Be good.
Anyone who has been coached by me in the past couple years has heard me talk about BeIng Good. The idea is something I’ve practiced for some time but was put more into context in a talk by John Herdman, Canadian Men’s National Soccer Coach, who previously managed to turn a distraught Canadian Women’s National team into world class competitors. Take some time to listen to his Ted Talk, it’s both light and enlightening. (https://youtu.be/yO57_nx0weQ)
It is something I preach but also something I practice.
Strive for 80% effort in everything you do, every day, on every play, in every meeting, at every turn, even in practice, with your career, family life, education, health, and challenges you face, and you shall have success in life. His philosophy, if everyone on his team lived above that 80% line in effort, at all times, it wouldn’t matter what star athletes were out there as they’d be successful or at a minimum be satisfied with their achievements. In his words “live above the line and the universe will bring you stuff”.
We can be very successful in many aspects of life by being good in many aspects of life. You don’t need to be an expert, a master, or perfect. Plus chasing perfection is unrealistic and requires a full time commitment to that one task without ever reaching perfection, not worth it for me. Nobody and no task will ever be perfect, there will always be room for improvement and the bar will always be raised. Focusing on life overall will have much more impact. In my opinion, balance is actually extremely important to achieving success overall.
Did you know we are never really giving 100%. Why do you think athletes constantly improve, records are constantly broken, and higher marks attained, because nobody before them had reached perfection and nobody after them will reach it. There is always room for improvement. One of the things I dislike is when people say “I gave 110%”. First you can’t give more than what you have, so your limit is 100% effort (that’s just simple math and logic). Secondly, you’re wrong because you didn’t. You might have felt like you gave 110% but in reality you gave more than you usually do, so maybe you hit 75% effort. And that’s on a good day, most days or weeks we likely are really only putting in 60% effort, sometimes less.
I had one of this days this past week, ran a standard 11km run and struggled mightily from the 4km mark onwards.
There may have been other factors at play, but my mind and body would not allow me to give more or I was not allowing myself to give more. My mind and body we’re giving up on me or I was giving up on myself.
My point here is once you realize this you’ll feel much better about the efforts you put in and the gains you achieve along the way, maybe you then manage to turn a 50% effort into 60% effort by knowing all this. I definitely know by finishing the 11km run last week, I was putting in more than I thought I could 7km earlier.
Our mind is selfish, like most other things in life, and it only allows your body to go well under 100% effort to leave some for itself to survive.
Striving for perfection is one of the most daunting and soul sucking tasks we can do, it’s unattainable and gives us a constant sense of failure. Failure leads to quitting unless you’re taking in the lesson to be learned and moving forward.
This is often the reason why hard work beats talent, as talent doesn’t have the ability to put in the higher effort.
Know your limits, then keep in mind that’s not your limit and there is always more to give. Feeling exhausted at the end of the day, trust me there is more there to give. Feeling burned out with work and career, trust me there is always more to give or ways to be more effective and efficient. There is always room to achieve more with the 1440 minutes in the day, you just need to realize it.
With the marathon (42.2kms), I knew I’d never run that far before....I’d never run more than 21.1kms before that day. But I also knew that I had more to give, then more, and then more. For that one task I was striving for 100% effort, but looking back in hindsight I probably wasn’t even close to giving everything I could as there is always more to give.
I put in a strong effort in all aspects of my life, but I never strive for perfection, being an expert, or focus too much on one particular thing. Be Good in all aspects, not overdoing it in any and you strike balance.
Dad Bud
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