Be Hard on Yourself and Easy on Everyone Else

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Hold yourself to the highest standard you can imagine. Then give everyone around you more grace than you think they deserve.

That sounds simple. It's one of the hardest things a person can actually do, and almost nobody does it consistently.

Most people run the exact opposite program without realizing it.

The Backwards Default

Watch how people actually operate. They are endlessly forgiving of their own failures and quietly brutal in their judgment of everyone else's.

When you cut someone off in traffic, you were distracted, you had a lot on your mind, it was a one-time thing. When someone cuts you off, they're an idiot who shouldn't have a license. Same action. Two completely different standards, and you apply the generous one to yourself without even noticing.

We do this everywhere. We explain our own broken promises with all the context. We judge other people's broken promises as proof of who they are. It's human nature, and left alone it makes you soft on the one person you can actually fix and harsh on everyone you can't.

What the Stoics Flipped

The Stoics fought this deliberately, and they flipped both halves.

Marcus Aurelius led millions of people while writing privately about his own shortcomings with more honesty than most of us manage in a lifetime. At the same time, he kept reminding himself to meet other people's failures with understanding. They don't know any better. They're doing what seems right to them. I've made the same mistakes.

That's the whole move. Take the harsh standard you usually aim outward and aim it at yourself. Take the generous standard you usually reserve for yourself and aim it at everyone else. Strict on you. Easy on them.

Why This Makes You Stronger, Not Softer

People hear grace for others and think it means being a pushover. It's the opposite.

When you stop spending energy judging everyone around you, you free up an enormous amount of attention for the only project you actually control, which is yourself. The harsh judge of others is usually dodging a harder look in the mirror. Being strict with yourself is the demanding part. Being tolerant of others is what clears the room to do it.

The young men I've mentored who built the strongest relationships and the most respect all ran this program. They were the hardest on themselves and the easiest to be around. People trusted them because they never felt judged by them, and people respected them because they could see the standard those men held for their own conduct. Both things at once. That combination is rare and it's magnetic.

A Practice for This Week

This week, run a small audit whenever you catch yourself judging someone. A driver, a coworker, a stranger, a family member.

Two questions. First, would I extend myself the grace I'm refusing to extend them right now. Second, am I holding myself to the standard I'm demanding from them.

You'll usually find the answer is no on both. That gap, the grace you keep for yourself and the standard you keep for others, is exactly the thing to close. Pull the standard inward. Push the grace outward.

The easiest life to build is the one where you're the perpetual exception. Everyone else has to earn it and you get a pass. It feels good and it makes you weak.

The harder and far better life is the reverse. You become the person who demands the most from himself and the least from everyone else. Strict where you have control. Generous where you don't. That's not weakness and it's not arrogance. It's maturity, and it's rarer than almost any other trait you could build.

Start with the mirror. That's where the strictness belongs. Save the grace for everyone else.

If you want a place to be held to a real standard while you learn to hold it for yourself, that's what the coaching program is for.