What’s the difference between being THE best and being YOUR best?

Be your best
Read on to find out the answer – it could make a huge difference to your quality of life and happiness.
Being the Best
Being the best is about beating everyone in sight, reigning supreme, consistently held out as the champion, number one, numero uno.
It’s about winning and losing. It’s about coming out on top every time. Taking the gong, the award, the plaudits. Making the teary thank-you speech (don’t forget your mum and your agent).
It is a noble aspiration to aim for being the best in your field. It provides motivation, others to compare against, ways to measure how you are doing.
We can revieve acclaim for our endeavours and feed our need to be recognized along the way. With dedication, hard work, a clear plan and a little luck we might even make it to the pinnacle.
Yet if this is the sole focus of everything we do, it can be destructive and exhausting too. Time passes, things change, life moves on.
Great champions lose their magic touch and fall from the top. In sport, think of Tiger Woods’ travails, Lance Armstrong cycling Le Tour with no chance of winning, Roger Federer the world number 3.
In cinema, do you remember F. Murray Abraham, Geralidine Page or Lousie Fletcher? They are all Oscar winners, the best in their field. They couldn’t stay at the top forever.
Being the best is a temporary status. It can take a lifetime to achieve and can be snatched away in seconds.
Being the best also requires you to play by someone else’s rules. Who really defines the best accountant, entrepreneur, geologist, academic, dancer, painter or lawyer. The best is chosen by popular acclaim, by an arbirary set of rules, some awards, a poll of polls, the whim of a boss or manager.
Striving to be the best is exhausting, disempowering and worst of all the rules can change at any time!
Be your Best
What happens when you try to be your best?
This subtle switch in thinking can untold happiness, peace and achievement.
When you strive to be your best, you set your own rules. The pressure of constant comparison and striving for success goes away.
You’re in a one horse race and you decide what determines the winner. Only you can be your best you.
Being your best means being able to look yourself in the mirror every day and say that you’re doing the best you can. That is all we can ask from ourself after all. It means learning to enjoy the successes and the failures and to learn from both. To be better next time.
It means that you can have an off day, give yourself a break and push on.
It also means that you can be flexible in how you approach life. The end game is all about being happy, living with yourself and finding peace.
You can still set big, hairy audacious goals for your life and career. However as long as you do your best and can look yourself in the eye, these are open to change at any time.
Learning how to be your best can transform life from an endless struggle to please others and get to the top into a self-directed journey lived without regret.
How to be your best every day
At the beginning of the day, look yourself in the mirror and say your daily intention out loud- “I will be the best that I can be today”.
Each morning, select the most important thing you’d like to get done today and write down that intention in a journal – “I will write an outstanding blog post today”
If you find yourself drifting and procrastinating during the day, close your eyes and repeat 10 times “I am the best that I can be”. Now refocus and put 100% into doing whatever feels most important (that could be work, taking a proper break or whatever feels right)
At the end of each day, look yourself in the mirror and be honest about your day. If you did your best, congratualte yourself and rebouble your efforts. If you faced challenges, forgive yourself and work out how to be even better tomorrow.
Over to you
If you’d like a little inspiration to be your best, get free updates from Less Ordinary Living by clicking here.
Please leave a comment and share with others:
- Do you strive to do your best or be your best?
- What techniques do you use to make the most of each day?
- Have you ever been the best and how did it feel?
Photo Credit: Kevin Dooley (Flickr Creative Commons) – one of the best out there