I Think It’s Time We Raise the Bar Again

On standards, self-respect, beautiful living, and how we choose to show up in the world.

Lately, I have found myself thinking a great deal about standards.

Not the performative kind that dominate so much public conversation—the lists of requirements we create for other people, the markers of status we use to measure success, or the arbitrary ways we decide who is worthy of admiration. I am thinking instead about the standards we establish for ourselves: the quality of our character, the nature of our relationships, the way we care for our minds, our bodies, our homes, our work, and the people we love. I am thinking about the degree of intention with which we move through the world and the expectations we hold for the life we are creating and the person we are becoming.

Perhaps I return to this subject because I grew up watching women who had standards before I ever had language for them. My grandmother was one of those women. She believed in presenting herself with care. Her hair was done. She wore beautiful clothes and jewelry, put on her lipstick and rouge, and carried herself with the kind of elegance that had very little to do with wealth. I remember her rings in particular. One of them is mine now, and every time I look at it, I am reminded that inheritance is much more than material things. We inherit traditions and expectations, mannerisms and mindsets, and sometimes their ideals of womanhood.

Of course, not everything handed down to us deserves to be preserved. Some standards were born of restriction, silence, respectability, or expectations that asked women to disappear inside the lives they were responsible for holding together. We are allowed to question those things and leave behind what no longer serves us. But there are other qualities I am reluctant to discard simply because the world has changed: grace, discernment, self-respect, responsibility, pride in one’s appearance, hospitality, the ability to make an occasion feel special, and the instinct to care well for what has been entrusted to us.

I wonder sometimes whether our desire to become less judgmental has made us uncomfortable admitting that certain qualities are still worth aspiring toward. People should be free to define fulfillment for themselves, but freedom from unnecessary judgment does not require us to abandon the idea of excellence. Integrity is still worth cultivating. So is discipline, kindness, self-respect, generosity, keeping one’s word, taking pride in our work, and continuing to learn when it would be easier to remain comfortable.

A standard, at its best, is not a weapon we use to measure someone else. It is a private agreement we make with ourselves about the quality of life we intentionally design and the kind of person we intend to be within it.

Perhaps raising the bar is not about demanding more from the world at all. Perhaps it begins with deciding what we are willing to ask of ourselves.

The Standard of Living Beautifully

Living beautifully does not begin with luxury, but with regard.

Standards reveal themselves most clearly in ordinary life, in all the places where no one is applauding us. They are present in the way we care for our surroundings, in what we tolerate from ourselves, and in the attention we give to our minds, our bodies, our relationships, our work, and the small details that eventually become the texture of our lives.

I have never believed that beauty requires extravagance. A modest room can still be elegant. A simple meal can still be prepared with grace. A simple wardrobe can still reflect extraordinary taste. A home does not need to be large to feel gracious, and a lifestyle does not need to be expensive to feel abundant. Beauty often begins long before money enters the conversation. It begins with attention, discernment, and the decision that the everyday still deserves our care and intention.

That is why I do not believe beauty is merely aesthetic. At its deepest level, beauty can be an expression of self-regard. It asks us to notice what belongs in our lives and what does not, what elevates us and what diminishes us, what reflects the woman we are becoming and what we have continued tolerating simply because changing it would require effort.

There is dignity in tending well to what is already ours, just as there is reverence in refusing to treat the present as a waiting room for some better life ahead. Yet so many of us postpone our standards along with our pleasure. We will make the house beautiful when we move into our dream home. We will wear the clothes when our bodies change. We will use the fine china when company comes. We will take ourselves seriously when the business grows, when the money arrives, when the relationship comes, when life finally looks the way we imagined it would.

Meanwhile, this is the life we are living.

I am becoming less interested in saving my standards for later. I want the way I live now to reflect, however imperfectly, the woman I am becoming. To live beautifully is not to insist that everything around us be perfect. It is to refuse to move carelessly through a life that deserves our attention.

What We Believe We Deserve

Standards are also shaped by what we believe we are worthy of receiving, creating, maintaining, and enjoying. I have never believed that wanting more for yourself is inherently shallow. There is nothing wrong with wanting comfort, opportunity, refinement, meaningful work, financial security, a well-kept home, beautiful clothes, memorable experiences, or objects made with care.

