ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST

 by Julian Duckworth

It may sound obvious of course that we should always try and do our best. But it doesn’t hurt to be reminded about this from time to time. It gives us a personal standard to set ourselves and if we adopt this it can also bring us a real peace of mind. I did my best – who can argue with that?

You might well ask, though, how do we ever know what our best possible is? Perhaps we don’t nor ever will. But doing our best is not asking us to be perfect or superhuman; it’s simply asking us to be sincere and well-intentioned. We can’t guarantee how others will feel about the way we do things; that will vary from person to person, and even though we do our best we might find that some people don’t like what we did. We need to leave that problem largely with them, and, if we feel that we did our best, it allows us to avoid feeling guilty or blaming ourselves for the way things turned out.

The only person we have full responsibility over is of course ourself. We need to be true to ourself. It will help too if we adopt the idea that other people are probably doing their best because that stops us from blaming them.

In the Bible, Jesus talks about new beginnings. It is a marvellous thought that whatever has happened in the past, any moment can become a brand new beginning based on our decision to do our best.

And more: if we do our best rather than accepting our second-best, we become a good example to people round us who feel that we have integrity and mean what we say. They might not ever tell us to our face how good we are, but they, just like us too, gain so much from being with people who can be relied on and trusted to do the best they can.

No one can ask for anything more!