"Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you."
Henry Ward Beecher

How high are your standards. Most of us like to try to get away with as little as we think we can without upsetting others. We have low expectations of the standards of others and assume that we don't need to be any better than they are. But that just makes everyone's standards lower.

If you really want to stand out from the crowd, if you really want to be successful, you have to do things better than they do. You will impress people and they will want to be around you more, and do business with you more. They will like you more and trust you more. They will see you as successful and hope that your success rubs off on them. You will inspire them to hold higher standards for themselves. If you do good things that other people really didn't expect you to do, they will remember you and do it in a positive way.

Successful people have their own standards for their behavior (which they then rigorously apply) that aren't based on what other people are doing. They stand out because they are a class act, and their success comes because other people gravitate towards a class act.

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