Mindset Monday - Raise the Minimum Standard

This is episode 245 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider. Welcome. Welcome to Mindset Monday. Today we have a fantastic topic to bring you to make a difference for you and your performance, really to raise your game. We are raising the minimum standard in order to have less distraction, get closer to our goals faster. And to do so, I will give you five steps today in order to set your minimum standard. But first, I'm going to share a little story. Way back in the day, I was probably in my early 20s, finished university, didn't have a lot of money. I was standing in a bank teller line and I could see some signs behind the bank teller. I could see these pictures and these signs that they were trying to display about saving money and the kind of interest it would make and that you could have all this greater amounts of money, more than what you just put in. And this was the first time that I had any real exposure to investing. My parents didn't talk about it. I had no idea. I didn't have other people that I knew that invested. I probably did know people who invested, but it was never spoken about to me. But I could see this sign and my first instinct was to think it was a scam because I couldn't understand how you could make this interest off of money you put in and then come away over time with more money than you put in. And I kind of understood it a little bit because I had a savings account. And I could see from the time I was about eight years old, I could see that I could get a little more money, a few more cents from my few hundred dollars that was in my little savings account. So I understood that. And I also understood that the bank was supposed to be something you could really rely on. So in my early 20s, I saw this sign and I just finished university and I was thinking that I should do some sort of thing that looked like investing that they were talking about. And so eventually I set something up and met with a person and they wanted me to invest in these mutual fund things and that that would do this thing that would increase more interest over time. But I didn't have any money to invest. I. I didn't have a big chunk. I daydreamed about having a big chunk of money that I could put towards this endeavor and invest, but I didn't have that. So I was, you know, just feeling like, okay, now I couldn't do it. And they proposed to me that I could just take a little bit of money each month, and if I put a little bit of money each month, then I could do it, and they could even automatically take it out. And I knew already that I usually didn't allow my bank account to go below a certain minimum. And so knowing this, I thought, okay, well, maybe they could take $50 or $100 out per month and that would be okay. So I literally went for the absolute minimum that they could take out. And I went for it. I thought. I thought, well, the minimum would be about $50. But then I decided, well, if I really want to save and if I only had $50 per month, I'm not going to have very much at the end of the year. So I decided on $100 a month. And that's what I did from my early 20s. I put $100 away per month, and it went towards my. What's called in Canada, an RRSP registered Retirement savings plan. And they went towards their bank's mutual funds. And I kept saving away. And over time, I could see what it was accumulating. But I also realized that if this was going to be my retirement because I had my own business after a while. So I was working at the Canadian Sport Institute. I had salaried position for quite some time, and then I had my own business. And I realized in changing from that salaried position into my own business, that I didn't have someone else looking out for my retirement. It was only me. And so that little bit of money that I'd been putting away, I thought, well, it needs to be more. And now I'm making a little more. Because in the beginning, when I first put that hundred dollars away, I was making so little. The first year out of university, I think I made less than $20,000 that year. And yet out of that $20,000 I was earning per year, I was putting away $100 a month in order to go towards my investments. And so as time went by, I decided, well, I'm making a little more money. I can raise that to $200. And you can imagine as time went by further, I decided I was making a little more. It needs to be $400 a month. So I changed that minimum. My minimum standard changed over time based on how I evolved and based on some of the different circumstances in my life. Now, another example for that same. Another example for the same category of money and putting a minimum standard of savings is that eventually My daughter was born, and when my daughter was born in my late 20s, then I didn't know how I was going to save for school. I wasn't making enough and didn't have big chunks of money for her to have a university fund. So I did the exact same thing and chose my minimum standard of a hundred dollars a month and started putting a hundred dollars a month in her respond. But this is an example of imagining what the maximum would be. My imagination was that I could have enough money in a bank account that she could go to school and it would be paid for. That was my imagination, but I didn't have any of that. And because it seemed so far away, I was at risk of not doing anything because I didn't have the chunks of money that I thought were needed in order to create that final result of having a big chunk of money for her university. So what I did was I raised my minimum standard of having, you know, a piggy bank. That was what was going on. I had a piggy bank that I was putting change in for my daughter. And I realized that wasn't a great, great plan. So I raised my minimum standard to $100 a month so that that would be a savings in