My Best IS Good Enough - Day 47 of 365 Days to a Better You

Today is the final of last Sunday's 10 Empowering Ideas that we're going to address for now. Today we are going to discuss the eighth bullet point from that post. It's an affirmation - My best IS good enough!My God, I battled this one for years. Many of the messages I received when I was young, even when I knew I'd done my best, were that wasn't good enough. I recall I scored 21 points in a victorious eighth grade basketball game. It was the most points I ever scored in a single game. I was elated. My coach, who I'm sure only meant to improve me, skipped right past my performance and to a mistake I made in the third quarter.I remember thinking, "What the heck? I just had the best game of my life and that's what you want to talk about?"I'm willing to bet you could replace this story with one or ten or a hundred of your own. Unless you are lucky enough to have had only parents, friends, coaches, and bosses who celebrate your successes and only provide feedback, when it's necessary, within the context of that positive reinforcement.Sadly, most parents, friends, coaches, and bosses haven't been trained in effective ways of giving feedback. They may focus on the negative because that's how people have always provided feedback to them. This stuff is unconsciously passed along from person-to-person.This kind of feedback leaves scars and subconsciously instills the concept in the listener - my best IS NOT good enough. Once any of us believe that in a particular situation or generally in our lives, things devolve pretty quickly from there.Power hack: Today's power hack and it's two-fold. If you have a role in life where you are providing feedback to other people:

• Remember to start with the positive and really give them credit for that before you move to the delta.
• Deliver deltas in a productive way and with actionable ways the person can do something to change the behavior.
• Start by asking for their assessment of how they did.
  • What did you like about what you did?
  • What would you do differently next time?
• Finish with another positive and express the belief that they can improve.
• Use proven feedback models like the balanced feedback model or the GROW model. Get educated on this very important task of providing feedback.

If you are the person receiving feedback from someone who doesn't know how to provide it effectively, please hear me now. I wish I could speak to every ten-year-old because it would save so much angst later.

• Other peoples' opinions, even those of a respected authority figure, don't matter nearly as much as yours.
• If no one else celebrates your achievements, celebrate them anyway.
• Never take feedback as a commentary you as a person.
• If you're struggling with believing your best is good enough because of past negative feedback, says this affirmation ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times a day until it replaces its opposite deep in your consciousness. Write it down and post it where you can see it. Do the old mirror time affirmation if you need to.

I AM enough!My best IS good enough!I AM enough!My best IS good enough!I AM enough!My best IS good enough!

That is the truth!Have a fantastic day and  I will talk to you again soon!RayDid you enjoy this post? Please check out and subscribe to the TAS YouTube page for more great motivational content.