A person’s growth ceiling largely does not depend on how much they push subjectively, but on the highest standard they have ever been exposed to. If someone stays in a low-standard environment for the long term, they begin to treat ambiguity as normal, completion as the result, and not reviewing as the end; but once they have seen clearer expression, more rigorous processes, and more stable ways of collaborating, their cognitive frame of reference will be recalibrated. Standards are not established through persuasion, but by being replaced with real samples. Once you have seen a higher version, it becomes difficult to continue default-accepting a lower version.