Elevate Your Standards with Derrick Lawter

Many people have things they want to improve on in life. Maybe its communication skills, anger control, or working out more. No matter what it is, simply wanting to change is not enough. If you don't consistently hold yourself accountable, you will be constantly living the same loop and not improving on your weak areas. In order to improve, you must always be looking to hold yourself accountable and call yourself out on your weak areas. It's the only way to get better!

Our generation is plagued by a victim mentality. So many people want to blame others for their problems or failures. They also want to cast others in the light as lucky or privileged and use that as an excuse for why they are not successful themselves. In order to start changing that, you need to take ownership of everything that happens in your life. Stop blaming other people and start realizing that the only person to blame is the person in the mirror. When you start owning your life instead of being a victim to it, success will be on the way. 

Why do people accept an average life? Society has trained us to believe that we should be grateful for living a secure and average existence. We have been told since day 1 that If we have a 6 figure salary and are comfortably supporting your family, we shouldn't need or want anymore.  This type of thinking has led to a whole generation of people who are content with living an average life and never following their dreams. Don't fall into that category. Never settle or accept anything less than your worth!

When you see other people succeed, you have two choices of how to react. You can either let their success motivate you, or you can let it discourage you and take the victim mentality. Many people fall into the latter. They blame everyone else, call the person lucky and wish it was them that was winning. Learn to be happy for others and use their success as motivation, and you will end up winning yourself. 

Have you ever noticed how most people seem to always have great ideas but never take action? It's a shame because when you wait on a great idea, someone else will come in and jump on the opportunity that you missed. You have to learn how to separate your great ideas from average ones and act on the important ideas in your life. 

What is Motivation? I'll give you a hint. It's the same category as anger, sadness, anxiety, or love. Motivation is an emotion. Just like all other emotions, motivation takes a path through your mind and body that starts strong and fades away. Between these gaps of motivation, you will still need to be productive in order to be successful and reach your goals. Learn to master discipline to keep that motivation fire burning.   

Have you ever wondered why some people seem to push through anything in life and others always quit at the first sign of adversity? Many people say that you have to have a strong "why" to prevent yourself from quitting. I see it differently. The ones who really never quit are the ones who fall in love with the process. Learn to love the struggle and you are on a sure path to success. 

A common theme today is that if somebody disagrees with you on an issue, they want to hate everything about you. Are politics really worth relationships? In this episode, we talk about why you should learn to disagree with someone without hating them. It's an important skill to learn to rise above the average mindset. 

Should we lower the speed limit to 40mph everywhere in this country? We know it would save lives. This is a very conflicting question and most people will avoid answering it all at costs. We break down exactly what both sides of this question mean, why it is relevant today, and some good answers I have gotten. 

Chances are, you probably know somebody you view as very confident. While the initial reaction is to think that this trait fo confidence is natural, the opposite couldn't be more true. Self Confidence is earned, and you can develop it by doing hard things that other people wouldn't.  Don't let anyone fool you. Self-confidence is earned, not faked.