When your best isn’t good enough

I often used this expression in the past “I did my best and that’s all that matters” and I hear people say it so often that it’s almost become a cliché.

One day, I realised that even though I may have done my best, it may not have been enough. Think about this for a moment: What if your best, is someone else’s average or worst? Read the last sentence again slowly.

Take the workplace for example; you try really hard to understand the new computer system and you’re quite proud of your efforts, but then another employee comes along and picks it up much faster than you do and gets more work done in the same time. Who will be considered when a promotion comes up? Although you tried really hard, it wasn’t good enough.

Here’s another example; You try your best to be a good mother. You try to do exactly as your mother did and you follow all her examples. But you still feel that something is missing, like your child isn’t truly happy. Then you see another mother who has less experience that you and she seems to have everything under control and her child is happy and fulfilled.

This is the reason why people get very frustrated after trying their hardest year after year and not getting where they want to get to or not becoming who they want to be. It’s like they are always one step behind.

The fact is that many times, more is required from us. Let’s go back to the workplace example. It may be that you need to stay behind after hours for a while and practise using the system. You may need to do a short course to brush up on your IT skills, therefore raising the bar on ‘your best’.

How about the mother example? What you learned from your mother may not be enough to successfully raise a child in today’s society. You may need to read some parenting books, or get advice from another parent with children of a similar age to your child.

Think about what else you can do to get better in those areas of your life that seem to be stuck. How about sitting down and taking some time to think and then plan out the extra things you could do? Then you can start to dig around, discover new things, and so on. Then your best will actually take you places.