Leadership guru, Tom Peters, recently tweeted, “I honestly have no room in my vocabulary for the word “best.” It is a static word in a dynamic world.”

As a life coach, I’ve encouraged many people to always do their best and I’m OK with that, but there can be a problem with that philosophy.

The problem is, what happens next?

Once you’ve become the best, what else is there to aspire to?

I’ve also said often that, “the only thing harder than becoming number one is staying number one.”

It’s the reason why in sports it’s so hard for a championship team to repeat the following year.

Once we’ve reached the top of the mountain, it’s easy to enjoy the view and then start slowly descending.

The other problem with aiming to be the best is that it can be demoralising.

If you’re in business does being the best mean making more money than Bill Gates or Warren Buffett?

If you’re in sport does this mean aiming to beat Lebron James or Tiger Woods?

Where do you start?

What should you do first?

How do you get there?

Is it even possible or plausible?

Why should I bother?

And so we give up on aspiring for excellence before we even start.

We don’t live in a static world.

We live in a dynamic environment that demands continued development and growth.

We also live in a world that sometimes placed unrealistic expectations on its inhabitants, often causing us to give up before we take the first step.

With that in mind, let me encourage you today to stop aiming to be the best and simply aim to be better.

Be better than a year ago, better than last week, better than yesterday.

Don’t rest on the laurels of a fantastic achievement, and don’t give up because you think that success is unreachable, but keep reassessing your goals and never stop setting your standards higher.

What are you going to do better today?

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