The Standard You Did Not Choose
Most people, if asked to describe what a successful life looks like, could give a fairly detailed answer. A certain kind of relationship or family structure. A certain level of professional achievement. A certain financial position. A certain appearance, home, social life, level of travel.
Fewer people, if asked where that standard came from, could give an equally clear answer. Because for most people, the standard was not consciously chosen. It was absorbed — from family, from culture, from peer groups, from media, from social media — through a process so gradual and so pervasive that the standard feels like their own genuine preference rather than something they were given.
The invisible measuring stick is the set of criteria against which you judge your life without quite realising you are doing it. And the problem with an invisible measuring stick is not just that you did not choose it. It is that you cannot examine or question something you cannot see.
Where the Standard Comes From
Family and early environment
The first measuring stick most people absorb comes from their family of origin. What did success mean in the household you grew up in? What was praised, encouraged and held up as the goal? What was dismissed, discouraged or treated as insufficient? These early messages install a template for what a good life looks like that operates below conscious awareness for most of adult life.
Peer groups and social context
The standard shifts as the peer group shifts. At school it is grades, social standing, appearance. At university it is achievement, ambition, lifestyle. In early career it is salary, progression, relationship status. In mid-life it is property, income, family. At each stage the peer group provides a reference point that recalibrates the measuring stick — often without the person noticing that the standard has changed or asking whether it should.
Media and advertising
Advertising is fundamentally in the business of creating dissatisfaction. Its entire model depends on the gap between where you are and where you could be with the right product. The images, lifestyles and standards presented in advertising and aspirational media do not describe reality. They describe a carefully constructed aspiration designed to produce the specific feeling of insufficiency that motivates purchase. This standard has been absorbed so thoroughly, for so long, that most people experience it as their own genuine desire rather than a manufactured one.
Social media
The most recent and most potent source of standard-setting. The algorithm-curated feed of achievement, beauty, success and aspiration provides a continuously updated, highly personalised measuring stick that is calibrated precisely to the domains you care about most. It is more powerful than traditional media because it comes from people who feel real rather than aspirational figures, and because it is present at every moment of the day rather than confined to specific media consumption.
Why the Wrong Standard Is So Costly
Measuring your life against a standard you did not choose and that does not reflect your actual values produces a specific kind of suffering: the suffering of working hard towards goals that do not genuinely matter to you, achieving them and finding they do not produce what you expected, and then concluding that the problem is with you rather than with the standard.
This pattern — achieve the thing, feel briefly satisfied, reset to dissatisfied, chase the next thing — is one of the most common presentations in therapeutic and coaching work. The person is not failing to achieve. They are achieving towards the wrong target and wondering why arrival does not feel how it was supposed to.
Two Examples
The career that was supposed to feel better
Michael spent eleven years working towards a position he had identified as the goal in his mid-twenties. He achieved it at thirty-six. The satisfaction lasted approximately three months before the dissatisfaction returned — slightly worse than before, because the goal he had been deferring wellbeing towards had been reached and found insufficient. He concluded he needed the next thing. The standard had not been examined. The next thing was higher on the same ladder he had not chosen.
The life that looks right
From the outside, Claire's life looks exactly like the standard. The relationship, the house, the career, the social life. She measures it against the measuring stick and it checks out. She also feels, persistently and confusingly, that something is missing. What is missing is that the standard she has achieved is not her own. She does not particularly want the things she has worked to get. She wanted something else and never quite identified what it was, because the measuring stick she was given was so pervasive that her own preferences never had room to develop alongside it.
Three Reflection Questions
- If you had grown up in a completely different family and social context, what do you think your idea of a successful life would look like — and how different is that from your current standard?
- Which of the things you are currently working towards or feel you should have were consciously chosen by you — and which were absorbed from your environment?
- When you achieve something on your current measuring stick, how long does the satisfaction last — and what does that tell you about whether the standard is yours?
Key Takeaways
- Most people judge their lives against a standard they absorbed rather than consciously chose.
- The sources of the standard — family, peer groups, advertising, social media — are generally not aligned with your actual values.
- An invisible measuring stick cannot be examined or questioned, which is why naming it is the necessary first step.
- Achieving towards the wrong standard produces the specific suffering of arrival that does not feel how it was supposed to.
- The work is not to abandon all standards but to examine which ones are genuinely yours.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know which of my standards are genuinely mine?
A useful test: when you imagine achieving something, the satisfaction you feel in the imagination is often more about other people's reactions than your own experience. If the primary pleasure is in being seen to have achieved, rather than in the experience of having it, the standard is probably absorbed rather than genuine.
Is it possible to consciously choose a standard?
Yes, though it requires significant deliberate work. Identifying what genuinely matters to you — separate from what you have been told should matter — is the foundation of the coaching work around values and purpose.
What if my chosen standard is less impressive than the one I was given?
Then you are more honest than most. The comparison between your genuine standard and the absorbed one is often uncomfortable because the genuine one looks less impressive from the outside. That discomfort is worth sitting with rather than avoiding.
Can this change over time?
Yes. Standards evolve with experience, relationship, loss and growth. The problem is not that your standard is fixed — it is that the evolution is often driven by external pressure rather than internal reflection.
Is this something Simon works on?
Yes. Identifying the difference between absorbed standards and genuine values, and orienting your life towards the latter, is central to the coaching dimension of the work.
The Measuring Stick Is Not Yours Until You Choose It
Examine it. Question where it came from. Ask whether achieving everything on it would actually produce the life you genuinely want. The answer, for most people, is more complicated than they expected. That complication is the beginning of something more honest.
Simon Taylor helps people identify what genuinely matters to them and build their lives around that rather than an inherited standard. A Free 30-Minute Consultation is a good place to begin.
Book Your Free 30-Minute Consultation | Get The Little Book of Big Changes
