Choice has always been a privilege of those who could afford to pay for it. ~Ellen Frankfort

Ellen Frankfort was talking about a choice of a different matter than I am right now, but I believe in most matters of choosing, this is an accurate statement. When we don’t have any way to pay for things (normal, everyday needs), we find it difficult to acknowledge things could be different without the means (money) to change it.

What we know (I say ‘we’ because I’ve been there: no money, no way to get anymore than I have now; no way out) is that the choosing doesn’t cost anything, the result costs plenty. And plenty is what we lack.

In business/education/etc., we know that if we hold the bar (our expectations/ our standards) higher, people will rise to meet it; lower the expectations, get lower quality/less production/etc. If we can all agree this is true then the statement “you get what you expect” must also be true.

If we get what we expect, why don’t we expect more for ourselves? Why don’t we raise our standards?

I remember my dad saying once: if you need something that costs $100 and you only have $50, you’ll figure out how to get it with the $50. That’s true enough. Usually, the thing I’d find with the $50 would be of lesser quality than the thing would be if I spent the $100, but it would do. I lived like that most of my life: a that’ll-do-lifestyle.

When I raised the bar for myself, that changed: I CHOSE to not live the same way I had been my entire life. The choosing didn’t cost me anything, the result gave me plenty. I found out that if I need something that costs $100, I can get it with $100. It might take me until next week instead of this week, but I’ll get what I expect to get.

I’m thinking we need to raise the bar for ourselves …and stop being in such a hurry.

(That’s a thought for another day: our hurry-up mentality. Nobody has a stopwatch on your progress/your life. If you slow down for very long, you might actually have time to think.)