. Records. Formulas. Recipes. Ingredients. Guidelines. Ethics. Rituals. Routines.

As you can see, I’ve been keeping track ;-) and I’m sure there are more words people use to describe similar ideas.

Acknowledging my bias, here’s an important distinction: all of those things are standards. But standards aren’t all of those things.

The definition of “standards” that I use comes from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

• something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example

• something set up and established by authority as a rule for the measure of quantity, weight, extent, value, or quality

This definition was in one of my earliest articles, linked below, in which I discussed why standards are healthier for relationships over expectations.

For this article, I want to highlight something different: the semantics of my argument that all of the words above qualify as standards, but standards aren’t limited to them.

In the definition from Merriam-Webster, the word authority is used twice. As it applies to the words each of us uses to articulate our standards - boundaries, principles, guidelines, norms, etc. - the authority is ourself. We get to be the ones who define which words resonate with us the most intellectually, mentally, and emotionally.

That, my friends, is all semantics because it’s about the meaning the words hold for us…we can describe our standards in any way we personally want.

SEMANTICS IN PRACTICE

As much as I love dictionaries, I recognize that most of us don’t grow up using them as constant references, even in adulthood. As we encounter different language in our lives - at school, at home, on the playground, at work, online, with friends - we adopt certain words and phrases that matter to us.

For example, I rarely used the word values in my 20s and early 30s. Around the time I turned 40 years old, I noticed I was using the word consistently both in a business context (a company’s core values) and a life context (one’s personal values).

As I’ve gotten older, that word has resonated more and more deeply for me.

• I discovered it was the simplest word to describe the different paths my former wife and I had taken individually (diverging values) which ultimately led to our parting ways.

• I incorporated it into my work with emotional intelligence, using it as one of two words that define personal clarity (the other word being purpose).

• Over months, I thought about and wrote out my personal core values, changing them from words into sentences and paragraphs.

• Those 14 statements then became daily reading during my morning routine.

• Today, I do workshops on values, have regular conversations with people about theirs, and love discussing how the word itself differs from beliefs and principles and, yes, even standards.

I know that my embrace of the word values is unusual. For many people I’ve spoken with, it’s a simple word that describes what they believe is important in their lives. For me, however, it has very deep meaning:

Values are my essence. They are all that I stand for, they are what dictate my daily behavior and language, and they are the origin of all my standards. When I follow my values on a daily basis, I’m living with integrity. I use them as a measure for deciding which people to spend time with and which ones to not. And I use the word as a standard part of my vernacular.

As you can see, it really is all about semantics.

No matter what words you use to describe your standards, remember: you have many of them. And underlying them are two fundamental truths:

1. Words matter.

2. How you live and lead based on those words matters even more.

It’s not “just semantics.” It is semantics.

I’ve made a number of new friends, become friends with former acquaintances, deepened relationships with long-time friends, re-connected with long-lost friends, and “broken up” with others.

I think about, journal about, and discuss friendship a whole lot more. I spend exponentially more time than ever connecting with friends via phone, video calls, in person, and text. When I met a woman whose company I enjoyed, I was focused on building a friendship for four months before expressing a desire to date her; she’s now one of my closest friends. And in my new town, I host meetup events called “Make New Friends.”

All of this has happened in my 50s, and I’m aware of why.

The combination of grown children, a divorce, moving from my hometown, a lot more travel, a bit more wisdom, a deeper appreciation of relationship, and stronger interpersonal skills (hopefully ;-) have all led to a heightened desire to build meaningful friendships and deepen existing ones.

But the one thing that has elevated this experience is increasingly living a life based on standards, and discovering how powerful they are to my relationships. I’m hoping that you may know this already and, if not, perhaps you may be inspired to think about it as a result of reading this article.

It Goes Both Ways

While there’s obvious truth in the folk saying, “you can't choose your family but you can choose your friends”, what’s missing is that your friends must choose you as well. After all, friendship is a two-way street.

By “choose,” I don’t just mean the decision you both make of selecting each other as a friend. What I mean is the daily choice you both make to invest time in that particular friendship: building the relationship, overcoming difficulty, showing up when the other has a need, and so on.

I believe that what underpins all these daily choices and behaviors are standards. But it’s not that simple because of five unique dynamics:

1. You have your personal standards for friendship, and they often change over time.

2. Similarly, each of your friends has their own personal standards which also change.

3. Both sets of standards must be in relative harmony for the friendship to continue and grow.

4. As time goes on, standards emerge that are unique to the friendship itself, separate from your individual ones.

5. Perhaps most importantly, each friend must avoid the trap of expectations which, as I’ve written extensively about, are unhealthy and cancerous to relationships.

These dynamics make the concept of friendship very complex, especially as we mature and gain greater clarity in our lives. But as you can see, they start with the idea of having standards in the first place.

Friendship Standards

There are so many standards that can exist in our respective worlds of friendship that it’s impossible to itemize them all. In fact, I searched my journal entries over the past five years and found dozens that I either wrote about explicitly or referred to in my musings and reports of time spent with friends.

Furthermore, based on the work I do in emotional intelligence coaching and training, there are many standards that I identified which could be healthy for any friendship. And I imagine that if I simply had a personal brainstorming session, I could come up with even more.

But to start, below are 21 standards that I believe are foundational for true friendship.

1. You express a desire to see or talk with your friend, using language like “I want to” or “I’d love to” or “When can I see/talk with you?”

2. You consistently share something that your friend finds valuable - support, resources, experiences, encouragement, wisdom, knowledge, contacts, etc.

3. You reach out with a simple greeting or message when you think about them and/or haven’t communicated with them in a while.

4. You suggest specific dates and times to be with one another rather than saying, “We should get together sometime” or “Let’s make some plans” or “Let’s touch base” or “Hope to see you soon,” or something similarly non-committal.

5. You respond within an acceptable amount of time when a friend reaches out with a question. “Acceptable” depends on many contextual factors like relationship history, personal responsibilities, your ages, etc.

6. You ask questions and share experiences rather than giving unsolicited advice.

7. You respect and respond to their preferred mode of communication (text, call, social DM, email, etc.) rather than emphasizing what you prefer.

8. You’re able to express emotion for your friend, saying things like “I miss you” or “I love you” or “I wish we could see each other more often” or “It was awesome to see/talk with you.”

9. You celebrate your friend’s small wins rather than question or ignore them.

10. You validate their emotions rather than question or ignore them.

11. You respond affirmatively to their requested favors, as long as they’re within reason and your capability.

12. You check in with them when they’re going through a hard time, and offer specific ways to help them.

13. You spend more time talking about the present and future than the past.

14. You follow up with your friend about things you committed to.

15. You respond to their communications (even with a simple emoji) within an acceptable amount of time no matter how “busy” you are.

16. You smile when you see their name pop up on your phone.

17. You listen attentively to them, avoiding distractions that are in your control.

18. You accept the life your friend is living, even if you don’t like or agree with certain aspects.

19. You express your understanding of what they’re going through and how they’re living their life, even if you don’t like or agree with certain aspects.

20. You let them talk about what they want without judging them, making assumptions, or drawing conclusions.

21. You take advantage of unique or rare opportunities to see your friend, even if that means re-prioritizing your schedule.

I hope to use this list as a means to intentionally build stronger friendships going forward. And I hope the list may help you reflect a little on what your standards are with your different friends, consider how well you meet those standards on a daily basis, and feel inspired to set new or different standards.

Truth be told, our friends’ standards must be in harmony with ours for the relationship to continue, grow, and flourish. We could do any or all of the above but, if the language and behaviors aren’t practiced in return, then it’s likely that the friendship isn’t meant to be. But the only way to find out is by taking a leadership role, setting an example, and talking about the mere idea of standards in our relationship.

And What Else?

In closing, I want to know what standards you already have and live by when it comes to your friendships. To keep it simple, think of your closest friends, and your individual choices. What language and behavior do you consistently practice? What do you consistently observe in them?

Please share your experiences in the comments section. And thank you for reading!

I realized that I’m motivated to start things, plan them out, make consistent progress, and iterate. I’m less driven by the end result or a goal. I love using the phrase, “trust the process.” I love the proverbial journey vs. the destination. And I easily experience flow, get lost in details, and wish that some process never ends.

Here’s a specific example: like many people, I enjoy cooking at home. I’m less motivated by what the meal is going to look, taste, and smell like, and far more motivated by the ingredients, how to prepare them, how to make the dish better, and do the actual cooking. Along the way, I make a decent mess in the kitchen; I’m so engrossed in the process that I have no interest in disrupting it by cleaning things as I go. I take far longer than I probably could or should but that doesn’t matter to me because I care more about the process than the outcome (truth be told: I do enjoy the meals).

As I reflect on this example, it occurs to me that my process-orientation may be one reason why I don’t eat out a lot. To me, that’s somewhat “transactional,” a simple action that’s taken when I’m either out of the house and hungry, or a way to meet with people. Interestingly, when it’s the latter, I care far more about the time I get to spend with someone (process) rather than the meal or what restaurant we’re visiting (outcome).

Another way to describe this is that I’m not very goal-focused. While I do set them for both my life and work, I’m less driven by my desired outcome and more driven by the work, the activity, and the process of attempting to reach the goal.

Here are other examples.

• Living in Colorado, I have no interest in climbing 14’ers (mountains that exceed 14,000 feet in elevation) yet I do 1-2 long, intense hikes every week.

• I buy lots of books yet only finish about half of them. I don’t count how many books I’ve read in a week/month/year, instead focusing just on the act of reading and how it gets me to reflect, learn, improve, and communicate in a different way.

• The work I do is emotional intelligence coaching and training. And I emphasize to clients that the purpose of our work isn’t to help them learn emotional intelligence (a body of knowledge), it’s to help practice emotionally intelligent behaviors (implement a skill set).

• I play in tennis tournaments yet I don’t focus on winning. In my mid-50s, I play the sport for exercise, being outside, and getting a little bit better every time I play.

• I’ve never set “a number” for personal wealth; instead, I focus on maintaining a healthy relationship with money by saving far more than I spend, making prudent investment decisions, spending little on fixed expenses and material things, and spending more on experiences that create memories.

