Marketing From The Heart: Issue # 25

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Marketing From The Heart: Issue # 25
http://www.zerald.com

By Tom St. Louis

"The Shortest Distance Between You And Greater
Profits(tm)"
September 06, 2002
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Doing Your Best Is The Enemy of Success

This issue of Marketing From The Heart concerns the
mindset of success. In order to achieve on the highest
level, you have a decision to make. You must decide
whether you want to do your best, or if you'd rather
do what you set out to do.

Let me explain.

Doing your "best" means nothing. Aiming for a specific
goal and reaching it -- that means everything.

Out there in the marketplace of ideas, it is widely
accepted that all a person can do is "their best".
After a person says they did their best, we're all
supposed to slap them on the back and say, "Way to
go! There's nothing more anyone could have done!"

This idea just doesn't hold up to a close examination.
Letting "your best" govern your results is to do
yourself a profound disservice. My goal today is to
convince you to throw the notion of "doing your best"
on the dust heap of discarded ideas and look at
what you want to achieve in very specific terms.

When Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile, he
did not do "his best". He did something a lot more
important. He broke a mental barrier that existed in
countless millions of minds. He did something
specific, measurable - and EXTERNAL! Doing your best
is vague, immeasurable and internal. Maybe some of
Roger Bannister's opponents did their best, but we
don't remember their names.

When I was sixteen I went to football camp and got in
the best shape of my life. I learned something very
powerful about my perceived limitations which nobody
can ever take from me. The external standards by
which I was judged allowed me to achieve a lot more
than I would ever have dreamed possible.

It started on day one of camp. The coach had us run a
seemingly unbelievable number of laps. If we had known
in advance what would be demanded of us, I don't think
any of us would have shown up. But we did it (most of
us) and amazed ourselves.

If the coach had said "Run as fast as you can for as
long as you can. Do your best!", I probably would
have completed ten or fifteen laps of the field and
then stopped, huffing and puffing and sweating and
given my self a pat on the back.

But my coach did not allow me to do (only) my best.
What a disservice that would have been! Instead, he
demanded something much more specific. First he had
us run ten laps. Then we did fifty jumping jacks and
twenty pushups. Then we ran ten more laps and did some
more jumping jacks and pushups. Then we did it again
and again and again.

At a certain point, I wasn't sure whether I would be
able to keep up. Each time we completed ten more
circuits of the field, I thought: "Surely this is
enough". Some boys quit, some got sick, some fainted
and most of us completed all that was demanded of us.

I know that I did at least five times what I would
have dreamed my best to be.

It's debatable whether the coach pushed us "too far",
and that's not really the point. There is no doubt
in my mind that "my best" in that situation was a
completely irrelevant, abstract and meaningless
concept.

Here's another example. I once declared that I would
walk the length of the Peloponnese - solo -- to raise
funds for a Canadian charity. It was a stupid goal
because of my poor planning and organization. I had
the wrong shoes, and no time and no place to shop
for new ones once I arrived. I had left myself only
enough time to walk about 23 miles a day (as the crow
flies) to get to my boat.

By the end of day two my feet were torn to shreds.
After about five days, my knees and ankles and hips
were wracked with pain and my feet were covered in
painful bleeding blisters.

As if that was not enough, the map significantly
misrepresented the distances and I had to walk twelve
vigorous hours a day in 90 degree heat and punishing
sun to reach my daily goal -- sometimes more.

I was determined not to quit, because I had to get
to the port city of Githio by a certain date. It was
an external and specific standard which would be the
measure of my achievement. Even though my goal was
arbitrary, and admittedly stupid; and even though my
preparation was inexcusably lax, the goal became
extremely important and meaningful for me – BECAUSE
IT WAS EXTERNAL AND SPECIFIC!

The walk was painful, difficult, challenging. I did
not do my best. My best is an absurdity in that
context. The only thing worth doing was to get to
Githio on time, and "my best" might have been to
walk ten miles on the first day and simply say,
"I have the wrong shoes, I can't go on. No reasonable
person would expect me to continue in these absurd
conditions".

I just wasn't willing to do that. The only thing was
to get to Githio by September 2 -- period. Otherwise
I would have missed the boat, literally.

So I did it. I made it on time, and raised $6,000 for
a charity that I believed in. The pain has faded and
all I feel now is pleasure. I will always look on that
experience as one of the great joys and one of the
best learning experiences of my life.

I'm not asking you to climb a mountain or walk the
Peloponnese. What I want you to know is that in your
business and personal goals, doing your best is just
an excuse to quietly fail with a built in
rationalization.

It's far better to set an external and specific goal
and measure yourself against it. When you set an
external and measurable "stretch goal", you give
yourself the opportunity to find out about resources
inside yourself that you would never find out about
any other way.

There's more in you than you know. If you do "your
best", you'll never be able to get it out.

Go to issue #26
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