Being your best self every day

Music (00:00:01) – She is dreaming, she is drifting. Never been so wide awake. Captured in the moment by the beauty all around her. There’s nowhere else that she would rather be.

Koren (00:00:19) – Hello and welcome. This is Koren Motekaitis. And you’re listening to How She Really Does It, the place where inspiration and possibility meet. As this show drops we’re heading into the new year 2024. Holy moly, 2024. There’s going to be all this stuff about New Year, new you be your best self. And I want to talk about what being your best self every day looks like. Because oftentimes the standards that we place about what we think being our best self is really unrealistic. And I find my clients beating themselves up because they hold this very unrealistic standard. That must mean I must do it perfectly. It has to look this way and I have to exhaust myself to do it. But that’s not really what being your best self every day is. We can’t do it all perfectly right. Perfection is unrealistic.

Koren (00:01:21) – It’s not attainable. And it can also be really harmful for us. So being your best self is doing your best effort for what you have that day. Those of you who are athletes or former athletes, you may go out and do a workout in one day. You’re training and you’re like, wow! And you’re blowing your mind about how great you did. And then you may turn on the next day and the fact that you finished is your best effort, right? Like it’s not as good as it was the day before. It doesn’t mean you didn’t do your best effort, and it may have actually taken more resources within you to finish because it was so much harder. So one way I’d like to define it is some days doing your best effort is like B-plus work, and we forget B-plus is actually good with a plus on it, right? That’s how the grades work. But we think of B+ is not good because we now have this weird 5.0 academic grading policy in the states, at least.

Koren (00:02:16) – But B-plus work some days are B-plus work. It’s good on occasion. On small occasions, your best effort may be an A-minus, which for most people, my high achievers, that’s not acceptable because they want to be A or A+. Because A-minus is like 92%. On small occasions, we’ll have that where everything will align really well. We’ll be like, yes, and then tomorrow will be a shit show. And you’re also going to have a lot of days where it’s B minus work and B minus is like 78%. And we think about that 78%. We are so trained that 78% isn’t great, but it’s B minus work and that’s good minus. And here’s the reality is some days it may be C minus or even D work. And that’s okay to be your best self. That may be what it is. And D is still passing. I had a former college athlete who used to say D is for diplomas, and he did get D’s and he did get his diploma. And he is a fantastic father and husband and he is a great educator, like a great teacher, an amazing human, you know.

Koren (00:03:23) – And so for him, it did work out. For some people that wouldn’t be acceptable, but that was some of the capacity he had back then. So as I was saying, we have this unrealistic expectation that when we equate being our best self, it’s always doing A-plus work. And remember that is perfection. And we are setting ourselves up for failure. That’s how people beat themselves up. That’s when they start to go, I’m not good enough. There’s so much shame that comes in because perfection is the birthplace of shame. And that’s according to Brené Brown. And in swimming, this looks like this unrealistic expectation is that every time a swimmer does a race, they’re going to get a best time, right? That’s how they’re their best self. That’s not true. Oftentimes how they’re their best self is they get disappointed. They hit the wall. They get a time that they didn’t want, or maybe they get disqualified. And their best self can be is how did they move through from that point? How do they handle that disappointment? You know.

Koren (00:04:20) – And you know, what can they learn from it? How do they turn around and pivot from that? How do they rebound from that. That can be oftentimes their best self. But so often we want that fairytale ending. So we think that’s the best self of the best times. We do that also outside of swimming. Swimming was just the metaphor being your best self every day is about having realistic expectations of what you can and don’t have capacity to do. It’s about trusting that you will get the priorities done in a timeline that is realistic. I even struggle with those realistic timelines, right? Like I believe I can do way more than I can physically do

Koren (00:05:01) – Partly because I’m really effective and efficient and I have a this immense capacity to get stuff done. But guess what? I’m always adding more to my list. So instead, it’s about having this realistic expectation and really checking in with what is the best effort that we have capacity for, right? Best effort is something that Carol Dweck has talked about here on the show, and she’s the author of mindset and talks about growth mindset, fixed mindset.