Desire is not always evidence of dissatisfaction. Sometimes it is evidence of vision—the recognition that there are ways of living, creating, loving, working, and experiencing the world that call something higher out of us.

This is what I mean when I say, You deserve nice things. I do not mean that wanting something entitles us to possess it, nor do I believe beautiful things can establish our value. I mean that there is dignity in working toward a life that feels worthy of our effort: in developing the taste to recognize quality, learning enough to appreciate craftsmanship, traveling somewhere and understanding more than your own worldview, or owning something beautiful and caring about its story, its maker, its materials, or the tradition from which it came.

The more interesting question is not whether we want nice things. It is what we are willing to become in order to hold them well. Can we develop the discipline to create what we desire, the discernment to choose it wisely, the responsibility to maintain it, and the gratitude to appreciate it once it arrives? Can we enjoy beautiful things without needing them to prove that we are beautiful, successful, sophisticated, or worthy?

Aspiration, at its best, should enlarge us. It should make us more curious, more discerning, more capable, and more appreciative.

It should encourage us not only to acquire more, but to do more, contribute more, and live more. Perhaps the point has never been to have everything. Perhaps it is to become a woman capable of recognizing what is truly worth having.

Becoming a Woman You Respect

There is a kind of confidence that cannot be purchased, styled, photographed, or convincingly performed. It develops slowly through experience: from knowing yourself well enough to trust your own choices, keeping promises to yourself, surviving things that once felt impossible, and becoming more willing to take responsibility for the life you are creating.

That kind of confidence is quiet. You see it in what a woman permits, what she protects, what she no longer needs to explain, and the things she no longer needs to prove. There is something deeply powerful about becoming a woman you can respect in private—a woman whose values are not merely decorative, who can be generous without abandoning herself, ambitious without becoming consumed by comparison, and elegant without confusing appearance with character.

She does not have to be finished. In fact, I hope she never is. There should always be more to learn, more to refine, more to discover, and perhaps even more to release. Elevation is not a destination we eventually reach and defend. It is the willingness to continue becoming without rejecting the woman we are today.

Maybe one of the highest standards we can hold is simply to live in such a way that, when we look honestly at the woman in the mirror, we recognize her—not because she has done everything perfectly, but because she has continued to rise to meet herself.

What We Choose to Carry Forward

And so I find myself reflecting upon the women who came before us: the women who made beauty where they could, set the table, wore their jewelry, put on their Sunday best, tended to their families, made homes from imperfect circumstances, and taught us something about how to carry ourselves simply by allowing us to watch them live.

We inherited more than their stories. We inherited ways of being. Some we will keep. Some we will question. Some we will outgrow. And some are worth preserving because they still contain beauty, wisdom, dignity, and truth.

I want us to inherit what was beautiful and have the courage to improve upon what was not. I want us to have grace without silence, elegance without restriction, softness without surrender, standards without shame, pleasure without apology, and ambition without abandoning ourselves along the way.

I want us to honor the women who gave us something worth preserving, the women we have had to become for ourselves, and the women we’ve yet to evolve into.

That spirit is part of what inspired the Matriarch Luxe waist beads—an adornment created in celebration of the matriarch, not simply the mother or grandmother by title, but the woman whose presence leaves an imprint. The woman who teaches by the way she lives, who brings beauty with her, who loves deeply, builds, nurtures, refines, and leaves something behind that another woman will one day recognize as inheritance.

Perhaps that is the standard I am most interested in now: not perfection, not performance, and not a life constructed for the approval of strangers, but a life so deliberately lived that it becomes evidence of what you valued.

So wear the beautiful things. Set the table and use the fine china. Learn your history. Make the room lovely. Take yourself seriously, but leave room for joy. Celebrate what you have built, honor what came before you, and continue becoming more discerning about what deserves a place in the life ahead of you.

Raise the bar, then live beautifully enough to meet it.

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Love, Beads & Culture explores womanhood, wellness, cultural adornment, personal evolution, and living beautifully through stories, reflections, and meaningful connection.