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Hey guys, I'm Heidi Prib. Welcome back to my channel or welcome if you're new here. This season on this channel, we're talking about change. And today in particular, I want to talk about the concept of standards or what it is that
Heidi Priebe explains how low standards drain energy and lists five signs yours may be too low, including lack of motivation, shame-bound needs, and outgrown relationships.
Key Takeaways
- Standards should be personal and calibrated to your current needs and stage of growth.
- Low motivation can mean your goals are too small, so raising standards may restore energy.
- Shame and limiting beliefs often cause people to undervalue their own needs.
- Regularly reassess what you engage with, since needs evolve as you grow.
What the video covers
- Standards are subjective and should be matched to one's current developmental stage, like finding the right school grade.
- A gap between ego self-image and what the body actually needs often causes people to set standards too low.
- Needs change over the course of life, so environments and standards must be updated as one grows.
- Shame around needing emotional support can lead to lowering standards in close relationships, which increases stress.
- Lack of motivation may signal that goals are too small rather than too big; dreaming bigger can generate energy.
- Limiting beliefs can cause people to shrink their expectations, and coaching can help surface a richer vision of what is wanted.
- Habits such as food choices reflect standards, and convenient support (e.g., balanced meals) can help meet needs (sponsored segment).
- Outgrown relationships or roles that once energized but now feel like a burden are a sign standards need raising.
- Failing to solve life problems creatively can indicate standards have settled too low.
- Focusing on what one wants to move toward, rather than only what to move away from, helps realign standards with needs.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Standards
- 01:20Matching Standards to Your Developmental Stage
- 02:41Ego vs. Body Needs and Shame
- 03:47Sign 1: You Cannot Motivate Yourself
- 04:48Limiting Beliefs and Dreaming Bigger
- 06:48Sign 2 and Sponsored Segment on Meal Delivery
- 08:47Sign 3: Outgrowing Your Relationships
- 10:55Sign 4 and Sign 5: Stagnation and Creative Problem Solving
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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we choose to engage with in our environment, in our relationships, and in the choices that we make for ourselves. And something that I want to make clear right off the bat is that I think socially we tend to have this idea
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that standards are this very objective thing. So there is this list of things that we all deserve from either a romantic partner or a workplace or whatever it is. And while there are absolutely things like basic forms of
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respect that I think all of us should be striving for in our close relationships and environments, I also think that standards are a completely subjective and personal thing. Okay. So, when I'm talking about standards and what we choose to engage with in our external
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environment, I think that it's most useful to think of it as kind of like finding the right grade for yourself in school. So, if you put a second grader in a fourth grade class, they're probably going to be totally overwhelmed
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because they're not going to be developmentally ready for what is happening in that grade level. But if you put them in a kindergarten class, they're going to be bored and unmotivated and they're not going to be living up to their full potential
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because they haven't chosen the right environment in which they can actually learn at the level that they're at. And I think that one of the most common reasons why we get our standards wrong is when there's kind of a gap between
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our ego or the way that we think of ourselves and what our bodies actually need. Okay? So, what our bodies need to flourish and thrive and feel regulated as well as contained enough to actually be able to process and integrate our
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experiences, all of these things are things that are going to change over the course of our lives. So, every time we grow in some significant way, we're going to need new environments and new standards for what we engage with that
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meet us where we are currently at. And so sometimes we can have this disconnect between the ego and the needs of the body, right? So we don't think of ourselves as someone who could want for more or who could handle more in any
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given area of our lives. Or we might have a blind spot around our needs in a particular area and think, "Oh, I can do with way less." When in reality, we are actually creating a whole bunch of extra
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stress and struggle for ourselves specifically because we are not asking for more. Whether that's more support, more inspiration, more environments that bring out the best in us. Right? So we are actually limiting ourselves and potentially what we're giving back to
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others by not meeting our own needs properly. This can also happen when we have let's say some area of our psychology that has become shame bound.
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So if we think it is shameful to need emotional support, we're going to have really low standards for what we are asking for in our close relationships.
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when actually having higher standards might allow us to stay way more regulated and actually be kinder and easier to be around even for the people that we are asking for that support from. Okay, so what this is about is not
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leaving money on the table and figuring out how to rightsize our expectations for our environment at any given point in order to also self-actualize the hardest and ideally give the most back.
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So without further ado, we're going to talk about five signs that your standards might actually be too low.