• Rather than taking 1-2 long vacations each year, I take 1-3 short trips every month (visiting family members, camping, weekend getaways, etc.). This way, I get to look forward to travel on a regular basis rather than once every so often.

• I have no desire nor intention to retire. I acknowledge my good fortune that I control my work life since I have my own business, and I love my work since it’s purpose-driven; that allows me to see it more as “play.” Therefore, I see work as simply one part of my life…just like family, friends, solitude, learning, hobbies, etc.

OK, I hope you get the picture, and have started to reflect on how this might resonate with your own personality, preferences, and lifestyle. And one thing to address is that many of us aren’t always at one end of this polarity continuum: there are indeed times when outcome-oriented people “go with the flow” or when process-oriented people work towards a very specific goal (as I’m doing right now during a two-hour period I blocked out for writing).

Let’s now get to how standards fit in, regardless of whether one identifies as being process-oriented or outcome-oriented.

As a process-oriented person, I’ve shared a bunch of my standards above: regularly hiking and playing tennis, taking 1-3 trips every month, and how I spend money. In fact, I can argue that my process-orientation is literally a result of the standards I live by.

But if I was outcome-oriented, the examples I shared would also have standards tied to them. Here’s what I mean.

• Desired outcome: climb all 53 of Colorado’s 14’ers. Possible standards: go on long, intense hikes only on those mountains, perhaps 1-2 every month; find a club or small group of people with whom I could complete these hikes.

• Desired outcome: win tennis tournaments. Possible standards: join a tennis club to play more frequently; hire a coach to improve skills; invest time watching potential opponents; film myself playing to see what I can change in my game to gain a competitive advantage over them.

• Desired outcome: read 50 books this year. Possible standards: read one book a week by carving out time in my calendar every day to read a certain number of pages based on the book’s length.

• Desired outcome: a “number” for personal wealth. Possible standards: setting a target salary; knowing how many years I’d need to work at that pay; a minimum savings/investment percentage of income; a timeline for achieving the number.

If you’re an outcome-oriented person, I’m hoping you can relate.

Think about desired outcomes that you have set in the past, and achieved: finishing a 10K or marathon, hitting your sales goal, being able to buy a house or car, lowering your blood sugar or weight, or not drinking alcohol for “dry January.”

In each case, that outcome would have had to have standards: training for the race, sales activities to hit the goal, saving up for the car or home, eating better for health indicators, and consuming non-alcoholic beverages when you’d normally drink alcohol.

Now comes the fun part.

All of those standards became part of the process that you needed to follow in order to achieve your outcome. In fact, I believe that the most effective way to realize your goals is by formulating a process to get there. We all know that we simply can’t wish our goals into existence: we must make the effort to achieve them.

And it doesn’t just stop there. Whether you’re process- or outcome-oriented, I also believe that the only way to achieve a desired outcome consistently is by setting and following a process consistently. And inherent to that process is the requirement for standards.

So what can you do with this idea?

1. If you are process-oriented, think about the standards you already have and might set to fully enjoy your life experiences, both the daily ones and the occasional ones.

2. If you are outcome-oriented, think about the standards you have and might set that would help you achieve your desired outcomes. And embrace the fact that you need process to get there.

3. If you’ve set goals, intentions, or desired outcomes for the next month, quarter, or year, think about what standards you must set to achieve them.

Finally, whichever polarity you identify with, remember that you will likely move along the continuum for different reasons and different points in life. After all, life is a process, not an outcome. Along the way, your standards will change.

If you’re like most people, you’re done with reflecting on the prior year and have probably spent time planning for the new one. Now it’s time to execute and get to work.

Perhaps you’ve set new year resolutions, the longtime adage that gets applied to ending our vices, becoming healthier, and living a better life. A resolution, according to the dictionary, is “the act or process of resolving; the act of determining; firmness of resolve.” It’s something we set in the present, often with little detail or a specific action plan.

If you don’t like the word resolutions then perhaps you’ve set intentions, a word that, based on my experience, seems to have become more popular in the last decade or so. An intention, according to the dictionary, is “what one intends to do or bring about; a determination to act in a certain way.” Similar to resolutions, this is something we set in the present but often doesn’t have an end time. And in my view, intentions is more firm than resolutions since it’s thinking about the end in mind and, as the definition states, gets closer to action.

If neither of these words resonate with you, perhaps you’ve simply set goals, “the end toward which effort is directed; the terminal point.” Interestingly, this word might be something we set in the present but it’s all about the future, with a set point in time that serves as a deadline. Sometimes we set smaller goals to move towards the bigger one and/or create an action plan that specifies what we need to do to achieve the goal.

Whatever your choice of language (words do matter) to characterize your new year plans, I hope you also give some thought to the standards you’d like to set and/or raise in the new year. A standard is “a level of quality, achievement, etc., that is considered acceptable or desirable; something established as a model or measure of quality.”

To me, the key words in this definition are level and quality. Both words offer a sense of clarity that is lacking with resolutions, intentions, or goals. And perhaps the biggest distinction (at least in my mind) is that standards don’t just matter in the present or the future but have ongoing relevance. Furthermore, they provide a simple way to set an action plan to achieve whatever resolution, intention, or goal we may have.

Here’s an example: one of my intentions for this year is to create a plan for publishing a book on standards in the next 2-4 years.

The standards I’ve set to help me get to this plan include:

1. maintain a digital journal of standards I observe, experience, and hear about

2. on my calendar, block out two hours for writing three days a week (this includes weekends)

3. actually write during those time blocks ;-)

4. organize a network of people I know who can help through their shared experiences and contacts (published authors, ghostwriters, others in the publishing industry)

The items above are things I plan to do on an ongoing basis to help me fulfill my intention of creating a plan to publish a book; they’re not about the present or the future. Each of the four is a means to an end. Put another way, they’re not goals but actions I plan to take towards my goal. None of them are simple actions or tasks that I can check off…they’re standards I must meet on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to move towards my intention.

Each of the four items meets that definition of a standard: “a level of quality, achievement, etc., that is considered acceptable or desirable; something established as a model or measure of quality.”

Here’s another example: many people resolve or intend to eat healthier. The following could be standards they set to do that:

1. eat beans, legumes, and plant-based proteins rather than animal proteins and meat products

2. plan, prepare, and cook meals in advance

3. avoid buying packaged foods

4. eat fruits and vegetables for snacks

5. cut back on or stop drinking alcohol

Again, none of these are tasks that can be checked off one time. They are ongoing standards that must be met in order to fulfill the intention of eating healthier: levels of quality, achievement, etc., that are acceptable or desirable.

So go back to your resolutions, goals, or intentions and see if you have action items you were planning to execute.

If so, are they simple tasks you can check off, like joining a gym or buying hiking boots? Or are they ongoing standards that will actually move you towards successful completion, like going to the gym every other day or hiking a new trail once a week?

If you don’t already have action items to support your resolutions or goals or intentions, then try to come up with at least three standards to help you move towards them.

And if you struggle to come up with such standards, drop a comment below and I’ll be happy to help.

In my response to him, I mentioned that I briefly addressed these questions on my Substack about page. Here’s an excerpt:

In my experience, I’ve discovered that having expectations in life and work were the biggest obstacle to my joy, happiness, fulfillment, meaning, and however I defined “success.”

Over time, I learned that this obstacle could be removed entirely by having a standards mindset, both in life and at work.

My passion for this idea began in 2013 when I started my company. It has been the single biggest driver of our survival, growth, effectiveness, productivity, and profitability.

In 2016, I began applying standards to my life. It has since become the single biggest driver of my happiness, meaning, and fulfillment.

I then realized that, since my plan is to write a book someday on the standards mindset, it would help to think through my entire journey with standards for the book’s eventual opening. These two colliding forces - Adam’s email and the book - inspired me to write this article on my origin story.

WHEN IT ALL BEGAN

In 2012, I founded The Junto Institute, a company that would help startup founders rapidly build their leadership skills through a nine-month program. Junto’s curriculum integrated deep mentorship, personal tutoring, emotional intelligence training, and twelve classes (today, our service offering focuses exclusively on emotional intelligence coaching and training).

Along with my co-founder, Catherine, we launched the inaugural Junto program in early 2013, and on March 1, held the second of those 12 classes. The session was titled “Recruiting, Hiring and Managing,” and the instructor was Jay Goltz, a well-known and successful small business owner in Chicago.

I had watched Jay’s entrepreneurial journey from a distance for many years and had gotten to know him casually. While he was - and remains - charmingly opinionated and steadfast in his beliefs, I was confident Jay’s shared experiences would be highly valuable for our clients. In our prep meetings, my confidence was rewarded by the many stories and principles Jay said he wanted to share.

Much of what took place at that time is easy to recall: I still have the emails we exchanged, his outline for the class, and our team’s notes from the session itself. Furthermore, the class is etched in my memory for the emotional resonance it had, both personally and professionally. One part of that resonance was how Jay opened the section on “managing people.”

He shared his belief that a company’s culture is based on expectations and standards. As he relayed the many dimensions of leading an organization - how far you go for customers, what you expect from employees, how they treat each other, how much money you want to make, etc. - he emphasized that it was all based on the expectations and standards the leaders have.

He then returned to his own experience and said in what could be referred to as a mic-drop moment, “I learned to lower my expectations and raise my standards.”

As a result, Jay said his job as owner and CEO got easier, and that “the business runs itself, the payoff is worth it, and the joy of success will far outweigh the bitterness of the nasty things we have to do as bosses.”

STANDARDS AND MY PROFESSIONAL LIFE

As Jay finished that portion of the class, my mind was blown. I started thinking about my own roles as a leader, partner, parent, and friend. I started realizing that so many of my frustrations and disappointments were because of expectations I had in those relationships. And I started imagining how different that might be if I lowered my expectations and raised my standards.

After the class, Catherine and I went to lunch to debrief. One of the points I kept bringing up was Jay talking about expectations and standards, and how I wanted to use the idea for Junto’s operation. From what I recall, it got to the point where I said, “Forget about lowering expectations and raising standards. I want us to have only standards and no expectations.”

