What does giving your best mean? Why would you want to give your best, always? Giving your best is the path to growth and the path to success in all areas of your life. It’s the path to self-confidence, self-esteem, and healthy relationships with yourself and all the other people in your life. Giving your best puts you in the moment, and takes you out of feeling guilty or upset about the past, or worrying and stressing about the future. Here are my tips on how to give your best always.
HAVE A POSITIVE MORNING ROUTINE
Nothing paves the way for a successful day of giving your best like setting yourself up with a healthy, positive morning routine.
Practice the 4 Gs every morning, and write them down for extra “oomph.”
- Gratitude – write down at least three things you are currently grateful for. I make a practice of consciously feeling gratitude throughout the day, every day. I even set reminders for myself on my phone that go off regularly, to remind me of how good my life is, even when I’m feeling stress or things aren’t going exactly as planned. It’s easy to focus on the negative in the world and in our lives; it’s more useful to make a daily practice to focus on all the good things in our lives.
- Get some – sunlight, music, dancing, coffee, or whatever it is that makes you HAPPY in the morning. Music is a fast track to feeling good – listening to songs that get you moving and grooving will always improve your mood.
- Goal – write down a goal you have for today, this month, this year, or this decade. Identifying a goal you can keep in your mind throughout the day will subconsciously attract all of the things you need to achieve it! I set myself an intention for each day; today’s intention is to inspire people to feel good and achieve everything they want to achieve.
- Going to be. Who are you going to be today? As a wife, husband, business owner, leader, friend, neighbour, person, how will you show up?
Work on your personal development every morning. I take an hour or so while I’m getting ready to listen to a podcast or a YouTube video about personal growth.
EAT HEALTHY AND DRINK LOTS OF WATER
I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but it bears repeating because it is so simple, yet so important – eat healthy food and drink lots of water if you want to give your best every day. Give your body the nutrition it needs to do the things you want it to do. Eating junk food or starving yourself or wolfing down a fast-food burger at your desk every day is not giving your body the good fuel it needs, or paying your body the respect it deserves for serving you faithfully, all day, every day. You can start small and simple – try to remember to drink more water, and add some vegetables to your diet.
GET ENOUGH SLEEP
This is another one you’ve heard before, but it also bears repeating – everything you do, everything you feel, everything you try works better when you’ve had a good sleep. If you struggle with insomnia or getting a good night’s sleep, don’t give up – see a professional, read self-help books, try Headspace meditation or sleep stories, and keep working on ways to fix any issues you have with sleeping. If you have a physiological issue like restless legs, see an expert who might have a recommendation for you. The answer to problems getting proper sleep is not, “I just can’t sleep.” There’s an answer out there for you – don’t give up on finding it.
USE THE ABRAHAM-HICKS EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SCALE
The Abraham-Hicks Emotional Guidance Scale is a list of 22 steps on a scale of emotions, with Level One being Joy/Appreciation/Empowerment/Freedom/Love, all the way down to Level 22 – Fear/Grief/Desperation/Despair/Powerlessness. You use this emotional guidance scale by taking your emotional temperature and seeing where you are on the scale, and trying to work your way up the levels to feeling good.
A note here – if you’re not feeling great, it’s not likely that you will be able to skip a whole bunch of levels all the way up to joy in one go. Start with where you are right now, and figure out how to move up a level. Then, do the same thing again, until you’re out of feeling bad and are feeling good again.
Another note (especially for women) – it’s okay to feel angry! Anger means you are developing self-confidence and self-esteem – someone has treated you badly, and you don’t accept that kind of thing. You deserve better treatment than that, and your anger is a motivator to start to expect better treatment from those around you.
BREATH
Take time to take an actual deep breath. This is one of the most under-utilized stress-relief tools. A deep, mindful breath reduces anxiety, reduces tension, increases oxygen flow in your body, and helps calm you down. When you take a deep breath, look for the tight places in your body and consciously relax them. Get those hunched shoulders down; unclench your hands and your forehead; sit up tall in your chair and breathe right from your abdomen.
KEEP GREAT PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE
I surround myself with people who lift me up to help me to always give my best every day. The people in my life I interact with every day are a constant source of positivity, who see the best in me and help and support me. I strive to be that person for other people, too – I aim to be the person who they love to be around, who makes things better and happier.
DECIDE TO EXPECT GOOD THINGS
“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react.” — Charles R. Swindoll
A lot of people have an idea that their life is a thing that is happening to them, that they have little or no control over. This couldn’t be further from the truth. I decide what I think about, I decide how I react to things, I decide how I feel about things, and I decide that I am going to expect good, surprising things to come into my life! *Will* good, surprising things come into my life? Why not? Like seeing red cars everywhere after you buy a red car, we get what we look for in life. Why not look for positive things?
YOUR CONVERSATION IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP – ALWAYS CLEAN THINGS UP
After you have had a conversation with someone, if you don’t feel whole and good about how you left things with them, have another conversation where you try to clean things up. If you’re arguing about something, try to find common ground and a solution to the issue you are disagreeing on. If you feel like someone is misunderstanding you, have another conversation with them where you try to clear up what you’re saying, and where you’re coming from. “I don’t like how we left things last time we spoke” is a powerful way to start a conversation – chances are, they’ve been feeling the same way, and would really appreciate setting things right again.
BE KIND AND LOVING TO YOURSELF
To give your best always, the most important thing is to be kind and loving to yourself, even when you don’t think you deserve it. Review your positive feedback (this can be surprisingly hard for people to hear and believe). You *are* good at many things, and people *do* like and respect you. Believe it! Most people don’t do this; they go through their days reacting to what happens to them, tossed about like a boat going down the river with no one steering. Steer your own boat! How you feel comes from how you think, and you can control what you think about.
I write down my accomplishments, and I ask someone on my team or in my family to tell me what they love about me, and I hear them with an open heart. I encourage myself; I am compassionate to myself. As Max Ehrmann said in “Desiderata,” “Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.”
