When Your Best Isn't

Sometimes your very best does not get the result.

You put in the effort. You practice. You show up. And you still do not get the trophy, the clients, or the income you wanted.

That can feel especially maddening when someone else seems to succeed more easily.

But your best right now is not the limit of what your best can become. Instead of making the result mean you should quit, I want you to ask what needs to improve.

Separate current capability from capacity

I spent a summer traveling with my son Christian during the beginning of his professional golf career.

He was doing the work and giving his best, yet not getting the results he wanted. I have seen the same thing with students starting businesses.

Beginning something new brings new failures, even if you have experience in another business or at another level of a sport.

There is what you can do now, and there is what you may be capable of developing. The gap between those can feel frustrating.

To close it, you first need to understand where you are starting.

Ask what your best actually is

Look at four areas: skill, attitude, commitment, and resilience.

What is your best in each one right now? Are you bringing it to the work?

Sometimes a student believes they are at their limit, while I can see much more capacity. That is why the definition deserves questioning.

You may be working hard but not bringing your best attitude. You may have skill but not be practicing commitment. Or you may show up once and struggle to continue after a setback.

Give yourself specific answers instead of a general statement that you are trying your hardest.

Do not confuse not yet with never

The next question is whether your best can become good enough for the result.

Many people look at a disappointing outcome and decide they are not capable. That is when they stop.

Your brain may argue that if you cannot do it, there is no reason to keep spending energy or feeling uncomfortable.

But you cannot discover what you can develop if you stop because you no longer believe in yourself.

That does not mean you can never change direction. You may want something else more. You may not enjoy the process anymore. You want to like your reason.

I do not want the reason to be that you have decided your current skill is all you could ever have.

Identify why your best is not enough right now

Ask for facts and specific answers.

With Christian, we could look at how many drives reached fairways and how many putts dropped. His attitude, commitment, and resilience were strong. The skill results showed where work was needed.

That is different from saying he is not good enough as a person.

Once we identify a gap in performance, we can make a plan to improve it.

Use the same questions in business. What is not working? Which part of your current best needs to become better?

Your answer should help you choose an action, not simply repeat a judgment against yourself.

Plan for the emotional work as well as the skill

Closing the gap requires action. It also requires a plan for attitude, commitment, and resilience.

Your brain may want you to doubt, criticize, or sabotage yourself when the work becomes difficult.

Anticipate that. What will help you continue?

I had many points in my career where my best was not enough to get the job done. I needed to raise the bar on myself and become someone who could do more.

If I had used my effort as proof that improvement was impossible, I would have stopped. Instead, I could ask how to make that effort more effective.

Enjoy the process instead of only tolerating it

At first, I asked whether we could tolerate the journey of finding out what we were capable of.

Watching tournament after tournament, I realized that question was not enough. If a goal takes years, merely tolerating every day is not a life I want.

Can you enjoy the process?

That does not mean enjoying every failed attempt. It means finding value in learning, improving, and discovering more of yourself.

You cannot just keep repeating the same action, endure the same result, and call it progress. The Model reminds us that actions create results. To create something different, examine what needs to change.

The process includes constantly identifying and closing the next gap.

Let the goal call you forward

I believe big, seemingly impossible goals can require more than a small change in behavior. They can ask us to transform who we are being.

The book The Last Word on Power helped me understand declaring a future beyond my current capability.

If you define yourself only by the past, you may conclude you cannot do something you have never done. If you consider who you want to become, the same failure can have a different meaning.

Looking back from a later success, a past failure may seem like a small lesson. In the moment, it may have looked like evidence you could never succeed.

What you decide to make it mean matters.

Use failure as an invitation to improve

I encourage impossible goals because I value the attempt to discover capacity, not only the achievement.

Achievement can be wonderful. But the ambition, anticipation, and creation along the way are their own experience.

Ask whether the journey would be worth living even if you never receive the final result.

Then bring your attention back to what you can work on now. What is your best? Why is it not producing the result yet? What specific plan would help it improve?

Your best can be honest and wholehearted without being sufficient today. Let that become a call to grow rather than a final definition of you.