Two seconds of “well done,” six months of “but”

Ninety-nine percent. Where did the other one go?

If that sentence made you wince, you’ll know the arithmetic that follows. You do something well — genuinely well — and “I did well” gets about two seconds of airtime in your head. Then comes the but. And the but gets six months.

But I could have done it faster. But I was lucky. But anyone would have. But look at that one thing I got wrong. And that one thing gets filed, and retrieved at bedtime, and retrieved again in ten years as evidence in a case that’s been running since you were a child.

People call this “high standards.” I used to. Here’s what I’d call it now: impossible standards. And impossible standards aren’t about excellence. They’re the inner critic’s favourite tool — a bar that can’t be reached, so there’s always a reason to swing.

Here are seven ways they disguise themselves. Count yours.

1. The moving pass mark. You hit the target. Immediately, the target was too easy, and the real target is further. You never once get to stand still and say there. Done.

2. “It was nothing, really.” Someone praises your work and you explain why it wasn’t impressive. Not modesty. You genuinely can’t let it count, because if it counted you might have to rest.

3. The one-percent audit. Ninety-nine things right, one thing wrong, and the one gets all the attention. The ninety-nine were expected. The one is proof.

4. The retrospective harvest. Something from years ago — a comment, a mistake, a moment of awkwardness — still gets pulled out and examined. Nobody else remembers it. You’ll never forget it.

5. Redoing what nobody asked you to redo. Rereading the sent email. Polishing the thing no one will inspect. The standard isn’t the work’s. It’s the voice’s.

6. Applying it to everyone. Impossible standards leak. You expect too much of the people around you, get quietly frustrated when they fall short, and don’t notice that the frustration is your own inner critic, pointed outward.

7. The reserved right to criticise. You climbed the mountain on one leg, on no sleep. The voice wants to know why you didn’t carry a rucksack. Whatever you achieve, it reserves the right to say but — and it always will, because there is no achievement that satisfies a voice whose job is to keep you small.

That last one is the key to all of it. The voice isn’t holding you to a standard. It’s using a standard to hold you. There’s no level at which it says good, you can rest now. It doesn’t exist. I built a successful business at nineteen and could have gone back to every teacher and doctor who’d doubted me — and even then, the voice had a but ready. It always did.

Two things to know. First, you weren’t born with the voice — you practised it into the loudest thing in your head, and anything practised can be replaced. Second, it formed to keep you safe, once, by keeping you in line. Thank it for that. Then tell it the job’s done.

None of that was your fault. Somewhere along the way you learned that ninety-nine wasn’t enough, and you learned it well. But the other one percent was never missing. The voice just needed something to say.

Every Tuesday I run a live guided session online. Some weeks it’s exactly this — meeting the voice, thanking it, and beginning to let it go. Come and try a session, and see how you feel afterwards.

— Adam