A friend made me so happy with a statement that truly opened my eyes.
“We all want to do our Best, you know,” she said. “But our Best is not the same thing every day!”
Ain’t it the truth?
Only I can know what my Best is right now; no one else can be the judge of that. But here’s the thing: sometimes I am appalled by how wimpy my Best appears to be. Some days, I’m all thumbs, I fail and hurt, I want to give up, roll into a ball, and disappear. It seems that’s the Best I can do, and I have no will to do anything else.
It doesn’t happen a lot, but it happens.
We have an idea about what we want to be and do, what we expect from our lives. We’ve been taught that if we work hard and do our Best, we can achieve our dreams.
It’s surely true that not working hard or living up to your Best will get you precisely nowhere. So these are excellent values for all of us to hold.
Problem is, there are still those days when your Best is, well, not so good. You can’t remember where you got yesterday’s motivation. Today, your Best is shot, a deflated balloon in the corner, useless and dull.
Now, we can understand this in one of two ways. Either you’re a selfish slacker and it’s only stupidity and hatefulness that keeps you from hopping to it; or you are able to distinguish between You and your feelings. In the latter case, You remain a noble, lovable, valuable part of your world but your feelings may for unexplained reasons take a sudden turn into the abyss.
I say we need to give up thinking that we have control over these darker days. Our Best, indeed, wants to show us a different face at those times. The difficult emotions we experience are better dealt with by observing them as passively as possible, rather than fighting them.
And then you can start thinking of your Best as something naturally given, not something you made from scratch. You can’t take credit for your Best; it is simply the clearest expression of who you are in a given moment. So you also can’t be blamed for the times when your Best is under-performing. Both states occur naturally and are essentially beyond your control.
If your Best seems to have gone on holiday, what good does it do to feel guilty and beat yourself up about it? Doesn’t it make a whole lot more sense to quietly figure out what’s going on and proceed – with love – from there?
Dark days require only that we observe them, respect them, and remember that we aren’t in control. By resisting the low-energy/negative outlook mood of a bad day, we only put on a mask, while the darkness festers just beneath the surface.
Might as well deal with it while it’s happening.
Journal writing is the Best way to ensure you get all you can out of letting dark days roll over you. Detail your observations. Let your emotions have full voice. Ask questions and look hard for answers.
Journaling lets us explore not only what we think is our Best but also what we experience as our worst. When we let both sides express we achieve a new equilibrium. And that’s a great way to elevate once again to your Best!
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Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/50757990@N07/5892360536/
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