“Don't lower your expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations. Expect the best of yourself, and then do what is necessary to make it a reality.” - Ralph Marston, Writer

Colossians 3:23

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”  (NIV)

Philippians 4:13

“I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.” (NIV)

I strongly feel that challenging yourself and meeting those challenges head on in order to change your life for the better is something that we should all do. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut with our everyday activities: same diet, same workday routine, same weekly worship or daily prayer schedule. However, when we step outside ourselves and move our own expectations for the norm to a higher level by thinking about what God wants us to achieve, we can see some surprising results.

Certainly, raising the bar can be intimidating and raising our level of expectation might be something that we actually do every day with no real measure of change. However, in the book Creating Your Dream: Confidently Stepping into Your Own Brilliance, Christopher Dorris advises us to go through steps or stages to reach this potential state of enlightenment and allover improvement. Dorris tells us that the five big stages to achieve better results in life are:

• Acceptance – Accept more into your life. Take on bigger challenges.

• Fearlessness – You become less afraid the more you take on and can successfully handle. 

• Higher Expectations – As you see improvements in your life, you expect more from every endeavor and every situation, elevating your expectations of yourself and your performance.

• Greater Effort – With higher expectations in life, an individual’s effort will increase or intensify.

• Greater Success – With greater, intensified efforts, greater success occurs in every aspect of life.

In essence, if we expect more of ourselves, consistently holding ourselves to improving despite past successes or becoming better with each new endeavor, we are expanding our own sense of accomplishment. Rather than fearing growth, change, or challenges, we are embracing it all—or raising the bar, if you will—and experiencing a heightened level of expectation and subsequently, a certain level of success in our lives. 

Of course, we know this process is only possible through God. We are told in Colossians to "work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord” and in Philippians, "I can do all this through Him." It is through our faith that we overcome fearfulness, accept more into our lives, and raise our expectations and effort. God grants us this strength and demands our motivation to be our best selves. 

I encourage us all to search for God's strength and rise to our own personal challenges in our prayer lives, our personal lives, and our professional lives. I want us to spiritually and intellectually explore things that we would otherwise not give attention to. In his blog, The Daily Motivator, Ralph Marston (quoted above) provides encouragement to like-minded individuals with his regular posts. It is important to him to let people know that he is a real person living in today’s challenging world. He is handling the daily ups and downs with the rest of us, yet his attitude and his constant adherence to God's strength and encouragement make him an interesting pop culture reference for the power of positive thinking.

Yes, with God we can elevate our levels of expectation. And yes, with God we can be better for doing so. Twentieth century minister and theologian Walt Schmidt once said, “You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.” In other words, we can all bring our best to every problem. There should never be an excuse for us not to do our best.

Pittsburgh Followers:

For some inspiration and opportunities to expand your horizons and bring out your best this spring, check out the upcoming local Pittsburgh events here: http://www.visitpittsburgh.com/events-festivals/. Those of you in other areas, do the same in your communities.