Be your best!
Life has an amazing ability toward abundance. Year after year, throughout history humans have gotten faster, stronger and better. We grow more food, live healthier lives, live longer, and are smarter now than we have ever been. Generation after generation we face challenges, beat them and improve our world. We do this on an individual basis and as part of our larger society.
But even in cities like London, New York and Toronto where there is enormous success everywhere, millions struggle with failure. Why?
All it takes for us to become substantially better people and live substantially better lives is incremental success. Every time we stretch ourselves, every time we do more, every time we do better we increase our capacity. As long as we challenge ourselves we grow. In contrast, every day we do less than we are able our capacity shrinks.
We are growing or we are dying – there is no other option.
For many people life is something that happens to them. Many people are not aware that they are really the authors of their own live, that they and they alone are responsible. We all look inside ourselves, decide the kind of world we want to see and then project that view outside of ourselves thereby creating our world. Some people see a world of decease, pain and suffering. Other people, living in the same city, often in the same street see a world of health, opportunity and abundance.
Every decision we make is a reflection of what we think. It is easy to know how people think by looking at their lives. The current reality of our life – our health, wealth and happiness is a direct result of past thoughts. The extra five or ten pounds of weight around our belly didn’t just arrive there. The credit card debt didn’t just happen. And the fully paid mortgage didn’t just happen either. For good for bad our thousands of daily decisions to be our best or less than our best will determine our life.
As an experienced sales recruiter I can look at a candidate’s CV or résumé and see what kind of life track they are on – growing or failing – the path is usually clear.
It is easy!
The choice to be our best is not an Olympic task. It is a matter of choosing the better option thousands of times a day. Do we get up or hit the snooze button? Do we rush out the door poorly prepared for the day setting us up for a string of failures or take the time face the day prepared? Do we invest in our coming week by doing the laundry; shining our shoes and reading something that can expand our minds? Do we always go for that morning run or afternoon walk? Or, do we always have desert, always ‘have fries with that’, and never turn down another drink? It is easy to do the best thing, it is easy to be our best but it is also easy not to! The problem is that the result of choosing doesn’t come at the end of the first day. Our lives are an accumulation of thousands of little decisions to be our best or not to be our best.
In selling, this is sticking to the basics – make the calls, build the pipeline and close the business. Do this day in and out and you will succeed. Do this more and better than anyone else and you will triumph!
In money, this is making careful decisions, living within our means and investing for growth.
Being our best is a matter of being aware of the thousands of choices we are making every day and to choose to always be better, kinder, and more honest.
There is no trying. In every little action we are either our best or we are less than that. One leads down the hill towards failure and the other leads up the mountain of success!