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The Standard You Walk Past: Stop Accepting Less · The Diva Details

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Welcome to the Diva Detail. Welcome to the Diva
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Detail, where bold, confident women embrace life
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unapologetically. From love and sex to
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wellness and reinvention, we keep it raw,
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real, and powerful. No filters, no limits,
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just fearless conversations to help you thrive.
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Let's dive in with Diva Mia and Diva
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Kat.
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Well, hello everyone. Welcome to the Diva Details. Today we're gonna
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talk about walking past your standards and choosing what you're willing
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to accept. This is Diva Mia, and I wanna talk to you today about
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something that has been sitting with me for a long time.
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Something that quietly shapes the quality of our lives more than most
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of us realize. There's a phrase that comes from the military. It was made famous
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by an Australian Army general. Named David Morrison, and he said,
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the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. Now,
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he was talking to soldiers about culture and leadership
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and respect, but the moment I heard that phrase, it hit me somewhere
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much more personal. Because the truth is, most of us are walking past
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our own standards every single day, not just at work, not just
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in other people. We're walking past them in ourselves. Every time we do,
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we quietly are accepting a lower version of the life we say we want.
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So today, let's be honest with each other. We're going to to get deeply
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honest. Hopefully this doesn't hurt too much, but we're going to look at the
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standards that we've been walking past, and especially
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the ones that involve you. Sometimes we need to go inward
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and look at who we are as a person to truly evaluate how
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we need to improve. So let me start with a question, and I want you
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to think deeply about this. Have you ever looked at your life and thought,
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I know better than this, so why am I still living like this?
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Maybe it's the way you keep sacrificing your sleep for someone
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else. Maybe it's the exhaustion you keep pushing through,
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telling yourself you'll rest when things calm down,
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and you've been doing it for years. Maybe it's the boundary you keep letting someone
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cross because you don't want to be difficult or you don't want to lose them.
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Sometimes you speak to yourself in your own head, that critical
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voice you would never let anyone else use on you. Every time you notice
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it and keep, keep going anyway, You are walking past a standard.
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The moment you walk past it, you accept it. What you're allowing into
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your life, you're accepting. That's the part most people miss.
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If you're allowing it, you've agreed to accept it into your life. Walking past
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something is not being neutral. It's a decision. You're teaching your body,
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you're teaching your nervous system and your confidence what is allowed.
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I used to do this constantly. I would tell other women to rest,
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to protect their energy, to stop overgiving. And then I would go
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home and completely ignore my own advice and I would overgive.
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And I would give up my sleep to protect other people. I would allow
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things in my life I never would allow if I was giving someone advice.
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Sometimes I would stay up too late answering emails. I would say yes
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when my whole body was screaming no. I would let my own needs slide because
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it was just this once. But it was never this once. It was
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every other night. And then just once becomes your new normal. And the new
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standard erodes, not in one dramatic moment, but in 100 quiet ones.
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You start by walking past small things. Before you know
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it, you're living in a version of your life that feels smaller than who
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you actually are. You've allowed so many things to interfere
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with you. So let's talk about the standards so many of us walk past when
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it comes to self-care. I think the number one thing, and right now they're
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talking that it's an epidemic in this country, is sleep. How many of you treat
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sleep like it's optional? Like it's something you're get to do
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later when the list is done. Your body is not a machine.
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When you keep walking past exhaustion, you are accepting a lower standard of health,
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mood. It's going to mess with your hormones and your clarity. It is also
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going to mess with weight loss and muscle growth. It also interferes
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with brains, your brain development, your brain health,
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as well as your organ repair. The number 2 thing is energy.
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You feel that fatigue, you feel the depletion, and instead of stopping,
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you push harder. You keep pushing through even though you know you should slow down.
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You tell yourself, strong women don't rest, or I've got to get this done to
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take care of my family. But strong women who never rest eventually break.
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And then who's going to take care of your family? I know a lot of
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single moms, myself included, out there. We push so hard sometimes,
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but we need to take a break sometimes as well. The third one is boundaries.
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Someone asks for more of you than you have to give and you give
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it away. Sometimes you give it away willingly, even when they don't
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want it or ask for it. You may walk past discomfort
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in your chest or something eating at you in your stomach. You walk past the
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quiet resentment building that's growing every single day. And in
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doing so, you accept a standard of relationship where your needs come last.
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You may allow a person to stay even though you know the relationship was off,
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or you may allow them to stay even though you feel like
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there's something wrong. That's letting down boundaries, and boundaries are there to protect
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you. We need to enforce our boundaries and never let them slip. The 4th thing
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is our self-talk. The way you speak to yourself when you make a mistake.
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Would you let a friend talk to you that way and still keep them as
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a friend? You need to be a friend to yourself because you probably not
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would allow anyone else to speak to you that way. But you walk past
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it every day and that becomes the standard of how you treat yourself, how you
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neglect yourself, and how you feel about yourself overall. Now,
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here's the hard part. Why do we do this? Why do capable,
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intelligent, grown women who've gone through so
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much accept standards we would never accept for the people we love?