Fortunately, Catherine bought into the idea, and from that day forward, we started setting standards across our operation and using the language consistently in our conversations. Over time, I’m confident that it was the reason why The Junto Institute became so efficient, consistent, and predictable, especially for a small business that had just been launched.

Within a couple years, the word “standards” was in our core values. The idea influenced our recruiting and hiring. All the documentation Catherine created for our systems and processes were based on standards. And the language became central to Junto’s culture. Over time, people new to our community started telling me that we seemed to be a much bigger business than we really were. Looking back, I believe it was because we adopted this remarkable idea.

STANDARDS AND MY PERSONAL LIFE

For the purposes of this article, I dug into my journal entries from 2013 on. Fortunately, most of my journal is in digital form so I could do a keyword search. The earliest mention of the word “standards” is from September 16, 2014 when I wrote that I have “changed personal standards of people in my life.”

The next mentions of “standards” come in 2016 when I was experiencing significant personal growth and wrote about how I wanted to start setting standards across other parts of my life such as my daily routine, my physical and mental and emotional health, and my time outside of work.

Over the next few years, I implemented standards related to all these areas and started noticing that I was feeling happier despite two significant challenges: the decline of my marriage and the departure of my co-founder. Based on journal entries and my memory, I did feel negative emotions such as frustration, sadness, disappointment, annoyance, and anger.

But during that period from 2016-2019, I started experiencing greater fulfillment, meaning, and joy (I even began saying what became a daily mantra - “I’m happier today than I was yesterday”). That’s because I used the experiences of losing my life and work partners as springboards to replace my expectations with standards.

THE ACCELERATION

In early 2021, I made a decision that rapidly made standards a bigger and bigger part of my life. Up to that point, virtually all my conversations on the topic were with individuals or in small groups. And in almost every case, the response was positive.

With that trend came increasing confidence that there was something worth sharing more widely. So I decided to start presenting on the topic of expectations and standards to Junto clients. At the time, our service offering was live e-learning sessions for our client’s employees, usually with speakers who were seasoned executives and subject-matter experts. We called these sessions “roundtables.”

I decided to lead a roundtable myself on “Lowering Expectations and Raising Standards,” and 15 people signed up for the first one on May 25, 2021. The poll results were positive enough to repeat the session, and for the next two-plus years, I held the same roundtable on a quarterly basis for our clients.

Since I was not only thinking and speaking on the topic of standards during this period but getting positive feedback from those who attended the roundtables, I began to implement standards across every part of my life and work. I started talking about them with anyone who would listen. I started using the word when I discussed restaurant menus, traffic patterns, generational differences, political parties and candidates, sports teams, and so on.

And in late 2021, I decided that I would someday write a book on the topic.

AN INSPIRING CONVERSATION

I had been toying with the idea for some time, and realized there was someone in my life whose opinion would give me the clarity I was seeking. I scheduled a call for December 2, 2021 with a dear friend of mine named Jeff with whom I have had a decades-long mutual mentoring relationship.

I wanted to get his thoughts on the idea of standards and the idea of writing a book, especially since he himself has published one and knows many authors as well. During our conversation, Jeff uttered two simple things that deeply inspired me.

The first was, “This is original thought leadership.” And the second was, “There’s a gospel to it.”

Those lines gave me the confidence that the idea of standards needed to be shared. Those lines gave me the motivation to take Jay Goltz’s experience to an entirely different level. And those lines gave me the inspiration to start this very newsletter…which someday is going to turn into a book.

There are parents who design process for their children to follow, like making their beds, keeping their rooms clean, doing their homework, and helping with house chores. Those same parents often follow process in the kitchen, from dinner and baking recipes, to loading the dishwasher, to organizing the pantry. And many of those parents then teach their kids to follow those processes.

There are leaders who build process to follow for employees, vendors, customers, volunteers, managers, and supervisors. Managers must hire people effectively, bookkeepers must stay on track with finances, customers must know how to use the product or service, employees must know how to do their assigned work, and volunteers must know how to fulfill their roles.

There are writers, influencers, speakers, and artists who find that process helps them with their creative endeavors. They build outlines or sketches or experiments; try to discover the right days and times to do certain types of work; experiment with physical settings where their creativity flourishes; find prompts to begin the creative process; use software and spreadsheets to organize their ideas; turn to AI to do the mundane work; and rely on proven strategies to overcome obstacles like writer’s block when their creativity is stalled.

THE PROBLEM WITH PROCESS

I’ve been in the shoes of all three groups described, and have come to believe that a fundamental pain these responsible parties have is the lack of a standard to structure these processes. That’s what often drives a number of questions.

Where do you start? How general or specific do you make the process? How do you communicate them to others so they can follow them easily? How do you create a flexible process that allows for experimentation and iteration? How do you keep it simple yet capture the complexity that almost all process has?

Beyond these issues, the challenge for all process-setters is spending less time on the process itself so they, and others, can spend more on the actual work. And I believe that the simplest way to answer the above questions and make the best use of everyone’s time is by setting a standard and following it. One that is a process in itself.

The benefit of solving this problem with a standard is that it makes everyone’s job easier: the party who is responsible for building process and the party who is responsible for following it. And the benefits go further. 

By setting such a standard, those responsible for building process then have a way to replicate the process-building process. In other words, by solving this problem, they create a replicable starting point that virtually anyone can follow. The standard itself becomes a virtuous cycle.

LEARNING FROM PIZZA

Years ago, I learned of a ridiculously simple standard to solve this problem. And it was at a pizza joint.

When I started my company, The Junto Institute, I was fortunate to be introduced to a man who changed my life and ultimately transformed our business. His name is Nick Sarillo, and he is the owner of Nick’s Pizza & Pub, a two-location restaurant in the far suburbs of Chicago.

When Nick invited me to visit one of his restaurants for the first time, I was blown away. As I pulled into the parking lot, I couldn’t believe that it was a 9,000+ square foot building…something I later started calling a “cathedral to pizza.”

After some small talk, Nick took me on a tour. He walked me through virtually every square foot: the waiting area, bar, lower-level dining room, upper-level loft dining space, kitchen, server galley, carryout counter, storage space, team meeting space, and offices. Nick also gave me a “tour” of how he and his team ran the business, and emphasized how the latter ran most of it, not him.

That’s because he had not only set a simple standard but, most importantly, implemented it across the board. I was so taken by the way in which Nick set up his business and its operations (I subsequently learned this was due to his collaboration with The Miick Companies) that I decided soon after that we would take Junto members on a field trip each year to Nick’s Pizza & Pub so they could learn about how to systemize operations. After all, everyones “gets” restaurants and pizza, and I believed it could help companies in any industry apply lessons learned in a simple way.

ART AND SCIENCE

The standard that was behind all the systems and processes at Nick’s Pizza & Pub included how they made pizzas (more to come on that), trained staff, made financial decisions, greeted customers, addressed difficult conversations, and so much more.

This standard is a tool known as “art and science,” and was an outcome of a longtime consulting relationship that Nick’s Pizza & Pub had with The Miick Companies (the latter holds a copyright and trademark for The Art and Science of Service and The Art and Science of Production).

This is how art and science was applied at Nick’s:

The science refers to the steps that everyone must follow for a particular process. These are non-negotiables…standards in their own right. One example was the process for greeting people as they walk in the door. 

From what I recall, the science included steps like the following:

1. Eye contact

2. Smile

3. Verbal greeting

4. Mention of Nick’s Pizza

5. Ask what they want

6. Respond

The art refers to those steps that allow for personal freedom, creativity, and expression to fulfill the science. For example, making eye contact and smiling at someone are pretty straightforward and leave little room for personal creativity.

But when it comes to a verbal greeting, a mention of the restaurant’s name, and asking what the people want, an employee has freedom to fulfill that step with their own style and preferences. For example, they can say any of the following:

• Welcome to Nick’s Pizza! How may I help you?

• Good evening, thank you for coming to Nick’s Pizza. Are you dining in, taking out, or something else?

• Hi there, thanks for joining us at Nick’s Pizza, what can I help you with?

As you can see, each of these fulfills science steps 3-5: verbal greeting, mention of Nick’s Pizza, ask what they want. But each example integrates different words, and perhaps tone of voice, that reflect an individual’s personal creativity.

This simple formula for developing a standard for others - art and science - was so impactful for our clients at The Junto Institute that one of them even referred to it during his graduation speech: “What I remember the most from Junto is that it takes 55 pieces of equally-spaced, nickel-sized sausage for a large pizza at Nick Sarillo’s restaurant.”

Our client was referring to the art and science that Nick’s used in the kitchen. When we took our participants there for a class on building a systematic operation, they learned that there was a standard number of toppings to be placed on each size of pizza, and that they had to be spaced in a certain way. That was the science.

If I recall correctly, though, Nick made clear that the pizza-maker had freedom to choose which direction to lay out the toppings and at what pace. That was the art.

And this model applied to everything in the company’s operation. It was so impactful for our own team that we decided to adopt the same approach for executing our leadership development program, a far less tangible and physical offering than pizza, yet one that benefited just the same.

SIMPLICITY AND BEAUTY

The beauty of “art and science” is that it’s a simple, intuitive, and flexible way to set standards for other people, especially when it comes to process.

Whether it’s showing children how to clean their room and make their bed, helping a customer understand how to use a product or service, or training an employee how to perform parts of their job, “art and science” can be used.

Of course, the same applies with ourselves. I have used “art and science” for my morning routine. There are so many things I like to do in the morning that I can’t do them all. So I’ve organized them into categories:

• Reading/writing: book, Substack, journaling, standards articles

• Reflection: meditation, hike/walk, journaling, spiritual reading

• Movement: strength training, yoga, cycling, hike, walk

• Learning: non-fiction reading, Substack

The four categories are my “science,” non-negotiable areas that I commit to doing every morning. The various options are my “art,” allowing me to have freedom to choose what I feel like that particular morning. I have this list in my note-taking app so that my own process for executing my morning routine requires little thought. It’s simple, intuitive, and flexible.

YOUR TURN

Give it a shot. Think about a real process that is relevant to your life or your work. Keep it simple, something that might only involve a handful of steps.

