Do the Best You Can

Going off to college was a big change for me. Besides the academic challenges, I was moving from a small town on the Texas coastal plains to the heart of Dallas. I had never been away from home by myself for more than a week at time. Also as I mentioned in Kindness Changed My Life, I was trying out a whole new way of relating to people, being kind to them. That was a lot to deal with.

Of course my parents wanted to see where I was going to school so they helped me move in. My dad had mostly been a small town guy, but spent six months in New York City going to orthodontic school. To be polite, I’ll say he didn’t care for the Big Apple. We got to my dorm room and there was a tag on the door with two names. One was mine and where I was from. The other said Bill’s name and that he was from New Jersey.

My dad was the kind of guy who could say something good about almost anything. He looked me in the eye, put his hand on my shoulder, paused a long time and said “Well do the best you can.”

Those words have come up a lot in my life. For me it meant, winning, and giving it my all until I got what I wanted. I focused on the word best, which meant being better than others and not letting up until I was. As you might guess I was very competitive and a sore loser. I hated loosing, so I did my best, not to. I got good at winning, but my life was a roller coaster ride. Life consisted of preparing for competition and then either the high of winning or low of losing.

As I got older and wasn’t able to compete athletically anymore so I found other forms of competition. As I said in The Great Thief, I was comparing myself to many different people trying desperately to be better than them. This was a losing battle because there was always a new person coming along that was even better. I was in this imaginary competition that caused me to constantly look at what was wrong with me, because if I fixed it then I could be the best. It was like a song was playing in my head on an endless loop. It reminds me of Your No Good by Linda Rondstadt.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0vJNp5asqc

I had to get off this endless treadmill. In Enneagram High Five I talked about finding a way to understand myself and my abilities. Here’s an example. I am a five on the enneagram, the investigator. I mostly navigate the world by trying to understand it rather than through emotions. It’s hard for me to have emotional empathy. I don’t put myself into another person’s shoes by feeling the way they do. It just seldom happens. However, I am good at seeing multiple viewpoints of a situation. Instead of feeling like someone else does I can think about what it must be like and gain empathy following that path. It’s a way for me to do my best instead of trying to be like someone else.

In coaching I was successful partly by working on player’s weaknesses when necessary, but mostly by taking advantage of their strengths. That’s putting them in positions where they can do the best they can with the gifts they have. I also had a special way of motivating the players. I would catch them doing something right and keep telling them that’s who they were. They would do their best, to prove me right.

Once again I found success applying the methods I used on players in my own life. I started spending time and energy on my gifts, rather than beating myself up about my weaknesses. I learned to address my weaknesses when needed, but don’t dwell on them. It’s finding the right balance point as I mentioned in Balance.

You might be wondering whatever happened between Bill and me. The first year was kind of rocky given our different backgrounds and focusing on each other’s faults. However, we moved past that and have been close friends for almost forty five years. We were in each other’s wedding, email almost every day and call when we need advice on the harder questions in life. He gave me advice on starting this blog and a clock at my wedding with an inscription that said, “Do the Best You Can.” Our key was looking for the best in each other. That helped us do the best we could.

May you have enough today, one moment at a time.