Please Stop Doing Your Best

Are you doing your best in your career? Are you doing your best in your friendships, partnerships, and with your family—whether that means doing your best at parenting, at being a good spouse, sibling, dutiful daughter or son? Are you doing your best at staying fit and healthy, at getting enough sleep/water/exercise, enough self-improvement practice, enough skill-building in whatever area you’ve identified your skills need enhancement?   

Please stop, darling. Please stop doing your best. You’ve been programmed to believe it’s what’s expected of you; it’s the messaging our society perpetuates, but it’s time we reevaluate this ubiquitous and confounding goal. Doing your best is exhausting, especially when that little voice in your head is constantly bullying you into doing your best at everything all at once. How would that even be possible?  

The truth is we simply cannot be our objective best at all things at all times. If you were a student right now, for instance, doing your absolute best at being a student would mean studying at the exclusion of many other things. Being the absolute best student you could possibly be would likely cause you to neglect your relationships, neglect your creative outlets and taking the time and care to feed your body in nourishing ways. It would mean neglecting fun, and relaxation, and idleness—all of which are essential components of a meaningful existence! 

Maybe, like me, you’re a fan of don Miguel Ruiz’s classic spiritual book, The Four Agreements, and you have internalized the final agreement to “Always Do Your Best.” I adore this book and have taught from it in my Joy School for decades. Miguel Ruiz Jr. is my friend and a frequent guest teacher at my Joy School, and I’ve discussed this issue with him upon multiple occasions. Please know that he does not want you to take this fourth Agreement to unhealthy extremes based on misinterpretation of the Ruiz messaging around the suggestion to always to do your best. 

The problem—and the solution—lies in the fact that that our “best” is a matter of self-assessment. Most of us have been programmed to assess ourselves far too harshly. From the time we’re fresh new humans here, our (generally) well-meaning caregivers push us to be better and better at the things they believe will enhance our existence. We’re pushed to get the best grades, to behave according to whatever best behavior expectations are laid out for us, and are often pushed to compete and excel in things like sports or musical or artistic achievement even when these pursuits are more about pleasing others than about our own joy in expressing what’s alive for us. It’s just where our culture is right now. Parents and teachers think they’re doing young people a disservice if they aren’t continually pushing them to be ever-better versions of themselves, whatever that means in the grownups’ eyes. 

Too often, however, the resulting belief that’s internalized by impressionable young souls is, “I’m not good enough the way I am.” Having worked with hundreds of joy seekers, I can tell you that this lingering subconscious belief in adults is far more widespread than its opposite. It’s hard to get through indoctrination into our culture without storing away some version of this belief. When that’s our underlying foundation, and then we’re repeatedly told, “do your best,” it’s easy for this directive to become skewed into a self-abusive mantra, a box we don’t ever feel we can truly check, because surely there is always a next level we could get to if we were doing our absolute best.   

We humans have evolved as a species to the point where our physical survival is pretty much ensured on a day-to-day basis (at least for most of us in our advanced Western world), yet our brains haven’t collectively evolved at the same pace. We’re still wired with primitive brain programming rooted in competition, scarcity mentality, and a jacked-up survival instinct that is out of sync with our actual, contemporary odds at surviving the day we’re in. That means our unrelenting demand on ourselves to constantly “do better” often feels like a matter of survival, though it rarely is. Understanding this outdated, primitive brain programming can help us remember to relax more, to be present more, and to tune into our inner wisdom rather than our reactive, self-critical thinking. What if that voice in your head always admonishing you to do better is just a now-irrelevant, habitual echo of some long-ago programming that you’ve never thought to question or challenge? 

In the words of my teacher Michael Bernard Beckwith, “In our fast-paced society, if we aren’t scrambling to attain or possess something, we label ourselves as lazy. However, when we live in a consciousness of trust, we are serene, creatively active, yet patient.” The energetic truth is that you are much more powerful and much better positioned to achieve your desires when you embody this serene mindset of trust than when you are perpetually berating yourself to do better. 

Only you get to decide what “doing your best” means for you, and most of us need to lower the bar. If you still insist on doing your best at something, how about this: Try doing your best at balance, at giving yourself some grace, some leeway, and some genuine compassion. Can you challenge yourself to do your absolute best at loving and honoring your journey and your own sweet, precious soul in ever more respectful ways? I promise you there is no more worthy objective than the goal of becoming kinder and gentler with your own tender self. You are doing just fine.