Every once in a while you have an experience of a different standard that puts your expectations in check. This happened to me today on a drive from Lake Como to Venice, Italy yesterday afternoon.
We were driving along and made it somewhere east of Milan when my youngest needed an anticipated (by me) yet unexpected (for him) bio-break. So we pulled over at the next rest stop, which had a gas station and the requisite bathrooms. After achieving what we had stopped for, we walked out through the convenience store which was cleverly and likely not accidentally located between the bathrooms and the exit.
Expectations…
Now if you’ve ever been into a gas station convenience store in the United States, especially those in the country (I live in northeast Georgia so I am most familiar with these), you’ve probably seen the goods for sale: plastic wrapped snack/junk food, boiled eggs, beef jerky, 5 Hour Energy drinks, cheap cigars and maybe a hot dog station and a Slurpee machine if you’re lucky. Everything in these stores is probably better for your dentist or your heart surgeon than it is for you.
Standards…
In Italy and everywhere else I’ve been in Europe things are a little different. The convenience stores have a small section of the requisite dense yet junky energy treats, but the majority of the shelves were stocked with a sumptuous variety of cheeses, sausages, fresh fruits, breads and fine chocolates (no, I do not consider chocolate to be junk food). It blew me away. I looked like a Whole Foods store, not a gas station. (For my international readers, Whole Foods is an upmarket natural foods/grocery store).
Realizations…
Then it hit me. The standard we have in the United States for snack food or “travel” food conditions our expectations. You don’t expect much when you stop at a rest stop, in fact, you’ve struck gold if they have a fast food restaurant, like a McDonald’s or a Burger King. That has become normal to us, but it is far from the norm in Europe in my experience.
And if you compare the average American to the average Italian, Swiss or French person, you’ll find that they are half the people we Americans are…literally. While Europeans have grown larger over the last couple of decades (possibly due in part to the adoption of American lifestyle habits and culinary influences), it doesn’t take but ten minutes in Europe to see that Americans have consumed themselves into a big mess.
The nice part about all this is that lifestyle and dietary choices are modifiable and the negative effects of poor choices in both areas are generally and relatively easily reversible. I suppose the first step is realizing that a new standard and a different set of expectations are within reach!
Gregory Hake 
It is amazing what we can learn when we get outside what is “normal” for us. I have had people from very small towns tell me that they lived in the best place in the world and they would never want to live anywhere else. This could be true, for them, but the key was that they’d never been anywhere else!
It is important to be open to seeing different things, and to integrating them into your life, into your family, or into your culture and society, if it’s right.
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We can apply these principles to most any situation can’t we Gregg. For example, we are training some of our managers right now about what it means to have Standards & Expectations for their employees. And like the example that you cite re our ‘convenient’ eating habits in the United States and how they have gotten us in trouble, the same holds true in the workplace. Having high standards and expectations raises the level of performance for most of the employees, leading to a healthier feeling of accomplishment. And having a healthier feeling of accomplishment leads to a happier and healthier life in all areas of their living, just like our eating habits do.
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It’s important to not let our surroundings determine our expectations.
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Often enough a really exceptional new business is born of just such a realization! It is odd how developments tend to follow such predictable norms, and how unlikely most people are to thing or imagine outside those norms! There is a lot of open space for innovation when this is realized!
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The bar for expectation is usually set by what you know and that is usually set by what you’ve been exposed to. This point is actually one of the benefits of travel, especially as children; that’s when many of our bars are set. I’d love for the average Europem to travel in the USA. They’d be amazed at how easy it can be to accomplish most legal necessities. Did you ever read a lease in France or get a business license in Italy? Being exposed to different cultures helps to prevent a constriction of thought. Sounds like a wonderful trip and a valuable experience for your children!
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