This comes from a book I’ve been reading, Inner Excellence. It makes a distinction between two things: do my best, and be my best.
Here’s how I understand it.
Do my best means this: in the state I’m in right now, give everything I have. This one is entirely within my control. It is completely up to me whether I give one hundred per cent of what I’ve got today.
Be my best means performing at my peak. This is what we say to ourselves before the moments that count: this time I have to be at my best. Except it isn’t within our control. However well rested you are, however hard you’ve trained, nothing guarantees peak performance on the day that matters. Hold yourself to that standard and the anxiety is unavoidable.
It was the first time I’d seen the two separated that cleanly, and it genuinely delighted me. Because I noticed this about myself: when I’m facing something difficult, something with real stakes, I get anxious and tight about not performing well, and at worst I just don’t do the thing.
Change the frame, though. Don’t aim to be your best, aim to do your best in whatever state you’re in. Everything loosens. The nervous system settles. Because doing your best is something you can actually accomplish. On some days, for some tasks, your do-my-best will be sixty per cent of your be-my-best. And sixty per cent is enough.
There’s a second effect I like. If you measure yourself by do-my-best, you get to celebrate far more often. Yesterday I went to HIIT. I’d been freediving at the weekend, so my body was tired, and measured against be-my-best that session was a mess. Measured against do-my-best, I’d give myself a hundred. I gave it everything I had.
That’s the everyday version of it. And if do-my-best is the target, you’ll also attempt harder things, because there’s no comparison with anyone else and no objective best to fall short of. There’s only your own measure: I gave it what I had.
I find the idea genuinely freeing. It stops us flinching, and it lets us celebrate ourselves far more often.