8 Struggles Of Holding Yourself To High Standards

All hail the girl who refuses to settle. In a world that always seems to be mildly insinuating that a lady's opinion is a secondary matter, the girls who won't accept less than what they want are liberated and empowered and drop dead sexy all around. It's great to be someone who has high standards, but there's a dark side, too, one that few people realize and fewer talk about.

There's a difference between the kind of standards that are rightfully high, and the kind that are so impossibly high it's no longer a matter of truly reaching for a goal, but trying to suffice for a feeling of lack. This, of course, is not always the case (standards, like goals and dreams, are subjective, so one person's "impossibly high" is another person's "reasonably fit"). But generally, there can be a hidden difficulty to feeling as though things are never quite good enough — a difficulty that can't ever really be expressed, for fear of shattering everyone's notions that everything in your life is under control. Aside from some of the obvious stressors, here are the struggles of being the kind of girl who holds herself to impossibly high standards:

You Are A Perpetual Editor Of Your Life

From the outside, you have it all "together." You like to dress well and work hard and come home to a finely decorated apartment (or whatever it is you enjoy in this life). But there's a dark side, too. You're never entirely certain about anything because you always have the lingering feeling of: but could this be better? It's hard for you to settle in a relationship, or for a job, because you're always seeking more. It will lead you to your wildest dreams, but may make it hard to fully accept them once you have them.

You're Indecisive To A Fault

You feel as though you're always choosing between what's easier and what's better; what's right for now and what's right for later. You can't make up your mind, only because you have so much confidence that you know you could achieve whatever else you set yourself out to do. It's a positive thing, in the end, but can cause some turmoil on the way.

You're Afraid To Settle For Too Little, So You Won't Settle At All

And settling, as it turns out, isn't always a bad thing. Happiness requires that you settle into accepting yourself, into hanging in there at a job or in a relationship even when things get hard and you're full of doubt. Settling, you've had to learn, isn't just "accepting less than you deserve" — it's also learning to be grounded and balanced in the life you have (and want), because it's not going to be perfect all of the time.

You Hold Other People To Those Standards, Too

This is an incredible quality to have: you don't tolerate the drama in your life. You hold the people you surround yourself with to a certain standard, as everyone should. Yet, this also has a dark side, in that sometimes, subconsciously, you don't completely accept people, or maybe even judge them a bit. It's not intentional, of course, but it's something you've had to learn to be at least more aware of.

You Have A Hard Time Fully Being Present

You are a future-oriented thinker, and a past-oriented evaluator. You're constantly using your experience to gauge what you should do next, how you could change, what would be best, etc. You're always drawing lines and connections, piecing together patterns, and coming up with the next big game plan. These things aren't just good, they're phenomenal. These are the habits of extremely self-aware and successful adults. Yet, when taken to an extreme, sometimes it can be hard to maintain your awareness in the present moment, which is all that really exists, at the end of the day.

"You're Often Not Sure Of The Difference Between "Accepting An Imperfect Thing" Or "Acknowledging When Something's Not Right"

It's kind of like trying to tell the difference between when to try harder or when to let go. Sometimes there's nothing to be fixed or augmented or evaluated, it boils down to whether or not you're willing to accept the imperfect job, or partner, or body, not because you're giving up on attaining better for yourself, but because you realize there's no such thing as "perfect."

Your Desire To Overachieve Can Sometimes (Or Maybe Often) Be Rooted In A Sense Of "Lack"

If you're being honest with yourself, you can see how there is a difference between goals you have that you want to achieve out of love, or passion, or respect for yourself, and then others that you desire to prove yourself to someone, to earn love from someone you feel you never got it from, and so on. It's not that ambitious women are insecure; it's that when anything is taken to an extreme (especially a manic extreme), it tends to be because something else is present.

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