Raising Your Standards Can Spark Joy

Struggling to commit to something? Maybe your vision of what you can achieve is too narrow.

Fête Champêtre (1944) by Dorothea Tanning

Yesterday I went to my pottery class but I was too tired to trim my pottery. Exhaustion made me impatient, and impatience made me rush my work.

But my bad mood was informative: As I sorted through all of the pottery I’d made in the class, I realized that I didn’t want to trim or glaze most of it. Why waste time, e…