Relativising the standards you use to judge yourself

Notice the standard you are using to evaluate your life and ask where it came from and whether you chose it.

Why it works

Most self-evaluation uses absorbed standards — cultural, familial, professional — that were never explicitly chosen. Zhuangzi’s perspectivism highlights that all standards are frame-relative: what counts as success from one frame is failure from another. Surfacing the implicit standard and asking about its source is a specific metacognitive move that creates the possibility of genuine choice.

How to do it

1. Write the main standard by which you are currently judging your life: income, status, productivity, approval.
2. Ask: "Where did this standard come from? Did I choose it or absorb it?"
3. Ask: "Would I choose this standard if I were designing my life from scratch?"
4. If not, name the standard you would actually choose and examine whether your current actions serve it.

Evidence

Research on self-concordant goals (goals aligned with authentic values rather than external pressure) shows that pursuing self-concordant goals produces more sustained wellbeing and motivation than pursuing absorbed external standards. (observational)

The self-concordance research operationalises chosen vs absorbed goals; the Zhuangzi move of questioning standards as frame-relative is a philosophical extension of the same insight.

Sources

• Sheldon & Elliot (1999), goal striving, need-satisfaction and longitudinal wellbeing, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Common mistake

Replacing one unexamined standard with another — "I reject achievement, now I’ll optimise for authenticity" — without examining whether the new standard was genuinely chosen.