What are the non-negotiable steps or the science? Can you use single words or short phrases? Then, what is the art? Where do you have opportunities for personal freedom, creativity, and expression?

I’d love to hear what this process feels like for you when you try it. And if you have fun with it, treat yourself to a slice of pizza, and send your gratitude to my friends, Nick Sarillo and Rudy Miick, for not just the experience but the idea.

Before Covid hit, our business was based in Chicago and all our sessions were held in-person. Like many companies, we went fully virtual after 2020. On the personal side, I decided to live a nomadic life so I could literally take my work with me. But one of the serious costs of that transition was not being able to see and be with all those “amazing” humans.

I use that word because I mean it. It was a word that many in our community also used back in the day. If they didn’t, they’d use good or wonderful or incredible or special. The sentiment was shared across the community and, after last week’s happy hour, it also came to life in the comments section of my LinkedIn post about the event.

And so the event alone inspired a yearning for that vibe as part of my daily life today. Put another way, I realized that “amazing people” was a standard I wanted to set. Sure, I had access to many such folks in the Chicago area but the problem was that they lived there and I didn’t.

I recently decided to make Boulder, Colorado my new home and since doing so, I’ve been trying to build a new community both socially and professionally. But the happy hour - and those subsequent comments - have given me not just the inspiration and fuel to make it happen but also the formula: to set standards for this new community I want to build.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

The question I was facing was how do you find, vet, and build relationships with good, amazing, wonderful, incredible, or special people? What distinguishes them from everyone else?

To my pleasant surprise, I recognized that I already had many such standards because my co-founder and I used them years ago in building what became the Junto community. The only difference was that I wasn’t conscious of the fact that I had these standards nor was I using that language.

So I spent a few days after the happy hour reflecting on what our team used to talk about when it came to clients, mentors and instructors, and participants. I even had a phone call with my co-founder a couple days ago to get her insights.

What were the attributes we were looking for? How did we vet them to ensure they were a good fit? How did we want to treat them? How did we want them to treat us and each other?

STANDARDS FOR AMAZING PEOPLE

I was able to come up with 11 such standards, some that were explicit, others that weren’t. And I know that there may be another 11 or more that I uncover with time. But for now, here are the ones I’ve recognized and will be using for my new community-building efforts, both socially and professionally:

1. Two degrees. This was possibly the most important standard I set from the time I envisioned what The Junto Institute could be. I believe that every single person in our community was either a first degree connection of mine, or a second degree connection introduced by someone I knew. From the get-go, the idea of a potentially “amazing” person was covered by this. We all know that word-of-mouth and referrals are the best way to not only build a business but also to build new relationships. This is one that I’m going to lean into in a hard way going forward.

2. “Ya gotta wanna.” This was a mantra my co-founder and I used to say when it came to seeking clients. We had a robust, intensive leadership development program built on the foundation of learning emotional intelligence. I concluded early on that we couldn’t focus on trying to sell it but rather finding people who wanted to buy it. Potential clients had to want to grow as leaders and humans. Interestingly, it also applied to our mentors and instructors. Those who showed a motivation to help, show up, and give back had the “gotta wanna.” This might be the second most important standard I’m going to set for my new community.

3. Follow standards. We started The Junto Institute with operational standards for our program, and each year, we added to them. In our second year, someone from the team was in every session that was held. Therefore, we could personally witness how well a community member followed those standards. Examples included: everyone speaks once before anyone speaks twice; silence/put away phones; share experiences rather than give advice; start on time, end on time; use “I” statements rather than “you” statements. If someone struggled with following these standards (ie: consistently “should”ing on others or showing up late or checking their phone), we had to intervene and remind them of the standards and, if the behavior continued, they simply weren’t invited back.

4. Can commit. This comes early in a relationship and, for our business, it was another essential. We ran an intensive, long-term program that required specific hours which we knew in advance. There were a number of people we passed on and who passed on us simply because they couldn’t commit. Today, I find myself following this standard by asking both social and professional connections if they have mutual interest in getting to know one another. If there’s any hesitation in their response, I see that as a possible inability to commit, knowing that some people can be surprised by such a question.

5. Showing up. Needless to say, this is another essential, and is the execution of “can commit.” We struggled with a handful of Junto community members who made the commitment but then couldn’t keep it. And either they voluntarily withdrew or we didn’t continue the relationship. I continue to live to this standard: if someone doesn’t show up, literally, and I don’t hear from them with a request to reschedule, it’s likely not going to be a relationship I want to pursue. My time is just as valuable to me as theirs is to them.

6. Relevant experience. Our former Junto program was targeted to founders and executives of early-stage companies, often first-time leaders. Therefore, we set a standard early on that mentors and instructors must have significant operating experience…seasoned executives who had walked in the shoes of our clients. In fact, in our first year, we went through every one of their LinkedIn profiles to see when they started their careers and/or graduated college. We realized that the “least seasoned” executive had 15 years of experience. From that moment on, that became a standard. And it gave us the ability to say that every one of our mentors and instructors had “been there, done that.”

   

7. Sees the win/win. The healthiest relationships go both ways: each party gives something of value and each party gets something of value. Back in the day, we looked for people who understood this. For Junto mentors and instructors, they knew that they were giving their time and wisdom. But those who valued that they were getting access to a network, an opportunity to learn from others, and the “feel good” that comes with giving back were the ones we wanted to keep.

8. Relational vs. transactional. This goes in line with win/win but is a bit more nuanced. When we sensed that a potential community member was explicitly seeking something transactional in return for their contribution, it was a warning sign. This occurred mostly with mentors and instructors and, in a bit of a surprise the first time it happened, it also occurred with a couple of our clients. Beyond the value they were receiving through our program in exchange for our fees, I learned that some were using Junto explicitly to generate business. And when I further heard how that made other community members feel, I realized these clients weren’t the right fit for us. Instead, we embraced those people and companies where it was evident that they saw value in the relationships, not only with us but others in the community.

9. Mutual appreciation. This standard emerged as our relationships developed over time. Just like best friends or romantic partners tend to appreciate one another for a variety of reasons, we did the same with virtually all our community members. Through the course of our program, and during three special events we held each year, our team expressed its appreciation and regard for them. But when some people went out of their way to express their regard for our business and people, we paid special attention and, candidly, were biased towards keeping them in the community.

   

10. Emotional resonance/enthusiasm. This is an extension of mutual regard. We were very careful in vetting our community members, and were proud to share who they were. We trumpeted them at our events, in our newsletters, on social media, and in our sessions. And when they told us that it was an “honor” to be “picked” for the community (even some clients!) we could sense an emotional resonance that went both ways. Truth be told, when this happened we went the extra mile with those relationships. This enthusiasm was another dynamic I felt at the happy hour; so many people told me how much they missed regular Junto sessions and events, that they remain proud of their affiliation with us, or that they look forward to these occasional gatherings.

11. Ability to listen and ask questions. This is huge in an educational program that is based on mentorship and, I believe, for any healthy relationship. It was one of the ways I personally vetted most of our mentors and instructors. If, during our initial prospecting conversations, I got a sense that the candidate struggled with listening, it was a red flag. Taking this one step further, I learned first-hand that the ones who asked the most questions were the best listeners. I know…a shocker. Today, this is a standard I have for virtually anyone I meet, personally or professionally. If there isn’t a fairly equal exchange of questions asked and a capacity to demonstrate active listening, it’s likely not a relationship worth pursuing for me.

Ultimately, what all these standards required was a great deal of hard work from our team. Our integrity was tested at times because we needed someone who could fit a particular niche we were seeking, or that we were short a certain number of mentors/instructors, or that we had access to someone with a high profile that could raise the visibility of our program.

Truth be told, we occasionally stumbled and invited such people into the community even though they demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to meet at least one of our standards. And in virtually every case, as you might imagine, we learned our lesson: we could not compromise our standards.

GOING FORWARD

I’m going to continue this exercise of setting standards for my new community in Colorado. While I’m inspired by the ones above, it’s important that I keep my heart and mind open to new standards that I’m not aware of or weren’t relevant in the past. After all, it’s a very different world we’re living in today. My business is very different than it was back then. I’m a different person, as are most people. And I have far more clarity than ever before.

Therefore, I’d love to hear any community standards you or your organization have, are experienced with from your past, plan to set in the future, or recommend for others…including me.

The title of my talk was “Leading with Standards,” with the following main points:

1. why standards are healthier than expectations

2. three key distinctions between expectations and standards

3. where leaders can easily begin setting standards in their organizations

Between the audience engagement and feedback I received after the talk, I learned a few valuable lessons.

YES, WORDS MATTER

After the conference ended, the closing keynote speaker (who was amazing) approached me and said he appreciated how intentional I was with my words. He told me that he could pick up the fact that I strategically chose certain words to make certain points, and that he further appreciated that I repeated those words over and over (on a side note, what he did was a master class in how to deliver an appreciation, a standard I will write about someday).

The point of his appreciation was spot on.

In preparing for the talk, I used the articles linked above as core content but I also significantly edited the language to try being crisp, concise, and more explanatory. One reason was that it helped me stay focused since I often insert extemporaneous thoughts while speaking.

A second reason was that I was concerned how my main ideas would come across verbally compared to in writing. The written word allows us to re-read anything that confuses us, resonates with us, or that we missed due to a distraction. Real-time listening, in a large audience, is different. We can’t “re-listen” to what we heard (or thought we heard) and most people are too polite, professional, or courteous to interrupt a speaker to explain/repeat something that was said.

A final reason that I was very careful with the words and language I used is because part of me still believes that a lot of people just don’t get the whole standards thing (more on that shortly). As a result, I weaved in a lot of examples and also asked the audience at different points to share expectations they have or what might be standards.

Ultimately, my most important takeaway was that choosing my words very carefully in a live speaking session does indeed matter; it helped reinforce this belief, one that I have previously written about.

As a former professor, current corporate trainer, and long-time public speaker, I’ve delivered thousands of talks and presentations in my career. I don’t believe I have ever paid so much attention to the specific words I used in a prepared talk. And I believe it paid off.