investing for her future. And by doing so, it made the final result far more attainable. Instead of me having a hit or miss action, that was putting money in a piggy bank. So it dialed me in, raised my standard. By creating a minimum standard, it created something that was closer to the final result. So what does this look like really? In the past few months, we've explored, with our coaching calls, we've explored the concept of indulging, indulging in food, indulging in work, TV and even emotion. But not just indulging, really overindulging. And this is an example of literally taking our maximum, what we perceive as our maximum in any category of our lives, and going over it. That would be overindulging. And then it feels really, really crummy. So the question becomes, what about the minimum? So when we're goal oriented, we rarely look at the lower end of the spectrum because we're always so focused on the higher end of the spectrum, what we really want. And that's very understandable and very important for goal setting and going for our goals. However, if we don't understand that there's a spectrum of what we're willing to do or how we're taking action, then we don't have clarity around our minimum. But our minimum and getting clarity around this can be A massive supporter in getting us to where we want to go. So our standards change over time. The things we did before may not work anymore. For instance, once I was finished university, I didn't want to just not know where my money was going and not have security in my future. When my daughter was born, I didn't want to just have zero dollars for her future in schooling and education. Another example would be when I was 18 years old, I went to the dentist. And I didn't go to the dentist very frequently. Neither of my parents were advising me to do so. So I finally went on my own accord. And when I went to the dentist, they told me that my front bottom gums were receding. They were all red and inflamed, and my gums were receding. And I'm 18 years old and I'm thinking I have to have these teeth for the rest of my life. And they said to me, how often are you brushing? And I said, once per day. And they said, how often are you flossing? And I said, I'm not flossing. And they said, well, you're going to have to get surgery at some point to put more gum tissue where your gums are receding because it will cause problems for your teeth and your mouth and you're going to have to get surgery unless you keep this area really clean, then you might be okay. And I was like, okay. So suddenly, because of the circumstances I learned about in my mouth, I was willing to raise my minimum standard of brushing once per day to brushing two times per day. And I even started toying with flossing every once in a while. It might have been once every week for a bit, but then I raised my minimum standard and then I started flossing once a day and. And eventually I started flossing twice a day. So now, if I look at my life now, and with regard to my teeth, my minimum standard is that I see a dentist at least once a year and ideally once every six to nine months. My minimum standard for brushing is that I brush every single day. I brush in the morning and I brush in the evening, and I floss in the morning, and I floss in the evening. But that didn't used to be my minimum standard. Our standards change. The things we once did may not work for us anymore based on the circumstances or how we have grown or evolved. So to set an intentional minimum standard, it brings our overall performance up and gets us closer to the higher end goal. If the higher end goal was that I had healthy gums and a healthy mouth and teeth and they were clean and white and it didn't have plaque all over them, then if that was the ideal scenario, then I raised my minimum standard. And that small investment day in and day out got me closer to that goal. And it happened by focusing on the minimum instead of focusing on the overall goal of having perfect white teeth. I didn't know how that was attainable. But by doing the small things that were suggested and raising my own personal minimum, then it was easy to get there. And now I would say I have healthy gums and healthy teeth and all that good stuff and they're clean without plaque. And I stick with my minimums. So we want to be able to set this minimum in multiple categories of our lives. And it takes something to set that. But the easiest way to do this is with these five steps. Number one, know your spectrum of minimum and maximum. In the examples that I gave, I knew that I wanted a maximum standard of having all the money my daughter needed to go to university. I wanted to have that whole chunk. I wanted to be able to pay for her university. I wanted her to come out of school if she chose to go to school debt free. And that was using my imagination. I had to think of that maximum standard by imagining that scenario or, or also knowing that there were examples out there of other people who have done the same thing. So knowing your spectrum of your minimum and your maximum requires experience. So knowing where you are right now, I knew I didn't have the money to get to that space. My experience of my earning told me that that might be impossible. So I needed to know what my minimum was. And my minimum at the time was putting some coins in a piggy bank for my daughter. And the imagination of the future was having her school fully paid for and her coming out debt free. And I'd like to happily inform you that she came out of university debt free because of the chunk of money that I was able to raise over setting that minimum standard over the course of 18 years of her growing and growing up. So this is the real life result from setting a minimum standard that really makes a difference for the maximum goal that you have in the future. That's number one, know