What Does Doing Your Best Really Mean?

What does doing your best really mean?

There’s a lot of talk about just showing up and giving your best.

I’ve certainly said it more often than I can count. I’ve said it to my sisters and close friends.

This perspective is so beautiful and refreshing though:

It’s important to realize that ‘your best’ doesn’t mean delivering your top performance. It means giving all you can give without compromising your health or hurting yourself. – Daniell Koepke

I think this is one of the most important things we can ever recognize and acknowledge.

It’s good – so good – to be passionate and have a desire to achieve and do great things, but it’s not good at all if we lose ourselves, our health, our relationships, in the process.

We are not what we do.

I’m so glad I learned that lesson in 2012 because I’ve been able to have a healthy perspective of this whole interior decorating world.

I quit my job in the spring of 2012 in pursuit of a “better and more important” job.

I wasn’t consciously aware of this, but I wanted to make a difference.

My heart was in the right place, but in pursuing things for the wrong reasons, I learned a lot about God and myself that summer.

What were these “wrong reasons?”

• I wanted to do something “better.”
• I wanted to impress people.
• I wanted to stop being embarrassed when someone asked me what I did for a living and I had to say I prepped salads for a living.

Sometimes we lose ourselves doing something, chasing things and trying to get to the next destination.

Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with having goals and pursuing those goals, but it’s so important to check our motives and reasons behind them.

Otherwise, we end up feeling lost, empty and confused.

Part of giving our best is sometimes learning to take a step back and reevaluating where we’re going.

Questioning why we’re doing what we’re doing.

Not out of self-doubt or paranoia, but as a way to check our heart and remember that life is not about performance.

As much as society would like to have us think that it’s all one big competition, that only a select few will ever make it to “the top,” the reality is that it’s just not true.

There’s room for all of us, but God will only elevate those who have humbled themselves.

It’s not about who is furthest ahead or doing the most, it’s about who understands that their calling goes far beyond themselves.

Our gifts aren’t just about us, they are to help those around us. And if we can give our best in that, that’s the most amazing thing we will ever do in this life.

There’s always beauty in hindsight.

Because sometimes, when you’ve walked through something and learn, when something new presents itself, you understand the gravity, you understand to check your motives and your heart.

Sometimes when the timing is right and you just “give your best,” you do the opposite of losing yourself.

You find yourself, you realize you were never lost but just taking small steps all along.

You see glimpses of the person God created you to be – not because of any titles or positions, but because you start to see yourself the way He does.

And that’s the most beautiful place any of us could ever hope to journey in this lifetime.