Koren (00:05:29) – And sometimes our best effort is the C minus or D like I talked about, being your best self every day is being self-aware of what you can see and insights you can gain. And being your best self doesn’t mean you need to see all those insights in that moment, because sometimes we have to process it. We may be able to see certain things and we may process it after the fact. We often treat our lives as like an exam, like, oh, see, if I’m really good at this, I’m going to get the right answer on the exam. That’s not how our brains work. There’s so much information that we’re trying to process and figure out. So being your best self every day is about being self-aware, to which you can see in the insights you can gain. And it may not be in that moment. It may be afterwards which you reflect on and what insights you can gain is it’s about okay, understanding. Okay. What work do you need to do to grow. And as you build to see more and have greater self-awareness, the self-awareness is an ongoing evolution.

Koren (00:06:30) – Being your best self is about giving yourself grace to what your effort may be for the day. Being your best self is to focus on learning and growth. Key learnings. So what I talk about here a lot, being your best self is about giving yourself space to rest and recover. Being your best self so that you can go to bed at night filled with contentment. Being your best self every day is taking into account what is working well in your life, as well as what can be improved. We usually only focus on the improvements, but it’s also time that we focus on what’s working well and acknowledge it, at least internally. Like really owning hey, look at me, I did this, I made my bed this morning or look at me being organized for the day, whatever it may be. Or look at me using my planner, right? Those can be simple things that we can take in and say, look at me being my best self. And I want to circle back to contentment, right? Because I said, being your best self every day so you can go to bed feeling content.

Koren (00:07:38) – And this is my invitation for you to practice this. Because contentment is defined as the feeling of completeness, appreciation, and enoughness that we experience when our needs are satisfied. And this is based on the data and existing research that Brené Brown shared in Atlas of the Heart. Right. This is a really hard one. Oftentimes parents that have some are saying, oh, I just want my kid to be happy. I just want the right to be satisfied. It’s really, really hard for high performers to be satisfied, right? Because once we hit that goal, then we raise the bar for the next goal. And this is why it’s so important that I talked about earlier of recognizing, like, hey, this is what I did really well and own that. It doesn’t mean you stop and then you rest and you just sit there and do nothing but really recognizing, taking it in and being proud of ourselves, being content, practicing being content with ourselves. We’re so good at being mad at ourselves or shaming ourselves or judging ourselves.

Koren (00:08:38) – We need to practice being content. So as we wrap up today, my other invitation for you is to let go of this idea that your best self every day means perfection. Working hard, and then one day you can enjoy your life yourself. And instead it’s about being your best every day by what you have inside of you, and being content with yourself and being complete and trusting that you’re going to learn and grow, and being able to have a good night’s sleep because you are best self that day, and being satisfied and appreciating yourself and knowing that there’s going to be other struggles and you’re going to move through them and you’re going to learn and grow. All right, my friend, I’m smiling big for you. Hey there. Before we go, I have a question for you. Have you subscribed to the show yet? This is an awesome opportunity for you to preserve your brain juice. I love the fact that I can subscribe to podcasts and television shows, and they go straight to my iPhone, or they go straight to my DVR and then I don’t have to worry of oh no, especially with television shows.

Koren (00:09:48) – Did I hit record? Is it going to be there or now? Do I have to watch it on demand and go through all the commercials? So go and hit the subscribe button. There’s a link in the show notes, and that will ensure you that you never miss a show. And you can also save your brain juice for other things in your life. There’s way more important things, but you and I will still be connected because the show will be waiting for you in your phone. Go to the link in the show notes. Subscribe to the show so you can automatically get all the shows to your phone.

Music (00:10:21) – She is dreaming, she is drifting. Never been so wide awake. Captured in the moment by the beauty all around her. There’s nowhere else that she would rather be.