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Sign one, you cannot motivate yourself. So I think that it is really easy for so many of us to go, okay, if I'm struggling to get out of bed in the morning, if I'm struggling to get excited about the future, the problem
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must be that I am dreaming too big and that I need to be more realistic. And this can be true in some cases, but the opposite can also be true. Okay? If we are not dreaming big enough, it gets
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really hard to mobilize our bodies into action because there's nothing that they see as inherently worth moving towards.
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And having a goal that we care about and something that we want to move towards in life is one of the most energy generating things that can possibly happen to us. So, I remember once shortly after leaving a relationship, I
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went to a coach and we were just talking about a whole bunch of different areas of my life that I wanted to do some work on. And the coach was asking me, "Well, what about your love life? What would
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you like out of dating?" And I was feeling really negative at the time. And I went, "You know what? I actually don't know if relationships are for me. I think that's an area that I just don't necessarily want to focus on." And the
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coach went, "Okay, well, tell me a little bit about what you think in an ideal world might be right for you." And everything that I gave her about what I might be looking for in a partnership or a relationship, I was also qualifying
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with. But if I had that, then I'd have to have this trade-off and it would limit my life in this way. And eventually, she stopped me and went, "Heidi, of course you're not motivated to date or find a partner. Everything
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you've dreamed up about partnership kind of sucks and you're not really thinking about what a super fulfilling partnership that actually meets your needs on different level could look like. It's like you have no concept of that. And that actually totally blew my
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mind. And this is kind of where we get into that area of what we call limiting beliefs. And that's a term that I think has been kind of abused in a lot of ways in the mental health field, but it does
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have its authentic time and place. Just like there is a lot of pain in trying to kind of meet the demands of something that's too big for you, there's also a lot of pain in trying to shrink yourself
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down to accept something that's too small for you. And so sometimes if we find that we're not feeling inspired or motivated towards action, the problem is that we haven't found the thing that we want badly enough for our bodies to
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really get excited and want to move towards it. This can be true in our work lives, in our love lives, in pretty much any area across the board. And so this is where we need to start doing some
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dreaming. In a perfect world, what would a job that I would want to jump out of bed and start doing every morning look like? What would a partnership that I was incredibly excited to say hell yes to for the rest of my life look like?
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What would it feel like in my body to be moving towards those things? And then which elements of those things can we start seeking out in our environment even if we don't get the whole thing at once. Now we're looking at what we want
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to move toward instead of just what we want to move away from. The not this not that kind of patterning. Right? So again we often think that when we're unmotivated we need to lower our standards. But sometimes the exact
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opposite is true. We need to raise them to a level that our body is actually going to respond to. One of the places where our standards show up in a very concrete way is in our day-to-day habits, especially around food. I used
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to have a habit of ordering in a lot because I didn't always have the time that I needed to stop and cook a whole balanced meal, which is why I've been loving using Factor. Factor delivers fresh, chef crafted, and dietitian
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approved meals straight to your doorstep. The meals are already balanced with protein, carbs, healthy fats, and vegetables, so you don't have to worry about trying to piece something together at the end of a day when you're already feeling exhausted. A lot of the meals
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are also protein forward, which just makes it so much easier to end up feeling actually fueled when you're done eating. There's no prep and no cleanup with Factor. You just heat up the meals and they're ready to eat in 2 minutes.
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Factor has over a 100 rotating weekly options, including meals, breakfasts, and shakes, so it never feels repetitive. I've also been using their daily greens, which are a once daily green drink with real veggies and nutrients, which makes it so much easier
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to keep up with those daily goals. For me, the whole thing just removes a lot of friction and makes it easier to follow through on the standards that I already have for how I want to take care of myself. I use Factor, and you should
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try it, too. You can go to factor75.com right now or click the link in the description and use code pfdg to get 50% off your first factor box plus free daily greens. That's code prib fdg atfactor75.com to get 50% off plus free daily greens.
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Sign number two that your standards might be too low is that it's taking a huge amount of energy to maintain the parts of your life that you once loved.
