Your standards are the things you still refuse to negotiate when you’re exhausted.

Anybody can hold a line on a good day. What counts is what survives at eleven at night after a long week, when the case for letting it slide is strongest and nobody would ever know. Whatever is still standing in that state is your actual standard. The rest was a preference you liked the sound of.

Notice what you dropped the last time you were wiped out, and ask whether you meant to drop it. Then choose one thing small enough to hold even on the worst night. Teeth brushed, nothing sent after midnight, homework started badly rather than skipped.