About This Episode
Welcome to another empowering episode of The Overachievers Podcast, where success meets sustainability. I’m Keith Blakemore Noble, your host, and today I’m diving beneath the surface of our high-achiever habits to reveal what’s really going on with our high standards. If you’re someone who sets the bar high and is beginning to feel the weight of your own expectations, you’re definitely in the right place.
In this episode, I explore why high standards are actually a strength, not a flaw, and we also look at how they can help you build trust, momentum, and an outstanding reputation. But there’s an important twist: over time, those high standards can quietly shift from being motivating values to unyielding rules, creating self-imposed pressure that can leave you exhausted. I’ll help you recognise when your standards have gone from driving you forward to holding you back, and I’ll show you how to recalibrate them so you can keep your ambition and your wellbeing intact.
Join me as we untangle the difference between excellence and perfection, explore the links between self-worth and achievement, and set ourselves up for a more balanced, sustainable road to success. If you’re ready to thrive without burning out, this episode is for you.
Key Themes
- High standards versus self-pressure
- Shifting from values to rigid rules
- Excellence versus perfection
- Standards linked to identity
- Importance of recalibrating standards
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Transcript
This is the Overachievers Podcast for people who want success without the burnout. If you hold yourself to high standards and those standards are starting to feel heavy, this episode will help you to see what’s really going on.
Hello, hello, welcome, welcome. My name is Keith Blakemore-Noble. I’m the Mindset Master, and I work with people who carry a lot. Over the past few episodes, we’ve explored how responsibility expands and why rest can feel uncomfortable.
Today we are going to go underneath both of those patterns as we look at high standards. Because high standards are not the problem, but the way they evolve, that sometimes is. High standards are a strength, so let’s start here. High standards are not a flaw. They are one of the reasons that you have progressed the way that you have. You care about quality. You care about outcomes. You care about doing things properly.
And that is not something for which you should apologize. High standards build trust. High standards create momentum. High standards protect your reputation. They’re often part of what makes you effective. So this episode is not about lowering those standards. It’s about understanding what happens as and when they shift. So high standards, they begin as values.
Uh, you often say things like, I want to do this well. I want to show up properly. I want to deliver something of which I am proud. But over time, those can turn into, into rules. I must get this right. This can’t go wrong. If this slips, oh, that means something bad about me. Now, that shift is subtle.
But it changes everything because values inspire, but rules, rules create a lot of pressure. That’s where it all starts to go wrong. Now, I have seen this pattern many times over the past, what, 16 years of doing this. Someone sets a high standard early in their career or early in their business. They set a nice high standard. Nothing wrong with that. They work hard. As a result, they deliver well.
As a result of that, they build trust. All of which are very important parts of a career or of a business. However, as they grow, the context changes. The stakes increase, the workload increases, the visibility increases, and instead of— excuse me— instead of adapting the standard to fit reality, So instead of adapting all those high standards to fit this new increased stakes, increased workload, increased visibility— instead of adapting the standard to fit that, they raise the standard again. Not consciously. This isn’t a conscious decision. This is something which happens unconsciously. It happens automatically.
And suddenly What used to feel motivating starts to feel demanding. You know what I’m talking about, you’ve been there, haven’t you? So let’s pause for a moment and a question for you: where in your life have your standards quietly escalated? Where in your life have your standards quietly escalated? Where are you expecting more from yourself than you would reasonably expect from someone else? And that’s a key part to, to consider and to ponder there and reflect upon. Where are you expecting more from yourself than you would expect from someone else?— that is a sign that you’ve gone from high standards into pressure. And the important thing here is, please do not judge. There’s no judgment, there’s no blame. Simply notice. Awareness is the first step towards changing something. So just notice where in your life have your standards quietly escalated so that you are now expecting more much more from yourself than you would reasonably expect from someone else.
Pause for a few moments, reflect upon that, and as I say, just notice— no judgments, just notice it, be aware. Notice you can become aware of these. And here— excuse me— here is the turning point. Standards become self-pressure when they stop being chosen. Standards become self-pressure when they stop being flexible. Standards become self-pressure when they stop serving you. Instead of guiding your behavior, they judge it. Those high standards turned into self-pressure, causing you to judge your behavior.