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So maybe two years ago you were jumping out of bed every morning to go to work or you were feeling naturally inspired to plan exciting dates and invest in your close relationships. But now those same things that may once have brought
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you a whole bunch of joy are starting to feel like a burden because the cost of maintaining them feels really great relative to what you're getting out of them. And there are two things I want to make clear here. One is that this is one
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of the most commonly cited symptoms of depression, right? That the things that once brought us joy now feel draining or exhausting. But I think that this is also one of the core signs that we might be growing in a way that we have not yet
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updated our environment to match. Now, does this mean that what we need to do is quit our job or leave our relationship? Absolutely not. We can still love and stay in connection with the things that we have loved, but what
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we might be needing is a new approach to those things or a new relationship to them. So, how do I invite my friends or my partners into the new identity that I'm forming for myself? How do I connect
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with them from who I am now as opposed to who I was when I met them? When there are parts of us that we're wanting to express or when there are desires that we have that are going unfulfilled, it
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actually takes a huge amount of energy. both to push that desire down and to force ourselves to not pay attention to it. As well as to kind of put on those old shoes that no longer fit and try to
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run a marathon in them, which is what it feels like when we are trying to get excited about things that were once kind of on the leading edge of what we were trying to learn and grow into, but that
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now are not meeting us at the level of challenge we're at. for all of us. There was a time when first grade felt appropriately challenging and then there came a time where we needed to go to second grade if we wanted to keep
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learning in a way that made sense. So we need to be able to look around and go what in my life once brought me meaning in a way that no longer feels as true and how do I update on that? Or how do I
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simply accept that okay that once brought me meaning because of the point I was at in my life and the challenges that I was facing then but now I need to expand and find new things and new challenges to rise to to give my life
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meaning. So maybe once all I really wanted was to be in a healthy partnership and so dating my partner or getting into that serious relationship brought my life a ton of meaning. But now, even though I still love them and
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want to keep them close, that's a part of my life that feels more settled. And so maybe what I need to do is recategorize the type of meaning that partnership brings me. Maybe now it's meeting more of my needs for safety and
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stability. And that's a wonderful thing. But those needs for challenge and growth are now wanting to be expressed in other areas. And if I keep expecting my challenge and growth needs to come out of my partnership because they once did,
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I'm just going to end up perpetually unsatisfied. Noticing how the meaning of something has changed in our lives and then figuring out where our next leading edge lies is how we stay in a continuous relationship with motivation, with
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drive, and again with a meaningful life. Third sign that your standards might be too low is that you are chronically feeling either disappointed or frustrated with the people in your life or the environments that you're in and you are spending a huge amount of energy
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trying to change other people or situations. So, this is kind of the equivalent of getting really mad at your first grade classroom because it's not giving you fourth grade challenges. It doesn't always mean that there's something wrong with the environment
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you're in or the people that you're surrounding yourself with. It just might mean that you are not choosing the environments that are developmentally appropriate for you. And in that case, the amount of energy it's going to take to try to get everyone around you to
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start giving you what you need is going to be humongous relative to the amount of effort that it's going to take to realize I need to be challenged in different ways. and I need to go find the environments that will challenge me
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in those ways rather than trying to change the one I'm in to be what I want.
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This might mean doing a bit of an ego update and doing that regular audit of what challenges am I taking on at this point in my life and which systems of support do I need in place in order to
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adequately rise to those challenges is going to require us to sometimes change things that we have hinged our egos on.
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Okay. So, for a lot of my life, I really prided myself on being someone who was super lowmaintenance in a whole bunch of departments. Like, I didn't need a lot of money or fancy things to be happy or
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whatever it was. But then the more my life changed, the more I realized, wow, I really do need to live in a place that feels really safe and secure. I really do need higher quality items for maintaining my health as I get older. I
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really can't be living paycheck to paycheck and feel chill and regulated anymore. The standards for what I need from my environment and my life have risen. And if I want to keep that ego ideal of myself as someone who is super
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duper lowmaintenance, I'm going to be feeling chronically dissatisfied. Getting into right relationship with what our needs actually are allows us to make better choices across the board because there's not this kind of chronic disconnect between what we want to need
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and what we actually need. Chronic frustration with our relationships or our environments can be a sign that we have not updated on what our needs are now and which types of relationships or environments we need to be placing
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ourselves in in order to function optimally. Sign number four that your standards might be too low is that you're seeing the world through the lens of tradeoffs that might not actually exist. So this kind of brings us back to that first
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point of are we dreaming big enough? But what we want to be watching out for here is false dichotoies in our own thinking.