PEOPLE GOT IT (I THINK ;-)

At a few moments during my talk, I stopped and asked if I was being clear. I did not ask if my content “made sense.” This is a rather new standard I began using during the many Zoom sessions I led through the pandemic to learn whether people could understand what I was sharing.

An aside to explain that:

For many years, like other speakers, I used to ask half-heartedly, “Does this/that make sense?” Then, I realized that everyone has a different way of something “making sense,” and that it’s out of my control. What is in my control is whether or not I’m being clear with my message. It takes the pressure off the listener/receiver, and puts the pressure on the speaker/presenter.

As a result, during my talk last week, I asked “Is this coming across clearly?” or “Am I being clear?” While only 30-50% of the audience likely nodded their heads, gave a thumbs up, or verbally responded, no one responded that I wasn’t being clear.

What mattered more was the feedback I got immediately after my talk and then during a happy hour later that afternoon. In those 8-10 conversations, people either proactively told me they loved the idea of standards and it made sense to them (!) or I asked them if they understood the key distinctions of leading a life and team with standards vs. having expectations. Every person answered affirmatively.

Of course, I have no idea how everyone else felt about my clarity or whether they understood my main points. So I have to leave open the possibility that there’s still plenty of work to be done. After all, it was my first big talk.

IT WAS FUN!

This might be the most important lesson I learned. Not only was it fun crafting the talk, I really enjoyed sharing the idea of standards with so many people. And, after all, if we’re not having fun when sharing a passion, what’s the point?

One of the main drivers of my fun was that, just before I went onstage, a couple of the sponsors who gave plugs for their companies used the word “standard” or “standards” by coincidence. Furthermore, my good friend Kris Krisco (holding cocktail in earlier photo) did a workshop immediately following my talk and referenced the idea of standards a couple times.

This lesson has inspired me to more actively pursue speaking engagements on the topic of living and leading with standards. I’ve recognized that, in addition to the love I have for consistently writing about standards, I will probably love consistently speaking about it as well (as I’ve done with my other professional passion, emotionally intelligent leadership).

And finally, just outside the hotel where I was staying was a mural, with the phrase “Vida Abundante,” Spanish for “abundant life.” I’ve used the word “abundant” a number of times in recent years with friends and family to describe my life at this stage. But seeing that phrase beautifully painted on a wall as part of a beautiful work of art, close to my hotel, in a city where I was invited to do something for the very first time, was deeply inspiring and took my fun to an entirely different level.

This newsletter has a new name: The Standards Mindset

One of the most important words I’ve learned in recent years is eudaimonia (yoo duh MOH nee uh), a Greek word that effectively means human flourishing or prosperity. It refers to the highest human good, drives fulfillment and meaning, and involves the pursuit of personal flourishing.

Its counterpart (not an opposite or antonym) is a word we’re much more familiar with, hedonia, which is about pursuing and maximizing pleasure while avoiding and minimizing pain. We use it in the form of hedonist to describe people who pursue pleasure, or hedonism which is the belief in pursuing it.

The reason I found the word eudaimonia so important, especially in contrast with hedonia, is because it resonates with me personally and professionally.

It sheds light on how I spend my time, which relationships are most important to me, why I have spent most of my career in learning and education, and much more. It also stimulated a lot of thinking and reflection for me on how the two concepts relate to the world of business and the people in my life, and whether it can be considered a standard in my life.

THE WORLD OF BUSINESS

I’ve always enjoyed my business career yet had varied feelings of moral conflict along the way.

In my opinion, most of business is about hedonia, the pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance of pain. There is the drive to “crush” the competition, the celebration of closing deals and landing big customers, the focus on managing risk, the awe of hyper-growth startups and, of course, the unadulterated joy of making money from profits or big exits. In fact, one can make the argument that hedonism and capitalism are interconnected.

These dynamics are a major reason why I have felt that so much of the business world is soulless. They’re a reason why I left the corporate world early in my career and instead pursued the entrepreneurship world. Despite earning an MBA along the way, and then spending 14 years teaching at an accredited business school, those dynamics are also a reason I became cynical of such degrees.

But in recent years, we’ve witnessed the rise of social ventures and “conscious capitalism,” the importance of culture and core values, the adoption of vision and mission statements, the discussion of purpose, and the presence of “triple bottom-line” companies.

Diversity is valued not just for compliance purposes but to enrich the workplace and decision-making processes. More startups and established companies are incorporating mindfulness and yoga at work. Large companies are increasingly judged on their social consciousness. Emotional intelligence is valued in employees more than cognitive intelligence. What used to be “VP of Human Resources” is now “Chief People Officer.” And what used to be “training” is now “learning and development.”

I’m not a business historian but I’m curious if eudaimonia is increasingly becoming a part of industry and commerce. It’s perfectly normal now to discuss the pursuit of flourishing and meaning in business in addition to the pursuit of market dominance, profits, and fast growth. The latter are necessary in a capitalist, free-market economy that provides the ability to pursue and create wealth with little government intervention. But it doesn’t have to be done without attention to humanity and soul.

THE PEOPLE IN MY LIFE

Along similar lines, I’ve noticed that the relationships I value most tend to be with people who show signs of eudaimonia more frequently than hedonia.

I often become friends with people I work with, including clients, given the type of work I’ve done in my career. Things like education, executive coaching, personal growth, learning and development, and emotional intelligence obviously draw people who are more inclined to pursue meaning and flourishing in their work and lives.

Despite the fact that I’ve spent a lot of time with financially “successful” entrepreneurs and executives, the ones whose company I really enjoy are those who are comfortable engaging in conversations that go beyond where they travel, what cars and toys they’ve bought, how big their homes (and second/third ones) are, and how much they’ve spent on art or collectibles.

As a classic introvert, I’ve always preferred a weekend away with one or two friends where we can spend hours getting to know one another and think together, as opposed to a guy’s trip full of partying, boondoggling, and really late nights. With friends and family, I’d much rather cook a “nice dinner” for them rather than going out to a “nice restaurant.”

CAN ONE BE A STANDARD?

I don’t believe that either hedonia or eudaimonia is better or worse, simply that the contrast has helped identify what I prioritize and how I spend my time, money, and energy. Put another way, it’s helped drive some contemplation for me and lots of conversation with others.

And while one may not be better or worse, I recently began wondering if one or the other can be considered one of our standards? Can either hedonia or eudaimonia help explain our lifestyle, way of living, and approach to life? Could it be a simple way to articulate how we prioritize our time, money, and energy?

Truth be told, I believe that most of us lean one way or another but that we also engage in the counterpart.

For example, I do many things for the pursuit of pleasure and which might be viewed as hedonistic. I’m comfortable buying great concert seats for what others might consider excessive sums of money regardless of their financial ability. At those concerts, despite how much I spent on the tickets, I’m comfortable buying an excessively priced band shirt.

I will hike for hours just to reach a gorgeous alpine lake. And then hike more to reach another. I love to slowly sip and savor a glass of really good Scotch. And I’ve decided I want to see all four Grand Slam tournaments in person (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and U.S. Open).

I’m perfectly comfortable with, and embrace, these decisions and desires. They feed my soul in a very different way - by providing pleasure - than other parts of my life. Therefore, I don’t feel guilty or ashamed, and never regret any of them.

But if a standard is “something set up and established by authority as a rule for the measure of quantity, weight, extent, value, or quality,” how far away can we veer from one that influences our life in such a significant way as eudaimonia or hedonia? At what point is something a standard, and at what point is it not?

I’d love to hear your response to this larger question, and especially within the context of eudaimonia and hedonia for your life.

Like most interactions and conversations, the ones I have cover a lot of ground. We can be talking about family, work, emotional intelligence, life partners, baseball, the outdoors, personal growth, iced coffee, or live music. One way or another, something comes up whereby the other person expresses a negative emotion about something: disappointment, frustration, annoyance, anger, etc. And that becomes an opportunity to bring up the differences between standards and expectations.

Sometimes the other person barely responds. And other times, they get intrigued. We have a lengthier exchange, I wax poetic about my passion for standards, we discuss a variety of contexts and examples, and it becomes a vibrant, stimulating discussion (truth be told: many ideas I get for this newsletter come from these moments).

What’s coolest of all is when I later hear them casually use the language of “standards” in a conversation, text message, or email. It’s not a common thing in my life yet but it’s happening with greater frequency, and it’s opening my eyes.

What I’m discovering is that people who start using the language or, better yet, actually start setting standards in their life are building a standards mindset. And, of course, it’s something I know very well because I’ve increasingly adopted one over the past 10+ years.

WHAT IS A STANDARDS MINDSET?

A standards mindset is a way of thinking, a way of looking at the world, a way of seeing how life can be a little easier and satisfying through the use of standards.

It’s comparable to a family mindset, in which some people put an extremely high emphasis on their family, treat friends like family, and identify with all things family-related. They spend most of their free time with family, perhaps work with family, say their best friends are family members, etc. The standards mindset is comparable to a sports mindset, in which some people spend an inordinate amount of time thinking, reading, listening, and talking about sports. They use sports metaphors, join fantasy leagues, start conversations with people wearing team merchandise, etc.

As you can see, the standards mindset isn’t about having high standards or even “higher” standards than the next person. The standards mindset is thinking about, and living with, standards. Period.

That means that if you have one, you come up with standards when you’re starting a new practice: writing, exercise, yoga, mindfulness. Or when you’re trying to make improvements in your life, you’re setting a new bar for not what you want to achieve but how. Perhaps you’ve been eating well in recent years and now you decide you want to follow the Mediterranean diet or start intermittent fasting. Or you have a relationship that is on the rocks, and you suggest that you and your partner go to counseling. It could be that the relationship you’re in that was on the rocks is now healing because of counseling, and you suggest that you and your partner continue the process.

You have a standards mindset when you view everyday occurrences through the lens of how people do things: the way drivers navigate their vehicles and obey traffic signs, the way parents treat their children, the way the restaurant server takes your order. You notice when things don’t seem “right” as a result, and it’s because you sense that it might be because of a lack of standards or an inability to meet them.

