I was recently asked this question by a reporter and I wrote
in response:

Personal standards determine your degree of tolerance. The higher
the standard the less you'll tolerate. Personal standards are
important but of even greater importance is discriminating where to
set standards. If you have high standards for everything - you'll
eventually have a nervous breakdown. But high standards for areas
that are most important are critical for developing motivation to
improve those areas.

Human beings take action when they are fed up with something, not
concerned (which is when they complain) but fed up and will not
tolerate any more.

If we broke this down into action steps:
1) Determine the areas of your life that are most important. (I
define the six major areas of life as: physical, mental, spiritual,
social, emotional and financial)
2) Now describe where you're at in those areas. What does the
current reality look like. What are you currently SETTLING for?
3) Now describe what you'd like your life to look like in these
areas. What kind of personal standards would you need to set in
order to get fed up with the way things are now? (so you can
develop the motivation to take action)
4) Now in your mind decide that you will no longer tolerate the way
things are and decide now that you're not sure what you're going to
do, but decide that you're going to do something!
5) Now begin thinking with a blank sheet of paper, write down all
the ideas as possible 'plans' for improving each of the six major
areas of life. Consider the best idea and take action on it. Trust
that although it may not be the best idea, if you at least take
action on something better ideas will come along and they'll be
easier to carry out because you've got momentum.

All actions in life are experiments. And failure should be thought
of as feedback. If something doesn't work, try something else. If
that does not work, try something else. Personal standards are key
for staying motivated to continue in this process.