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So having thoughts like do I want to get married and start a family or do I want to feel inspired and excited about my life? Do I want to make a lot of money or do I want to have a career that feels
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meaningful to me? These can be things that we internalized from a young age as eitheror situations that are not eitheror situations in real life. And so we might be perpetually kind of making a trade-off that we don't need to be
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making. Like, okay, I'm going to get into a relationship and I'm going to drop all of my standards for feeling excited and inspired and alive about my own life. Or, okay, I'm going to accept that I need a career that meets my
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financial needs, and so I'm going to stop even thinking about what's going to make me happy at work. So, we automatically lower our standards in one area in order to meet them in another because it has not occurred to us that
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we could have both of those things fulfilled at once. So, I remember seeing a quote, I think it was just a tweet actually once that said, "If you can't decide between two options, it's because the thing you're actually going to be
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satisfied by is a third option and you need to wait for that to arise." And I think that this is very often true when we get really stuck and kind of neurotic about should I choose choice A or choice
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B. If neither of them feels right, we might just want to stop and ask ourselves the question, what would it possibly look and feel like to have both of those things satisfied? Finding and choosing to pursue that third option
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often takes a lot of courage, but it's the kind of courage that expands us into new areas where we can actually have more of our needs met across the board.
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Sign number five that your standards might be too low for where you're currently at is that you are not solving the problems of your life creatively.
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So, there's a quote by Jim Ran that I'm sure I've quoted on this channel a couple of times before, but it goes, if you really want to do something, you will find a way. If not, you will find
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an excuse. And this is a kind of paradox that I've heard a lot of people talk about over the years, that the busier they are doing meaningful work, the more they are getting done. And the periods where they're really struggling to find
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even one or two things that interest or inspire them are often the periods where they're doing the least even if they technically have more time. Because when we are kind of all systems firing because we are engaged and motivated and
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wanting to move towards something, what our minds are naturally doing is finding creative ways to approach our problems.
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And so often a sign that we are not really connected to our desires in life and that we're not feeling nourished by the environments we've chosen is that everything feels incredibly effortful, but our brains are not coming up with
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creative solutions to those problems. Our thinking might be really stuck on how big and overwhelming everything feels. And so sometimes the way to deal with this is to just develop a practice of asking ourselves, what is the biggest, most satisfying thing I could
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imagine having or doing with my life? And how could I get there? How could I get a quarter of the way there? How could I get halfway there? I remember once going through a period where I was so burnt out, like I was burnt out
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beyond belief. And all I wanted to do was go outside and walk and think for like 8 hours a day. And at one point I asked myself the question, okay, if I have 40 hours of work that I need to get
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done in a week, but my body really just wants to be outside all of the time, how is it possible that I could get 40 hours of work done in 20 hours every week so that I could give myself the time I
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needed in a day to go let my nervous system do what it needed to do. And is this a massive and unrealistic ask of my life? Absolutely. It is very hard to find a way to go hang out outside for
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eight hours a day. And a lot of the things that we're doing when we're trying to rightsize our desires are going to feel ridiculous, but they are also going to get us thinking creatively. It turned out that I wasn't
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able to figure out a lifestyle where I could be outside for 8 hours a day and do my work for four. But I did get to a point where I could work for 4 to 6 hours a day and be outside for two to
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four of them. And so this is about asking ourselves those ridiculous questions that at least start getting us moving in the direction of something that feels better for us by putting in incentive in place, right? We figure out
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what we actually want. We temporarily bypass that part of ourselves that goes, I couldn't have that. And then we ask ourselves, well, how could I?
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Hypothetically, in a world where all of the boundaries of reality were different, how could I have more of that thing that I want? and what creative solutions could I find for the barriers that lie in the way of it? All right,
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we're going to start wrapping this up for today, but what I want to make clear is that of course realizing that we are holding ourselves to the wrong standards in life is not always going to be an easy fix. So often this requires doing a
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lot of restructuring in the way that we are prioritizing our time, our resources, our energy. And so the updating that we need to do in order to find lives where our environments are more well matched to the needs that we
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have at a given point in time is going to be a process. But surfacing all of these things that we've talked about today can really start to point us in the right direction rather than staying stuck in a state of feeling perpetually
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unsatisfied without knowing why. So we start asking ourselves those questions around what do I want? What environments would better support me in rising to the challenges that my body and my system and my spirit really wants to be taking
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on right now? And then how could I get there? These are incredibly useful questions to be asking ourselves over and over and over again in life, especially during those periods where we are feeling kind of perpetually unfulfilled or dissatisfied with our
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lives. All right, as always, any questions, curiosities, or thoughts that have been popping up for you as you've gone through this video, please leave in the comment section below. I love you guys.
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I hope you're taking care of yourselves and each other, and I will see you back here again really soon.
Topics:standardsself-developmentmotivationlimiting beliefsemotional needspersonal growthrelationshipsenergyself-awarenessHeidi Priebe
