Have you exceeded your personal best today?

It’s a good thing our television has been designed to be on for extended periods of time. Yes like many of you, we have Olympic fever. I enjoy watching the downhill events especially snowboarding. I am terrified just watching and can only imagine what the competitor’s parents are feeling. I like that there is a speed indicator on the screen  showing how fast the competitors are traveling - roughly the same as we travel on the 407!

As elite athletes, the Olympians are competing against themselves as well as the other competitors. In the interviews with the runners-up, you often hear the phrase “I beat my personal best.” While these Olympians are arguably the most competitive people on the planet right now, they still understand the value of personal effort and achievement. If you have a short-term goal to meet, you can be focused on the successful outcome of winning. However, if you are reaching for a goal four or more years into the future you will need to stay motivated for a very long time. The motivating focus becomes doing better than you did yesterday.

The idea of a personal best doesn’t need to apply only to sporting events. What is your personal best? Is it a yearly sales figure that you are working to beat? Perhaps it’s a production quantity that requires the work of a team. Maybe it’s about doing less - fewer errors, fewer rejected units.

Motivated people live to excel. With courage, commitment, the right tools, coaching and motivation, we can all do a better job. Nevertheless, will it be our personal best or will it be THE BEST? The Gold requires magic, special sauce, je ne sais quoi and natural talent. Being the best means standing out in a very crowded field. The difference between a Gold medal and a last place finish can be the distance of this column of words or the amount of time it takes to blink or being the only one to stay on their board. You train hard to get to the event. You win by having more natural talent and desire than everyone else.

Lately we’ve been speaking with young adults who want an understanding of their natural abilities to help them chart a course for the future. It’s challenging to do this because so many people today are programmed to just get a job. What job is the challenge. Using Kolbe and Enneagram gives an added dimension and understanding of what they are good at and what their natural talents are and points them on a path to a meaningful job that makes sense for who they are.