Um, give you an example of what I mean. You might notice thoughts like, it’s not good enough. Or, ah, I should be further ahead. Or, oh, what about this one? I cannot afford to mess up. Have you started noticing those sorts of thoughts? Because the language matters. Should and can’t, very, very rarely do they feel light. There’s a lot of pressure behind that, often unreasonable pressure, and it’s coming from yourself. Over time, those high standards which served you well stop being about excellence, and they become about avoidance.
Avoiding what? Oh, avoiding criticism, avoiding failure, which is impossible, avoiding disappointment. And that’s when those high standards turn into those sorts of avoidance. That’s when it really starts to cost you massively. And there is there is a very powerful distinction here. Excellence, excellence is doing something well. Excellence is doing something well, doing it really well. Perfection, perfection is trying to eliminate all risk. Notice I say trying because we can’t eliminate all risk, can we? Perfection is impossible, and that’s the problem.
Excellence is doing something well. Perfection is trying to eliminate all the risk. Excellence allows iteration. You can go through it many, many times, getting better and better, improving it, tweaking it, refining it. That’s excellence. Perfection, that just demands certainty from the outset. Excellence says, this is strong, what we’re doing here, this is strong. Perfection, on the other hand, says, this must be flawless, which, as we all know, is impossible.
Now, the thing is, most overachievers realise that perfection is impossible. Most overachievers do not consciously aim for perfection. They know it’s impossible. They don’t aim for it. Consciously. However, for a lot of overachievers, over time they quietly drift towards perfection seeking, because the more capable you are, the more you believe you should be able to get it right, and that belief is heavy. Yes, you, you can get it right, but you’re also allowed to get it wrong. Getting it wrong is part of the journey, part of the process of getting it right.
But over time, those high standards turning into that self-pressure removes from you the luxury of being able to get it wrong. You must be able to get it right, you must be able to get it right from the outset. That is a really heavy and unhelpful belief. Mm, underneath high standards, there is often an identity. Let’s explore this. If I perform well, I’m secure. If I deliver constantly, I am valued. If I stay ahead, I’m safe.
When standards are tied to identity, Lowering, or even being perceived that you’re lowering those standards, feels threatening. Not because the task matters that much, but because your sense of self, your sense of identity, does. When your standards are tied to identity, any even perceived lowering of those standards threatens your sense of identity. That’s why simply telling overachievers to relax never works. It just doesn’t halt work. You’re not relaxing a task, you’re relaxing identity. I’ll say that again: you’re not relaxing a task, you’re relaxing identity. And that, that, my friend, that takes awareness.
Sustainable success does not remove standards, it recalibrates them. It asks, is this standard still serving me? When was the last time you asked yourself that? Is this standard still serving me? It asks, is it proportionate to the situation? It asks, is it aligned with my current stage of life? As we go through life, our stages evolve. Do our standards evolve to match? Because standards that worked at one level, standards which served you very well in the past, they can suffocate you at another level. Growth requires adjustment. Not endless escalation. In the next episode, we are going to explore something which sits even deeper than all of this. We are going to take a look in the next episode, episode 7, we’re going to take a look at self-worth, because when standards and identity merge, self-worth often gets tangled in the process. And untangling it, that’s where real freedom begins.
So as you move forward over the next week, I invite you to hold this gently: where are your standards guiding you, and where are they pressuring you? So where in your life are your standards guiding you, and where in your life are your standards pressuring you? Again, you don’t need to change them today. Absolutely don’t judge them. Just notice, notice that you can start noticing the difference between standards guiding you and standards pressuring you. That awareness is a first step to enabling you to start to change this. So over the next few days, Notice the language that you use for yourself, especially when you’re using words like “should,” “must,” “have to,” “not good enough.” Again, don’t judge, just be aware. Notice when you— notice the language that you’re using with yourself, and notice where your standards are guiding you versus where they’re pressuring you. Just something to bear in mind over the next 7 days. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Overachievers Podcast.
If this episode resonated, hey, give us a like, give us a subscribe, follow the show, share it far and wide. Give us a review and a rating on your favourite podcast— podcast platform. And stay with me for the next one, where we are going to explore how self-worth quietly weaves itself into achievement. I’m Keith Blakemore-Noble, the Mindset Master for Overachievers, and I will be your guide as we explore a healthier way to succeed.