your spectrum. I knew my minimum was throwing coins in a piggy bank and my maximum was going for her being debt free coming out of university. Number two, feel the pain of the low points. The piggy bank was a big piggy bank, but it was certainly not big enough to hold more than a few hundred dollars. And I knew the pain of that was that my daughter may not be able to go to school, or she'd have to take out loans to go to school, or she might come out of school with a lot of debt. And I didn't want any of those things. And thinking about her and feeling that pain for her, that financial pain for her was the pain of my low point. That was the pain that had me go, okay, putting coins in a piggy bank is not going to be enough. So that's number two, feel the pain of the low point. Understand where your minimum is currently, and number three, take a tiny step above that low point. Now, a tiny step could have been at the time that I just started putting some, some money in a bank account instead of in a piggy bank each week. But I took a little bit of a bigger step for me personally, and it was putting that hundred dollars a month automated into an account that would be invested for her. So I took a bit of a different step. But number three is really taking a small step above that point. And then number four is measuring it with quantity and time. So the quantity and time was that the quantity was $100, the time was one month, and this would recur $100 each month after month. The example of quantity and time with the toothbrushing was that it used to be once a day, and then the example was twice a day, morning and evening. And then I started to raise that minimum again with the flossing. So measure it with quantity and time is number four. And number five, test it. If it works for more than a month, then guess what, you're likely going to be raising that minimum in some way or another after six months. Just like I did with my own personal retirement investing, I raised that standard. If you test it and it doesn't work after a week, then your minimum is probably too high because you're still dabbling in a different minimum. The minimum you wanted to set wasn't working and you were actually participating in a lower minimum. So take a look at it. So if you don't follow through with what you measured as quantity and time, then reset your minimum, your minimum might need to be a little bit lower, because if you set your minimum too high and it's not attainable, then you're not going to have the desired effect of being closer to your goals. You're not going to have the desired effect of raising your overall standards. So identify those minimums, identify your limits. I should say, on the minimum side of the spectrum, what are you willing and not Willing to accept in your health, in your career, in your relationships, in your finance, in your interactions with others. I had a client say no is a full sentence. No is a complete sentence. And I love that she's completely clear on being able to set boundaries around her minimum standards and using the word no as a complete sentence. So this involves understanding your values, your priorities and your needs. So use those five steps to identify your minimum standard. When you don't have one or you're using multiple standards and it's not getting you where you want to go, then anything, anything goes. When you don't have those standards, you can be. It's like not having lines on the road, not having lines to say to stay in your own lane and then you drive all over the road. It creates more distraction. You end up not being direct in where you want to go. So ask yourself what your minimum standard is in the following categories. Perhaps water drinking per day, how much do you drink, how often, how much sleep do you get per night? And maybe the work hours you put in per day. What are your minimum standards for your work per day or social events? Time with friends, maybe date nights? What's your minimum standard there? What about your work meetings? What's your minimum standard for regular meetings with your employees? Or relax time? What's your minimum standard around relaxing in a given day or week? Or maybe food, fruits or vegetables? What's your minimum standard around there? I know that I have minimum standards around all of these and most of them are working. A couple of them aren't. Especially getting time with friends. As we've moved Covid happened, there's a number of things that have put difficulties around that, but those are ones that I'll use the five steps to create the minimum standard. And same thing with date night or relaxing time. Those minimum standards I'm still testing to see what's working. When your circumstances of life have changed or you have evolved or. Or your relationships with others have evolved, you may have to test it a little bit longer. It may take a few weeks or a few months to figure out your new minimum standard that really works to elevate your own life. All right, so those five steps were. Know your spectrum of minimum and maximum. Feel the pain of the low points so that you know you want to set minimum. Number three. Taking a step above that low point could be a tiny, tiny step, but making something that's standardized. Number four, measure it with quantity and time. How much and how frequently do you do that thing? And number five, test it. Don't think that just because you've done those previous four steps that it's going to work. You have to test it and then tweak it according to what you've learned from your testing. All right, everyone, this is so that you can have the life you really, really want. Raise your own game. Optimize your own performance. So try it out. Go do it. Raise those minimum standards so that you can feel the optimization in your life. Let's go. 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