This is something that I struggled with a lot, and to be honest it still rears it’s ugly head every now and again.
Most of us doubt our abilities, we feel we are not good enough, that there is always someone who is better than us and this ends up causing paralysis. It holds us back, it stops us from even trying, we fear judgment because we know there is someone out there with more knowledge, more experience, cleverer, better speaker, writer, teacher and so on. We know we are not the best, so we stay stuck, we play safe.
If we focus on being the best, if that’s our goal, then where does that leave us? Being the best for most of us is unachievable. The world is a large place and there is always going to be somebody better than us out there. So if we are striving to be the best then we are left with feelings of overwhelm. It feels way too big, unobtainable, we ‘know’ we are never going to be able to achieve it. The difficulty comes because we believe we should be striving to be the best. Why? Because we are told this constantly from parents, schools, society, media, all telling us that we should be the best and yet we know we are not. Doesn’t do a lot for our self-worth does it? We know the majority of us will never be the best in the world at what we do.
So, what do we do?
Do we just shrug our shoulders, give up, not try, be content with mediocre, wash our hands of responsibility for our own success?
Or could there be a way we could look at it differently, reframe, think of it in a different way so that it start to work for us rather than against us? So that it seems achievable, manageable and doesn’t leave us feeling overwhelmed.
So, instead of looking around me at all the other Pilates teachers, RTT therapists, Authors out there, I decided to be the absolute best that I could be. I stopped looking, comparing myself to others and focused on me, my uniqueness, my skills, my abilities. I went from trying to be the best, to being the best that I could be – big difference.
Everything improved – my teaching got better and better, I allowed ME to shine through, I trusted in myself and believed in me. I stopped focusing out there and focused inside. It really was a game changer.
You see being the best doesn’t even have to be big, I started being the best parent, the best partner, the best daughter, the best friend and so on.
I stopped hiding behind the fear of being the best and started putting my energies into being the best that I can be.
I took responsibility for my thoughts and re framed them, simple but effective.
Big life changes often happens in simple, small but consistent actions.