“I’m not saying it’s your fault…although you could’ve done more…”–“Naïve” by the Kooks
Just do your best. These are words of wisdom from people that care about us, right? Our parents and teachers say this, trying to impart that they believe in our abilities and that we can hit the mark.
What does that mean exactly? What is your best? If your life isn’t exactly what you want and you feel you’ve given your best, well what then? What if your best isn’t good enough?
The killer is it’s a relative term. One woman’s best, is another woman’s half-assed. You talk to someone who is defending their actions as their “best” and they’ve only followed through on two or three things towards their goal. You hear what they are saying, but you can think of about 10 or 15 more things they could’ve done.
For me, your best is when you’ve done every single thing you could think of and then you step back, think of more things and do them until you get what you want. That’s your best. Best isn’t a shoulder shrug saying “Well, I tried. It just didn’t work out.” Do it again! Do it better! Do the opposite of what you initially thought you should do. Think outside of the box. And most important: Don’t give up.
We all want something we don’t yet have. If you don’t, you’re dead. Keep going until you get it, then move on to the next thing, and then the next and so forth. That’s how you grow. If you do this, will everything always work out? Hell, no! Sometimes you’ll fail miserably, but the point is not always the victory. Sometimes, the point of it all is the journey that leads you to the eventual win. It’s coming; you just have to want it more than the next gal. You have to open up your mind, ignore the limits that we all think of (“I’m a girl”, “I don’t have a degree”, “What if it doesn’t work?”) and just GO FOR IT.
Well, what if it doesn’t work? Then you just dust yourself off, figure out what went wrong and move forward, but better – armed with your hard earned wisdom. There are no real rules. The older I get, the more I’ve come to understand this. Whatever rules we think are set up are arbitrary. You’ve probably noticed, as I have, that the rules that supposedly apply to you, don’t seem to apply to others. That’s right, they don’t. They don’t really apply to you either; you just act like they do. You can do literally whatever you want. This is the basis for your decision making from now on. No more limits, no more rules. You don’t have to be born in the “right” family, look a certain way or be anything else than yourself to succeed. You just have to bring it harder than anyone else.
A thought on the word “try”: I really hold a special disdain for this word. I recently heard someone wise say “Try is the just the beginning of triflin’.” Whenever someone says to them “I’m trying”, all this person hears is “I’m triflin’”. It’s the perfect way to think of this word whenever we start to say it. It will stop you dead in your tracks. No more trying. Only doing.
This post is for me as much as it is for anyone else. I have been guilty of "just trying", of shrugging my shoulders and thinking that things won’t work for me because I don’t have the right stuff (my label, no one else's). None of this is true. All of my accomplishments have only come through giving it my all and eliminating from my mind the possibility of failure.
So, you now live in a world where: 1) The word "try" does not exist. 2) There are no rules. 3) You can literally do anything you want. What are you gonna do?