The standards mindset develops when you realize you have non-negotiables: what you will tolerate and what you won’t, what you must do and what you can’t. Perhaps it’s acceptable when people use swear words in conversations with you but unacceptable when they use swear words directed at you. Perhaps you’re willing to forgive friends who are always late but won’t when they are a no-show. Perhaps you’re willing to take long road trips but not drive past a certain hour.

You have a standards mindset when you are proactive about relationships in your life. You don’t wait for friends and family to contact you but rather you reach out to them. You focus on creating time with them that is likely to deepen the relationship for both parties. You are comfortable initiating hard conversations because you know, if left unaddressed, the issues will likely fester and cause bigger problems down the road.

SYSTEM 1 AND SYSTEM 2

Like all mindsets, the one for standards is rooted in consciousness and awareness. And over time, with practice, the mindset becomes subconscious. How does this happen? Through the magic of what behavioral scientists call system 1 and system 2 thinking.

System 1 thinking is fast, automatic, intuitive, and can’t be turned off.

It’s a way of thinking and behaving that comes naturally to us and/or happens without any thought. An example is when you see the equation, 2 + 2 = __. You automatically know the answer. It’s intuitive and fast, you can’t turn it off. You learned it early in school, and it was wired in your brain cells through repetition and application.

Another example of system 1 thinking is a hobby that you learned years ago that you continue to practice or participate in. Whether it’s basketball, tennis, weaving, playing drums, or kayaking, you don’t need to think much about performing the basics of the activity. You know how to stitch the yarn into your desired piece, you know what arc and speed to shoot the basketball towards the net, or you know how to paddle with rhythm and consistency on the water. In each case, it’s fast, automatic, and intuitive. You can’t turn it off.

A final example is anytime you struggle with emotional regulation. If someone says something to you that triggers fear or anger, if something in the news upsets you, or if a loved one disappoints you because they didn’t meet an expectation of yours, those are all examples of system 1 thinking. Your reaction is fast, automatic, intuitive, and obviously emotional. You can’t turn it off.

In contrast, system 2 thinking requires thought. It’s slow, deliberate, logical, and must be turned on. You’re aware that you’re thinking.

System 2 thinking kicks in when you see the equation 117 + 389 = __. You likely don’t know the answer automatically and you realize you are thinking how to solve the equation through long addition and that you must “carry the one.”

System 2 gets used when you’re kayaking in open waters, suddenly the waves start increasing in size, and you think about how quickly and efficiently you must paddle to get to shore. It gets used when you’re playing basketball or tennis against better players and you must think about how you can compete with them with different moves on the court.

When it comes to emotional regulation, system 2 is when you’re at a gathering and you hear something upsetting and don’t want to create a scene so you pause to create space for yourself. Or when a loved one says something that shocks you, and you take some time to process what you heard and how to respond. Or when someone cuts in front of you in a line, and you notice they’re a parent with a child that’s giving them a hard time, and you decide to not say anything because it’ll make matters worse.

In other words, system 2 thinking is when you start building a mindset for something: how to paddle in unique situations, how to adjust your game, and how to respond in difficult settings. System 2 thinking must be turned on. It’s a conscious choice you make, often in the moment, to think differently about what’s in front of you and perhaps the action you will or will not take.

As a result, this conscious awareness of thinking is what I believe is necessary to start building a mindset for anything. And if you find that you already have a certain mindset - family, sports, creativity, humor - it’s probably because it’s subconscious and has become system 1 thinking for you.

BUILDING A STANDARDS MINDSET

If you currently talk about standards, consistently set them in various parts of your life, and view how things are done through such a lens, it’s system 1 thinking for you: fast, automatic, and can’t be turned off. You already have a standards mindset.

But if you don’t and are curious about starting to build one, as you might imagine, it’ll require system 2 thinking: slow, intentional, and deliberate thought.

Here are three different ways I believe you can begin the journey towards building a standards mindset:

1. When you’re out in the world, asking yourself what standards you observe, experience, and can imagine.

2. Discovering where you already have standards.

3. Thinking about expectations you have in your life that you would like to turn into standards.

As I’ve built a standards mindset over the years, I’ve concluded that it’s made my life more fulfilling and predictable. I feel more self-assured and confident, and find myself rarely experiencing negative emotions. Those are outcomes of not only adopting a standards mindset but living to them.

Whether you can relate to this because you also have such a mindset, or you’ve been gradually building one, or this is entirely new to you and you want to experiment with it, please share your experiences as time goes on in the comments section below.

I firmly believe that this is a secret to building a far more satisfying life, one day at a time, and would love to connect with those who can see that as well.

Since I first heard the term in the late 1990s, I’ve struggled to understand it. Isn’t work just one part of our life, like friends, family, hobbies, solitude, sleep, eating, and exercise? I’ve never heard someone say “family-life balance” or “exercise-life balance” or “sleep-life balance” (although most of us do wish we slept more).

I understand that, for many people, work is how they spend the bulk of their waking hours, and that there’s a constant struggle to devote adequate time to all those other parts of their life. I also understand that many people would rather not work if they had a choice and/or are doing it to financially support themselves and their family.

I know there are many people who are in a career/job that is highly demanding of their time, mental energy, and physical capacity. And, of course, there are those who must work weeknights and/or weekends because of family dynamics, personal needs, or career choice. Therefore, I understand why so many people use the word “balance” in the context of work and the rest of their life.

Even still, I wonder why “balance” emerged as the word of choice.

Personally, I’ve preferred the words “integration” or “harmony” since I consider work to be a part of our lives, even when it’s the biggest. But even then, I’ve struggled viscerally with the context of work’s place in my life.

THE EXPECTATIONS OF BALANCE

Interestingly, I believe part of the challenge people have with work-life balance is that they have expectations of others and of themselves. And if you’ve read any of my articles on expectations, then you know that I consider them to be unhealthy, dangerous, and cancerous.

In my experience, most expectations go unmet and, as a result, they provoke negative emotions like frustration, disappointment, aggravation, sadness, dismay, etc. And like most people, I don’t want to live with negative emotions. Very few people with whom I’ve shared this have disagreed, especially when it comes to expectations they have of others in their life. And that’s because our desire to see our expectations come to fruition are often outside of our control.

Well, I believe that work-life “balance” falls into that realm.

One of the reasons I’ve heard people complain about their lack of work-life balance is that their manager, team, or co-workers have an expectation of them to work certain hours, complete tasks by a certain time, etc. while they have an expectation of working different hours, prioritizing their own tasks, etc. Another reason I’ve heard is that some people have an expectation of themselves to be a “good” parent, partner, or friend and find that other life obligations (not always work) get in the way.

Ultimately, all these expectations stimulate negative emotions because they often go unmet. And fundamentally, that’s one of the reasons I believe “work-life balance” is an unhealthy term to use: it rarely, if ever, comes to fruition.

PROCESS VS. OUTCOME

There’s another way to look at this.

Many years ago, one of my good friends asked me if I’m a process-driven person or an outcome-driven person. Since I had never heard that comparison or personality trait before, I had to think about his question for a little bit. Soon after, I responded: I’m all about the process. For me, life and daily living is about the journey, the experience, the means, the steps, the path. This is in contrast to the outcome…the goal, the destination, the finish line, the objective, the end.

So when it comes to work in the context of life, the reason I struggle with words like balance, integration, and harmony is that they are all outcomes to me. And I believe the reason many people struggle with achieving those outcomes is that they haven’t found a process for doing so.

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

As a result, I propose to reframe work-life balance as work-life standards.

The beauty of this phrase is that it refers to process, and steps we can take to achieve the outcome of balance. The beauty of this phrase is that we take responsibility for not only setting those standards but also meeting them; they are in our control. The beauty of this phrase is that there are no expectations from others or of others.

What are examples of work-life standards? Here are several of mine:

• I don’t think about how many hours I work. I only think about what work I have to get done.

• Most days, I try to be done working by 2pm, at the latest 4pm, especially from spring through fall.

• On my calendar, my top priority (and only “must-do” item) is coaching and training sessions, ie: client delivery. The second priority is anything related to business development. Everything else is third priority (unless there is urgency like deadlines, taxes, etc.).

• Because so many people have access to my calendar, I frequently block out mornings so I have control of that time for creative and fulfilling work, exercise, and writing. I typically don’t hold meetings during these hours.

• I work on weekend mornings when I want and/or when I’m kept inside by poor weather.

• When friends or family visit the area during the week, I take off as much time as I can to be with them; the only thing on my calendar I will not, or cannot, change are those client delivery sessions.

• Because I want to become a better skier and don’t want to combat weekend crowds, I take Wednesdays off in the winter so I can hit the slopes. I do almost no work on those days, except an occasional call or emails in between skiing runs.

When I meet these standards, which is virtually every week, my work-life balance/integration/harmony happens. It’s automatic. I never fret, complain, or worry about how my time is being spent. Because I focus on the process, the outcome materializes.

CONTROLLING THE TIME

What I find interesting is that most people have standards for other parts of their life - family, friends, solitude, exercise, eating, etc.

We spend a specific amount of time with specific people in our life we consider important. We go on vacation each year, go away on special weekends, play certain games when we’re together, go to a ballgame on certain days, enjoy celebratory meals together. We call out-of-town friends and family on the same days or the same times.

Many of us have morning routines on weekdays and/or weekends. We drink a certain type of coffee or tea, and brew it the same way. We read the news or our latest book of choice. We shower and get dressed before or after breakfast, or maybe never shower in the morning. We journal, meditate, take a walk or do yoga.

Speaking of yoga, many of us have standards for exercise. We go to the gym on certain days or at certain times. We bicycle or run similar routes and distances. We play tennis or pickleball or golf with the same people at the same place.

When it comes to diet, we have preferred foods, restaurants, and recipes. Some of us eat three meals a day at specific times. Others eat certain meals with the same people.

You get the idea: virtually all of us have routines, habits, schedules, and requirements for the other areas that make up our life. They’re all standards. So why don’t we have as many for the one thing that makes up most of our waking hours, work?

Ah, yes, it’s because most of us are in control of our time outside of work but we’re not in control of our time during work, often because we work for someone else (full disclosure about all those standards I listed above for my work: I own my business and do have full control of my time).

