Upgrade Your Standards
The audit I do every year on my birthday, and what New York reminded me about how I actually want to live.
I’m writing this letter from the plane on my way home from New York. Four days of meetings, a creative leaders retreat, new partnerships, my favorite spots for movement, the bright lights and chaotic energy of a city that used to be on my bucket list to live in.
I love it there. I always have.
There was a version of me that once dreamed of my life living in New York but somewhere between a slice of pizza on Tuesday night and the four-hour train fiasco to the airport this afternoon that left me sprinting with all my luggage through Manhattan for 5 city blocks (a story for another time), I noticed something I’ve been noticing more often lately. The version of success that includes a brownstone in New York is not the version I’m chasing anymore. I want more cabin-in-the-woods vibes (yes, with fast wifi and package delivery). Creative mornings. More space to think.
The point is, I’ve been noticing what’s for me and, what’s not for me with a lot more ease these days.
How about you, are you team cabin in the woods or, big city?
The bucket list updates with you, if you let it.
I’m turning 39 on Monday.
Every year on my birthday I block time for the same ritual I’ve been doing since 27. It started as a blank journal page. Now it’s the most important meeting on my calendar.
It’s not just a goal review.
The goal review is the easy version. You celebrate what hit, recommit to what didn’t, set a slightly more ambitious version for next year and start running toward it.
It’s a vision reset and a standards audit. The audit underneath the goals is the one that actually changes anything.
It’s the standard audit.
You can hit every goal on the list and still not be the version of yourself you wanted to be at the end of the year. You can cross every finish line you set for yourself and still feel unfulfilled when you get there. Most high-achievers do exactly that, every year.
The standard audit asks something else.
Where have you been calling tolerating a foundation.
Where have you been confusing comfortable with secure.
What is the standard you have been unwilling to raise, because raising it would mean admitting what you have been settling for.
You can’t build a life that lasts on a foundation you’re tolerating.
The slow energy leak is what most of us are working with. It starts as it’s fine.
Then it becomes normal. Then it becomes the structure of your week, and you can’t remember choosing any of it.
Whatever standard you raised a year ago is the ceiling on what you can build today.
Unless you go back and raise it again.
Here is what I realized in the studio last week, recording the audiobook for Chasing Enough.
I was running the same pattern I teach my clients out of.
The book, the audiobook, the media pitches, the launch infrastructure that is the biggest personal project of my year. I had been squeezing all of it into the leftover hours. Whatever was left of me after I had been of service to everyone else all day. I had mis-managed my own calendar. Booked the most important work of my life into the worst version of myself.
I have been resentful enough times to know this is a me problem.
It was listening to my own voice in the booth, reading my own words back to myself, that I finally caught it. Triggered by myself, by my own lessons.
Honestly? My first thought was fuck.
The leadership teacher hitting the wall she teaches people to see coming.
After a week of sitting with it, I can’t help but laugh at how human I am.
We repeat the loops until we complete the loop. But knowing what I know now, I know how to bounce back quicker. This used to throw me off for months, letting the pattern turn into a spiral. Now, I make new choices when I catch myself in a loop. That’s breaking a pattern. That’s growth.
I needed the reminder. So I took it.
Now I’m recalibrating. The work that makes me alive — creating, writing, conversations, designing the rooms — is moving from the leftover slot to the front of the day. Not what is left of me. The best of me.
That is the standard I’m raising for 39.
This move is so much more than just-time blocking. When I stop self-abandoning what is actually top priority for me, I have more aliveness to lead everyone else with. The team gets a fuller version. The clients get a more present version. My marriage gets the best of me. The book gets the work it actually deserves. Resentment shrinks. Capacity expands.
New roots start in the garden. In the soil. With a seed.
You do not scream at a seed to grow. You tend to it. You nurture it. You water it on the days you don’t feel like it. You trust what is happening underground before there is visible evidence above the soil. You raise the standard of what you’re willing to plant, and then you bring patience to the tending.
The standard is what gets planted. The patience is the tending. Both have to be true for anything to grow.
At 39, the question is not what I’m building. I know what I’m building. The book hits in October. The audiobook is wrapped. I’m designing the conversations and the rooms we’re going to gather in. The well we’re going to draw our energy from. The next chapter of this work is the clearest it has ever been.
The doing is not the question.
Honestly, I don’t fully know the answer yet. What I know is the question.
Who am I being while I build it. How do I want to feel when I get there.
That is the audit. That is what 39 is asking me.
If you want to do this reset with me, here are the prompts I’m sitting with this week. Pick one that feels juicy. If you’re feeling bold, pick the one you want to avoid. That’s the medicine you need. Leave the rest. The point is to find the one you’ve been avoiding, and let it open whatever it’s going to open.
Where in your life are you calling tolerating a foundation. Why do you continue to tolerate it. What’s the belief underneath the choice.
Where are you confusing comfortable with secure.
What is the standard you’ve been unwilling to raise, because raising it would mean admitting what you’ve been settling for.
What is the thing you’re still chasing that you’re no longer sure you want. What feels like a better chase.
Who are you being while you chase what you’re chasing, and is that who you want to be at the end of this year.
If your body could write a letter to your calendar, what would it say.
What is one standard you’re willing to raise this week, even before you know how you’ll hold it.
A year from today, what do you want to celebrate about yourself. One thing you did. One standard you held.
That is the ritual. A Sunday morning, a second cup of coffee, and one of these questions.
The standard you refuse to raise is the life you’re agreeing to keep.
Mandy
P.S. Chasing Enough is the biggest project of 39. The book hits October. Pre-order is open here. If you’ve been here a while, this is the moment that helps most. Pre-orders are how independent voices land on bestseller lists, and they tell the world this conversation matters.
Pre-order, send it to a friend who needs the book too. Help me celebrate.