I remember my parents telling me to do your best! Everyone can try to do their best. Too often, something prevents us. It could be lack of skills, experience or effort. Too often your past prevents you from success. If you do not have the skills to succeed and fail constantly, you are unlikely to keep trying. Next step is giving up or failure. What are going to do?
Albert Einstein is attributed to have said doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity. Do you keep doing the same things and expecting different results? I see people in that rut all the time. It ranges from weight loss, school, jobs, careers, home life, social life and everything else. Success means doing the things that helps you succeed. When you fail, pick yourself up and approach your problem or goal differently.
Did you do your best today? What can you do differently to do your best? Each day, you should set out to do your best. It starts right away with how you approach everything. Your attitude is everything. You should approach everything positively as if you expect to succeed. If you are successful at everything you do, how would you act? I know I would be happy all the time.
Positive thinking or good attitude is infectious! Given a choice, who would you rather be with, the happy successful people or the complainers? I usually stick with the successful people because the complainers usually bring me down. I am competitive and I find that positive people bring the best out of me. Besides, it is more fun to be around happy people.
How do you approach life? Do you always do a good job? Do you always do the right thing? Every day, I reflect on what I do to determine if I made my best effort. If I did not, I change what I can to do a better job the next day. How do you measure your best? I take every opportunity to give my best. It may be saying good morning to everyone, showing appreciation or encouraging others to do their best and helping others.
Doing your best is vague because it can be interpreted in so many ways. How can you evaluate the “best” performance? You need to set specific goals. How else can you determine if you did your best? Goals have to be measurable to hold yourself accountable for the results. If the goals are set reasonable, meeting your goals would be one way to measure success or your best.
In school, did you get all A’s? If not, did you do your best? Not everyone will get A’s in school, but you can do your best. What was your best in school? In college, I had a 3.65 GPA. Could I have done better? I doubt it because I was carrying 18 and 19 semester credits. For some students, their best may be less and others better. Every student is has different skills and abilities.
Your career and personal life is no different. Some people are promoted quickly and others struggle to find the right career. Does it mean that the person who is not promoted is a failure? No, he/she may not have found the right career. Doing your best means you are doing what you can reasonably achieve. Did you meet your expectations?
I usually start with my goal or what I want to achieve and work backwards to accomplish it. For example, I want to save $X for retirement. How much do I need to invest every year to achieve it? Can I sacrifice enough to meet the annual goals? If it is important to me, I will make the changes necessary to meet my goal. I did the same thing when I wanted to lose weight. I set the goal weight and how much was reasonable to lose each week. I monitored my progress and adjusted my efforts.
Final Thoughts
Doing your best can be vague! Setting goals will keep you accountable and gives you a way to measure your progress. One of my past articles titled “How to Get What You Want?” discusses goal setting and how to achieve success. Since there is no guarantee of success, you need to monitor your progress and adjust your efforts to meet your goals. What are your expectations of success? Whether it is work, or your personal life, how do you know you do your best?
Photo by: dutchbOy
I feel that I try my best at balancing my life. If I tried to do the best I could at everything I do I would get no sleep or do a much lesser variety of tasks. Don’t let the best be the enemy of good.
Doing your best means just that. You can’t do better than your best.
I like the idea you present of setting goals to get around the idea of “doing your best.” I’m a constant goal setter and currently I believe that my main “issue” is that I’ve set goals around the wrong objective. Now I’m backing out and asking, “This may be my best, but is it the BEST goal for me to achieve?” It’s like completely answering the wrong question 100% correctly.
Your goals should fit into an overall plan. Making your best effort may be the daily tasks as well as the goals.
I have always had a hard time knowing personally what my best is. I never feel fully confident that I am doing all I can. At the same time I feel tired and maxed out. It really is hard to know. When I have asked others what they have thought I often get positive feedback so I guess that means I am doing good. I think I inherited the over achiever genes.
In some ways it is easier when you are in school because you get a grade. You can tell if you studied enough or made a big enough effort to do well. In the real world you can measure it by achieving goals or recognition. As a parent, I sometimes think you can take the easy way out. I try to evaluate my performance daily so I constantly adjust my effort.
I always do my best! This why I don’t publish as much as some colleagues but when I do there is madness and excitement in my papers (I’ve been told). I am starting to think about the downsides of ‘over-working’ things though.
What is your goal or outcome? Perfection or something meaningful? I would rather spark a conversation or dialog than write the great American novel.
I definitely set specific goals, make a list, and if I don’t succeed in one of the goals I try to find out what happened. Being specific is definitely important.
Monitoring your progress is the key to be your best. I constantly readjust my efforts to achieve success.
Very good strategy to set goals. You can control your actions, just not the outcome. Make your best steps every day to reach your goals, the rest is out of your hands.
I try to control everything and when I can’t I keep trying anyway. It keeps me motivated to make changes.
I always strive to do my best and the results are my gage of how I’m doing. Great Post.
Reflecting on your performance is real important to improvement.