People put meetings on our calendar, the company has a policy for putting in a certain number of hours or a target for billable hours, our team has set specific goals that each of us must help achieve, our boss tells us what work we should prioritize first, and so on. Sometimes those dynamics require us to start work earlier than normal, end later than normal, and in rare cases, require us to work on weekends. All of which disrupts that balance we so desperately want.

WHERE TO BEGIN

So if you like the idea of reframing work-life balance to work-life standards, where do you start? How can you focus more on the steps and process rather than the result and outcome?

Here are some ideas:

• adjusting work hours to align with how you work (when you like to do creative, analytical, operational, interaction-based work, etc.)

• adjusting work hours to other life priorities you may have (child/elder care, exercise, eating healthy, etc.)

• starting the day with a healthy breakfast and/or exercise, both of which are proven to help our ability to perform cognitive tasks, which is what “work” is all about

• carving out time during the workday for walks, snacks, naps, family/friend conversations, and other similar activities that restore and rejuvenate our brains so we can be more productive

• intentionally interacting with co-workers who give us energy and avoiding those who drain our energy

• closing Slack and other messaging platforms during certain hours, and telling people we’re doing so, to avoid distractions (how much of those communications actually contribute to our work getting done?)

• blocking out time on our calendar in advance to do our deepest work or create space for the most time-sensitive tasks

Sure, most of these are obvious and perhaps you have already tried implementing some. But how many have you set as actual standards for your working hours that you follow week after week? How far have you gone to exercise the greatest control of your time during the workday so that you can have more time outside your workday?

One last example to make the point of reframing work-life balance.

Regardless of which side you’re on when it comes to remote work, I believe that it’s never going to go away simply because too many people (including me) have set it as a work-life standard to help achieve work-life balance. And because many of us are enjoying that outcome, we have no interest in going back to the office on a full-time basis since we lose control of our time during the workday.

We started our jobs at the same time. We weren’t co-workers in the purest sense and neither of us reported to the other yet, technically, we were on the same team. We were on a lot of correspondence together and periodically attended the same meetings. Our individual work complemented one another’s to a certain degree and we often talked about different ways we might collaborate.

My colleague’s intellectual prowess, passion for their work, and playful nature all contributed to my desire to spend time with them. I welcomed them to meetings I held. I wanted to get coffee and have lunch with one another. I invited them to join me at a concert by one of my all-time favorite bands. And even though we didn’t hang out much outside of work, I probably would have called this person a friend.

As the years went by, however, things started to change.

I started experiencing passive-aggressive behavior and language in our 1:1 conversations. I increasingly felt like they were competing with me, comparing and contrasting how much better and more effective their work was. At times, I was even told by this person how I should do my job. And I still have emails from them that would likely cause leaders in the C-suite and HR departments to cringe, if not take disciplinary action.

When this person asked me to nominate them for a high-profile award, and I responded that I don’t do things like that at someone’s request but rather by my own accord, they said there are times we should put aside our principles (today, I would interpret that as standards!). And after I left that job, I learned that this person was actively campaigning for my role before I had even resigned.

As this pattern of behavior evolved, I concluded that I no longer wanted to be in relationship with this person and no longer considered them a friend. Fundamentally, the shift that I realized was that they were taking more energy from me than I was receiving from them.

THE STANDARD

This experience taught me the importance of drawing a line in the sand with relationships, the simplest and most important standard I now set when it comes to people in my life. And it can be articulated in a number of ways:

I build and maintain relationships with people…

1. from whom I get more energy than I give.

2. who charge my battery rather than deplete it.

3. with whom I feel more “blue sky” than “gray sky.”

4. who fill my bucket rather than empty it.

5. who breathe life into me rather than suck life out of me.

Of course, it’s one thing to set this standard, and another to actually meet it.

Through my work with emotional intelligence, I’ve learned that virtually everyone has relationships that take more energy that they give. In the case of my former colleague, it was fairly easy to let the relationship end (meeting my standard) because it was professional in nature and I moved on from our employer. However, most of us have such relationships with close friends and family members, and that’s where things get tricky, touchy, and tough. We know that sometimes we just can’t end the relationship.

For me, I’ve gradually learned how to meet this standard by limiting the frequency with which I interact and the length of time that I spend with the other person. The truth is that I have some people in my life whose company I do enjoy in small doses. I care about them, I want to hear about their life, and they make me laugh and smile. However, at a certain point in our interactions, I start feeling tapped out.

So rather than experiencing the reaction of wanting to end a conversation or leave the setting or simply hide (!), I go into the interaction knowing what my limit is. And then, as that time starts approaching, I deliberately find a way to bring the interaction to a close. And not once has the other person seen this coming.

Now, it’s important to recognize that every relationship has moments when our energy is taken up. As a father of two adult daughters, there were many times in their adolescent and teenage years when my energy was being depleted. But those occasions were fairly infrequent and short-term; the vast majority of the time, I got tremendous energy from each of them.

The same goes with co-workers, significant others, neighbors, family members, etc. Every one takes our energy, depletes our battery, and empties our bucket from time to time. The question we have to ask is, does this happen more often than not and is it a continuously one-sided affair?

TWO CHALLENGES

Over the years, I’ve learned that most people know about the giving/getting energy dynamic in relationships. However, I’ve also learned that very few people actually do something about it. Therefore, I have two challenges for you.

First, I encourage you to define what “energy” means to you and/or how it is generated for you.

For me, I derive energy from someone through inspiration, deep conversation, attentive listening, humor, common interests, shared values, thoughtful questions, and their vulnerability.

When I feel that someone wants to get to know me, wants me to get to know them, can stimulate my intellectual curiosity, cares about mutual connection, and is comfortable “going there,” I get energy. It doesn’t matter where and how this happens: on a hiking trail, over a meal, on a phone call, etc. I do know that it’s not going to happen at a movie, concert, or other crowded place where we can’t pay attention to each other.

Secondly, once you’ve defined “energy” for yourself, I encourage you to set the simple standard of building and maintaining relationships with people from whom you get more energy than you give. I know it’s a big undertaking so I further encourage you to start small in one of the following ways.

1. You can make a list of your friends, family members, and co-workers and rate them on the energy dynamic. Perhaps you simply label them as “give” or “get.” Or you can rate them on a scale of 0-10, zero being you get no energy and 10 being you get unlimited energy. And, of course, you can give them a grade based on the A-F system. Just this awareness is likely going to help you take the next steps in meeting the standard.

2. You can choose one relationship where you give more energy than you receive, and then set a limit on the frequency of interaction and/or length of time you spend with that person.

3. When building a new relationship, you can consistently ask yourself whether you’re getting more energy from that person than you’re giving.

***

I set this simple standard (giving/getting energy) for myself about seven years ago. In that time, I’ve let one longtime friendship come to an end and closely managed virtually all my interactions with friends, family members, and professional contacts. Perhaps most importantly, I only build new relationships with people from whom I get energy fairly quickly, knowing that they’re worth investing my time early on so that they become fruitful early on.

We all know that relationships are hard. They require a lot of time and effort to make them grow and flourish. But when they require more energy from our side than the other, it’s time for us to draw a line in the sand.

So what might you say to show your compassion? If you’re like most people, you’d likely ask them, “How are you doing?” or “How are you feeling?”

Both are standard questions we use to try to connect with someone we care about. And when we use such standard questions, we often get standard responses like the following:

• good

• not good

• fine

• amazing

• tired

• wiped out

• awesome

• OK

• terrible

• alright

• could be better/worse

• living the dream

The problem with these responses is that they don’t tell us much about how the other person is actually doing or feeling because they’re generic, ordinary, and humdrum. Sure, we may follow-up with “Why?” or “Tell me more” but in my experience, few people do.

I believe there’s a higher standard for a question that shows our compassion, connects deeper with someone we care about, and stimulates a more human interaction. That questions is, “What are you feeling?”

For some reason that perhaps a linguist could explain, the how questions often elicit a generic response like those listed above. But the what question is more likely to generate a specific response that aligns with one’s emotions.

Truth be told, most people may struggle with answering the what question and still offer a generic answer like “joy” or “sadness” or “anger.” And that’s where a second standard becomes powerful in our desire to be more compassionate, connected, and human: a catalog of emotions we can share with the other person to prompt them with the right language.

Here’s an example:

This is a tool called the Junto Emotion Wheel that I use in my work with emotional intelligence training (there are many similar emotion/feelings wheels out there).

In my experience, as well as that of hundreds of others I’ve interacted with, tools like this prompt people’s awareness and thinking to get more specific with how they’re actually feeling.

So the next time you want to connect with someone you care about, I invite you to try two new standards:

1. the question, “What are you feeling?”

2. a list of words that stimulate deeper awareness of their emotions

Yes, it may take some getting used to, take more time at the start of a conversation, and perhaps require at least one of you to move out of your comfort zone. But if you’re like me and many others I know, you’re likely to connect with your friends and family in a much deeper way.

As I was preparing to write this piece, I reflected on some of my friends and family, and their standards (yes, these are all real examples):

• a friend who always eats a cannabis edible before we go on a long hike

• another friend who insists on choosing restaurants based on Yelp reviews rather than Google reviews, news articles, or word-of-mouth

• a relative who takes his blood pressure every day upon waking up

• another relative who mailed me a birthday card every year from my 20s through my 40s

• a friend who has coffee at home every day except Fridays when she goes to the same coffee shop to order the same beverage

• and finally, my longtime friend who finishes his side dishes before starting his entrée

As you can probably tell, these are an outcome of each person’s preferences, habits, routines, etc….all things that you and I also have. That’s what led me to realize that the easiest place to start with setting standards is to simply think about, and possibly write down, your standards based on such categories, and many more. Here we go.

Preferences

Maybe you go out for pizza or sushi once a month. Perhaps you only get a burger when it’s cooked to order. Do you like to work with music in the background? Maybe you organize the apps on your phone in a certain way, maybe you don’t organize them at all. If you drink alcohol, what kinds of beer or wine do you enjoy the most? Do you prefer vacations at the beach or in the mountains? Your responses to these are standards.

