Happy Friday, G.O. readers!
As promised, I got out another Girl October blog entry in the same week! Yay! I’m so proud of myself. My new policy is to type in sections each day until I have a complete entry. I’d love to get out at least two per week–more if possible. But enough with the rambling, let’s get on to the good stuff.
Today’s topic is about doing your best. This is one of the Four Agreements Don Miguel Ruiz talks about in his book, “The Four Agreements”. It’s a really good book. It’s not too long, and it doesn’t take forever to get to the point. There is some set up before he gets into “the meat” of the principles, (where he talks about the Toltec traditions of his ancestors), but it’s all really interesting and helps you to better understand where he’s coming from. I could do a separate blog entry for each principle, (and just might), but today I’m going to focus on “doing your best”.
What I like about this principle is that it doesn’t place the excess pressure on you that you might expect when first reading the phrase, “do your best”. Ruiz explains, (and I’m paraphrasing), that essentially, your best is going to vary from day to day. On a day where you feel physically or emotionally drained, your best won’t be the same as when you’re well rested and feeling good about life. Some days your best at any given task may only be 10%, but on another day, your best might be 80% on that same task.
It’s also important not to try to compare your best with someone else’s best. That is going to vary according to each person’s unique skills and talents. I have a trick knee; so my best in a marathon isn’t going to be the same as someone’s who’s in great physical shape and has no knee issues. They’re obviously going to do way better in that marathon. But according to Ruiz, that wouldn’t matter as long as I gave the best I had to give. I can never give someone else’s best–and they can never give mine. And that’s a great thing to remember! We already make enough comparisons among ourselves that cause us unnecessary stress.
| Image from yourbeautifullife.org |
And here’s something else about doing our best that I found interesting. Mr. Ruiz made it a point to say, that we should not try to do more than our best. You would think this would be common sense, but actually it isn’t. To a lot of us out here that are perfectionists, it can be hard to just accept our best. We want there to be a way to do better than our best; but just like with making comparisons between our best and other people’s, trying to do better than our best also causes us undue stress. You can only give what you have to give and not an ounce more. But he also stresses the flip side. Never do less than your best. Give everything the best you’ve got. As long as you know you’ve done the very best you could, you’ll never have a reason to feel bad or guilty about your performance or effort.
So there you have it–always do your best. For a more in depth reading about the subject, check out Don Miguel Ruiz’s book, “The Four Agreements”. You can find it on Amazon.com (and I’m sure in local book stores). Here is a link for it on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Agreements-Practical-Personal-Freedom/dp/1878424319/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1437050901&sr=1-1&keywords=the+four+agreements
Here’s to wishing you guys an awesome weekend! Do your best to make it a good one!
Girl October