I stumbled across this issue in a couple of Linkedin posts recently, particularly Debbie Wosskow’s, and I made a couple of quick comments. I let the ideas just float around in my head for a while and in the end I felt like I wanted to add a short post on the topic myself.
When we’re busy, tired, and stressed, it can be hard to get any perspective but easy to feel our best isn’t enough. For someone who does a lot of work on both acceptance and seeking value, as well as projecting a path forward, I do have some thoughts on this issue. I think the idea of doing your best or doing your absolute most, as I saw someone refer to it, causes trouble on a couple of levels.
The first level is related to really understanding what our best or our absolute most actually means to us. Otherwise, they really are terms just for us to beat ourselves with because doing our best or absolute most is, by definition, exhausting (see the picture!). I think, on this level, getting clear what our best is in a particular context or on a certain day, when this, this, and this is going on, is super important. In that way, our best is much more relative and it's under our control.
It is also worth practicing acceptance on this level as well. Not acceptance in the sense of judging something being ok but just simply in the neutral sense of accepting what has got done today, fact: it can’t be changed, it’s done, a line can be drawn, ready for another day. If that means tuning into something specific more the next day, ok, but at 'X’ O’clock on a given night, “Right, this day is done, whatever went on in it went on, finish.” Then, it’s less about exhaustion, guilt, disappointment, and regret, and more about just closing the day down, taking the wins and the learning, then resting and moving on.
This begins to relate to the second level, which is just to look at it differently. Our best is something that is done over time – see some of Shane Parrish’s work here – something that is part of a strategy, that is part of us working towards something. Then, the regular showing up and the ongoing process of that is our best. The degrees of what that means each day we can't allow ourselves to be burdened by - apart from it maybe informing us about how we want to show up on any given next day.
What we can do, instead of measuring or looking for our best every day, is one, of course, show up, but two, save our judgement for those bonus days that come out of the blue. We judge when something goes well, when a job is well done, or when we get a good result, we celebrate the wins. Take the long view and be kind to yourself.
This is really just a way of accepting the natural ups and downs of the process, and all that comes from it, but being tuned into the wins when they come, in all their shapes and sizes, and enjoying them.
As Gemma Atkinson wisely noted, “It takes real dedication, time and energy to rejig how your brain links your self-worth to your output level.” From our perspective, here at twenty2beyond, that is work that we believe is well worth the commitment and dedication. If you do want help with this, please do drop us a line.
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