Habits

The good habits we have are reflections of our standards. So are the bad ones. If you go to bed at the same time each night, and wake up at the same time each morning, you’ve set a standard. And if you don’t, you have as well. If you stay up late on weekends, it’s a standard. If you eat too much junk food (in your own opinion), that’s a standard. If you always check your bicycle’s tire pressure before going for a ride, that’s a standard.

Routines

If you have a morning routine (coffee/tea, exercise, skin care, watching the news), that’s a standard. If you stop at a certain coffee shop most days you go into work, that is also a standard. If you bike the same path every Saturday morning, yep, it’s a standard. If you have a glass of wine after coming home from work…you get the idea.

Checklists

Whether it’s your grocery staples, what to pack when you travel, how to follow that morning routine, or anything else you consistently refer to to make sure you haven’t missed anything or use as for reminders, those are standards you have.

Calendar

“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives,” said Annie Dillard.

Your digital calendar, daily planner, or wall calendar all contain standards for your life. Whose birthdays are on them? Which friends’ and family members’ names are on them? How much time do you devote to yourself vs. others? What things on your calendar reflect what you want to do vs. what you need to do?

Practices

What are the activities you perform on a regular basis that feed your well-being? Do you play tennis every week? Do you knit or crochet while watching television? Do you exercise after you end your work day? Are you writing a book, trying to make progress one day at a time? Are you studying a foreign language? All of these practices reflect a standard you’ve set.

Rituals

Perhaps you have Taco Tuesday at your house. Maybe you tailgate only with certain friends and family during football season. It could be that you go to the same restaurant only on your birthday. Or perhaps you take your birthday off every year. Once again, those rituals are your standards.

Boundaries

As much as I don’t like that word (a personal standard of mine), the limits you’ve set in your mind about relationships are standards: whether you will sit next to that aunt or uncle at Thanksgiving dinner; the words or language you won’t put up with; the friends or family members whose texts you will or won’t respond to; how much time you’ll spend at an after-work event if a certain person is also there.

As you can probably tell, you have a lot of sources for your standards.

And that’s because the way I look at it, our practices, routines, preferences, rituals, etc. are all standards. However, every standard we have isn’t necessarily all of those…I believe they tend to fit more neatly into specific categories.

Of course, you may be thinking that this is all semantics. If so, that might be a standard of yours. But I love definitions, pay close attention to distinctions between words, and quite often utter the phrase, “words matter.” In fact, all of those preferences and practices of mine honor the fact that, yes, it is all semantics.

Or put another way, honoring the semantics of language is a standard of mine.

Like many things, easier said than done.

Many of us were raised by parents who didn’t see everyone else as equal. Others succumbed to the influence of childhood (or perhaps early adulthood) friends who didn’t see everyone else as equal. Perhaps we had a harmful experience at some point in our lives that led to an unwillingness to see everyone else as equal.

Whatever the reason, I believe most people can gradually reverse or improve this trait so that it becomes a standard by which they interact with others.

Seeing Others as Un-Equals

Before I get to how we can do that, it’s useful to address the thorny issue of not seeing other people as equals. As we know, this can manifest in a number of ways, sometimes in benign fashion:

• “They wouldn’t have to panhandle if they just got a job.” (I have a job)

• “They’re just kids. What do they know?” (I’m not a kid)

• “He never finished college.” (I did)

• “All these damn transplants are ruining our town.” (I’m a native)

• “It’s scary seeing all those homeless people.” (I have an address)

• “She was raised in a broken home.” (I wasn’t)

Truth be told, there are facts implicit to each of these statements: people who may not be employed, have moved to a new town, don’t have a physical adddress, or whose parents are divorced. However, we usually don’t have all the facts and simply judge them as un-equals based on our initial or limited perception.

As a result, when we use statements such as those above, we define people by their challenge, their liability, or their deficit. And once that happens, it can be very hard to see them as equals, and see their humanity.

The Concept of Asset-Framing

Trabian Shorters is “the author and global authority on a cognitive tool called Asset-Framing”, a term that has gained traction and popularity in recent years amidst the backdrop of the corporate trend of (and debate over) diversity, equity, and inclusion training.

Here’s a brief video where he explains it in his words:

By focusing on someone’s aspirations and contributions, rather than their shortcomings and challenges, we’re able to find common ground. We see that they, too, have desires and ambitions like we do. We see that they, too, have hopes and dreams. We see that they’re more like us than we thought and, therefore, more equal.

The Impact on Emotional Intelligence

Shorters recently posted some thoughts on LinkedIn, in response to a follower’s post, which I believe adds further clarity to his cognitive tool.

His comments led me to realize that by changing how we see people, we can actually improve those emotional intelligence competencies I mentioned at the start: attention, empathy, and compassion.

Here’s how:

1. Asset-Framing is paying attention to a person’s aspirations and contributions in addition to their challenges.

2. Those challenges aren’t ignored. We still pay attention to them, only after the acknowledgement of their aspirations.

3. When defining that person, integrating language for their assets shapes our emotional response and initial impression of them, often in a more positive way.

4. We’re able to understand how they may think (cognitive empathy) and how they may feel (emotional empathy) because it’s likely that we also define ourselves by aspirations and contributions; we can relate to them.

5. The outcome is that we’re able to be more compassionate and take action on our empathy. What’s the action? Treating them as equals.

Setting the Standard

In my opinion, the standard worth setting here is judging people by what they may want rather than judging them by what they lack. Going back to some of the statements I used when we see people as un-equals:

• “have to panhandle” can become “stay nourished”

• “never finished college” can become “has other life priorities”

• “damn transplants” becomes “seeking a better life”

• “homeless” can become “safety and security”

Again, I acknowledge that this can be hard, especially when our neural circuits have been wired by past experiences. Reminding ourselves that most of us would like to be seen by others in a similar light can make this a bit easier. And as we know, anything that’s hard is probably worth doing.

It’s a book about an economist by an economist but – as you can tell by the title – it has nothing to do with economics.

Many people know Adam Smith as the father of capitalism because of the seminal book he published in 1776, The Wealth of Nations. But few people know that Smith was also a social philosopher, memorialized in his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which was published in 1759 when he was 36 years old. That book uncovers the human side of Smith, in which he addresses more philosophical and esoteric topics such as morality, happiness, respect, and the meaning of life.

Russ Roberts was so moved by reading Moral Sentiments that he decided to write his own book about it, interpreting Smith’s main ideas in the context of modern society. In particular, Roberts interprets the core message of Moral Sentiments as the following:

The chief part of human happiness arises from the consciousness of being beloved. For Smith, being loved is a natural result of being lovely. When Smith says that we want to be lovely, he means worthy of being loved.

And by “worthy”, according to Roberts’ interpretation, Adam Smith means having integrity, honesty, good principles, a good name, and a good reputation: virtues that most people aspire to achieving and practicing, and that are often mentioned as important elements of humanity and leadership.

Roberts continues:

When [Smith] says we want to be loved, he means paid attention to, liked, respected, honored. We want to matter. We want people to notice us, to think highly of us.

So then, the natural question is, how do we become worthy of being loved by being lovely? According to Roberts,

Smith has two answers for how to be lovely.

The first is a minimum standard, what Smith calls propriety…acting appropriately. And by appropriately, he means meeting the expectations of those around us – acting in the way that they expect and that allows them to interact with us in the way that we expect. When we conform to such expectations, we allow those around us to trust us. That trust allows us to share our emotions with each other at the right level of intensity for the different rings of intimacy we inhabit. That’s the beginning of loveliness, of earning the respect of those around us, along with self-respect. Propriety gains you the approval of those around you. But it is not admired or celebrated. For admiration and celebration, you need virtue [the second answer].

What exactly does Smith mean by virtue? Prudence, justice, and beneficence. For Smith, prudence means, in modern terms, taking care of yourself, justice means not hurting others, and beneficence means being good to others.

First of all, I must point out that I feel a kinship to both Smith and Roberts simply due to the language the latter uses in the above passage: “minimum standard” and, of course, “expectations.” One of my deep convictions is that when we set a standard and communicate it to others, we are able to manage their expectations. Smith - through Roberts - says that if we act appropriately, we meet the expectations of others and enable them to do the same with us.

Second, and more importantly, I see a compelling standard by reversing the order of Roberts’ passage:

1. Imagine taking care of yourself, not hurting others, and being good to others.

2. By practicing these three things regularly (referred to as prudence, justice, and beneficence by Smith), you’re enabled to meet the standard of virtue.

3. That could put you in position to be admired and celebrated, a heightened version of being seen, acknowledged, and recognized, all of which are fundamental human desires, in my opinion.

4. Before being admired and celebrated, however, you must gain approval, or earn the respect of others and have self-respect.

5. That’s achieved by building trust with others in a way that makes sense given how intimate of a relationship you have with them (acquaintance, friend, best friend, loved one, significant other, etc.).

6. That trust gets built by conforming to, or meeting, the expectations of those people.

7. And that, of course, is achieved by you simply acting appropriately.

Where I’m going with all of this is that “being lovely” is a very hard standard to set because it lacks specificity. We don’t know what to necessarily do by setting that standard.

However, if we simply practice the first item in my reversed list - taking care of yourself, not hurting others, and being good - we can put ourselves on the path to being lovely.

And when we start being lovely, according to Roberts and Smith:

1. We become worthy of being loved.

2. We are paid attention to, liked, respected, honored, noticed, thought highly of, and feel like we matter.

3. That leads to us having integrity, honesty, good principles, and a good name.

4. That, combined with being loved, leads to happiness.

So it all starts with taking care of ourselves (physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, financially), not hurting others (based on their perspective, not ours), and being good to others (again, based on their view).

That’s the standard worth setting. Sounds pretty easy, right?

After all, many of us might say that we already do those three things. But do we practice them consistently and together with everyone and every day?

As someone who has been actively trying to do so since 2015, I can honestly say that it’s not as easy as I originally thought. I don’t do it every day and with every person, however, I’m continuing to work on it and believe I’m gradually making progress.

But it’s been a standard worth setting.