My son had a flag football scrimmage game today and, quite frankly, his team got squashed. Their defense was horrible, and their offense could barely move the ball. If they did move it, it was usually backwards!
Afterward, my son and I were talking about the game and he said, “But Dad, I played my best!” He said it in a tone that suggested there was nothing else to be done about it.
Now before I get into my response to him, I just want to point out two other very distinct responses I’ve seen from parents to games like this one.
The first parent tells his son that he did a great job. He played awesome, and was one of the best players on the team. And the mistakes he did make, well they just weren’t his fault. This is usually a lie. Very often he didn’t play great, and the other team ran circles around him. His parents obviously feel that he needs encouragement, and I’m sure their intentions are good.
The other parent has their son in tears. He played terrible, and they lost the game because he didn’t try hard enough. They point out all the mistakes that he made and explain how these mistakes cost the team the game. This too, is often a lie. The kid did try his best, but certainly can’t be expected, in a team sport, to be solely responsible for the outcome of the game. This isn’t single player game like chess. Its football, a team sport.
What I told my son is, I believe, the truth. I told him that just playing your best doesn’t mean you will win the game. He made mistakes, as did other players on his team, but he can learn how to avoid making those mistakes in the future. He needs to keep practicing and improving his skills. That, along with trying his best, will make it much more likely that they will win next time. A win isn’t guaranteed, but he could certainly stack the advantages in his favor.
Fortunately, he seemed to understand this pretty readily. In fact, he pointed out that if the other team keeps practicing, then they will get better, too, so they might always be better than his team. I told him that that was why he needed to keep practicing, and keep doing his best, and put forth his full effort every time. His team has some catching up to do.
Where ever you are in life, especially in business, if you are trying to get ahead, trying to push through to the next level, the competition may be yourself, or it might be someone else. As an internet marketer, I’m always in competition with other internet marketers in my niche. Its a friendly sort of game, and we share strategies, often times even enter into partnerships, but we are all looking for the edge that will bring us more traffic and more sales. And we are always doing our best (at least the successful ones). If I wasn’t learning new skills, and working those new skills, then my success online would be minimal at best.
If you are looking for a promotion at work, or if you want to make more money in your business, then you’ve got to do more than just your best. You’ve got to keep practicing and improving your skills, too.
Hey Jason,
Great post…I love the analogy! It’s so interesting that so many of the lessons we need to learn as online marketers can be learned through living our best lives. Be true to ourselves, treat others as we would like to be treated, develop a spirit of cooperation rather than competition, and keep practicing.
You’ve obviously taken these lessons to heart
Live Free,
Kathy J