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There's a few reasons. I think number one is we were taught that being easygoing
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made us likable. We became people pleasers. As women, we grow up
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this way, but it's not just a female problem. There's men that do
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this too. Sometimes we confuse self-neglect with strength. I know there are
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men that do this all the time. They'll neglect themselves and then they feel like
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they're stronger or they're toughing it out. Sometimes we're scared that if we raise
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the standard for ourselves, people will leave. But you know what? That might be
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okay. Or maybe you think that other people will think that you're high maintenance.
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That's okay too. It's okay to be a little bit high maintenance. And fourth,
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we're simply out of practice taking care of ourselves.
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Sometimes we've been in survival mode for so long that a higher standard feels completely
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foreign to us. Survival mode is not a place to live. It's a
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temporary place that you need to get out of. You need to move from survival
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mode to stability and then from stability into success. Let's get
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out of that survival mode. But here's what I need you to hear.
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Accepting a low standard for yourself does not make you strong
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because our boundaries are our standards. When you accept a low standard
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for yourself, it's making yourself smaller. Don't diminish your light
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because you're in a relationship with someone that doesn't appreciate you.
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Don't become smaller in order to make the other person feel bigger.
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Don't pour into someone that doesn't deserve it and neglects
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you, and then you realize at the end of the relationship you lost
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a part of yourself. You were not put on this earth to live small.
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You were put on this earth to to live proudly and bold and
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accomplish so many things. So what do we do about it? You stop
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walking past it. You stop walking past yourself. You start noticing
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what you've been ignoring for so long. And then
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we raise the standard one clear decision at a time. I'm gonna give you
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3 practical tools that you can start doing today. But remember, you've gotta
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raise the standard and it's up to you to choose to. The first thing you
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need to do is sit down and ask yourself, what is the lowest standard I'm
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willing to accept in these areas going forward? And these are the areas
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we talked about before: sleep, energy, how people speak to
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you and how you speak to yourself, how much you're gonna give away to other
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people in the form of energy and loyalty and respect.
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And then write it down, make it clear. Having vague standards are
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easy to walk past. Clear standards are harder to
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ignore. Number 2, have a 24-hour standard check. At the end
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of each day, ask yourself one simple question: What did I walk past today or
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what did I ignore that I didn't want to accept tomorrow? Maybe you
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only got 6 hours of sleep or 4 and your minimum standard is
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7. Don't judge yourself though, just notice it. Awareness is the first
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standard to raising the bar because if you've been lowering your standards for so long,
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accepting people into your life that don't belong, getting less
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sleep, not taking your health seriously, having lower energy,
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it's gonna take a little bit of time to recuperate and get back to a
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new normal. Every time you catch yourself walking past something,
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replace the old pattern with a new sentence. Instead of, I'll rest
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later, try, rest is part of how I show up strong. Instead of saying,
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it's fine, I can handle it, try saying, I deserve the same care I
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give everybody else. You are important.
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You are valuable. These small language shifts rewire what you will accept.
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And sometimes you need to look yourself in the mirror and just say it to
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yourself face to face. Because sometimes I think neglecting us is we do
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it when we're walking away, not walking past that mirror.
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Look at yourself in the eye and say, this is what I'm— my minimum standard
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and what I'm gonna allow in my life and what I'm gonna accept. Now,
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let me be clear. This is not about becoming rigid or perfect.
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This is not about never having a hard day or never making
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an exception. This is about stopping the quiet, consistent acceptance
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of less than what you deserve, because the life you want will never be built
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on standards you keep walking past. It will be built on the standards
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you decide to uphold, especially when no one is watching.
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This is giving yourself your own integrity back because sometimes
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we allow other people to walk all over us because we're not holding ourselves
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to account. So here's my challenge for you this week. Catch yourself the
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next time you feel the familiar pull to ignore your exhaustion,
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to say yes when you mean no, and to let the critical voice run
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wild in your head and abuse you when it shouldn't be.
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Pause for a second and look at it and ask yourself, is this the standard
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I'm willing to accept? If the answer is no, raise it. Even if it's
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uncomfortable, even if it means disappointing someone,
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even if it means slowing yourself down. You are worth the highest standard.
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And until you raise your standards higher, no one else will fall
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in line. The higher your standards are, the more people will respect
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your standards. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept from others.
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And the most important place that this truth
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shows up is how you treat yourself. You get to decide what is acceptable
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in life starting now. You've got this. Now go raise your
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standards. Don't let anybody walk all over you anymore. Stop people pleasing
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and become the person you've always dreamed of and the person you really
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wanna be. Go be strong and raise your standards.
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This is Diva Mia. I hope you have a wonderful week.
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Take care of yourself.
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Divadetails.com to connect. See you next week for more.
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