What is your best effort? As part of a personal development program I am participating in (BTE), this was my journal theme for the week. Every day, I write on this topic- best effort. Some days the pen flows for what feels like an eternity. My handwriting gets messy and hard to read as my grip gets tired.
Other days, I stare at the empty pink page that is longing to be filled with words. I manage to haphazardly fill the page with ideas clumped together like ants surrounding a fallen cookie on the pavement, carrying crumb by crumb back to their colony. No rhyme or reason, or making sure the sentences flow from left to right, just random thoughts making a circular motion around the words “best effort.”
Am I failure on the days I don’t produce more? No.
What I’ve come to realize is that best effort needs to be detached from the goal or the outcome. For me, best effort is committing to taking action. Best effort is doing what I say I’m going to do. Best effort is being present. Best effort is consciously deciding not to be paralyzed by perfection. Best effort is showing up and surrendering to the moment. Best effort can be as simple as just being.
I encourage all of you to define your best effort. Take away the outcome. Take away the goal. Take away the ideas of what things should look like. Whether you’re defining your best effort when it comes to your workout, your homeschooling skills, your ability to show up as a partner, your stock of household supplies, your professional career, your ability to check off items on a to-do list, please remember that no matter how you show up today, as long as you are showing up, that may be your best effort for this very moment.
You get to decide. Let it ebb, let it flow, own it, and let it make you proud- whatever it looks like in this moment.