There have only been two times in my life where I have felt like I have given my all. The kind of ALL where there is not one single cell left, not one more place to draw from. The absolute 100% best you got, the place of total peace knowing there was nothing else you could have done. I put in my 100% ++ and gave it my all. The first time was in 1980. I was the head concierge at a major hotel, and 450 of our 500 member staff went out on strike. Since my staff weren’t union employees they were quickly assigned to other vital services, I was left to man the concierge desk and ended up working 14 hours a day for 28 days straight. While at my desk, I heard the constant banging of pots and pans through floor to ceiling windows on three sides. The strikers were screaming as they banged, “local 2 on strike.” To stay centered, positive, and to deliver excellent service in this stressful environment taxed every ounce of my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual strength. When it was over, I felt like I had climbed Mt. Everest, and I was proud of my performance. It felt triumphant to work at that level.
The second time I had that same feeling didn’t happen for another 25 years. It was 2005 and I’d been engaged to deliver concierge training at a hotel chain in India. Part way through the first day of the training, I realized the client didn’t really want classroom training for the concierges! Instead, the client wanted my consulting expertise on how to set up a concierge program in their hotels: where to place the desks, how many to hire, what should the schedule look like, etc. If I had the luxury of sitting down quietly to ask questions and learn about their hotel chain, as well as the differences between the way hotels are run in India than North America I could have easily met their expectations. However, my agenda was filled with the training we’d scheduled for their employees. So, pulling on every resource I had, I switched gears, in the moment and in front of a full classroom of attendees and managed to use the training as a vehicle to get the answers I needed to meet their expectations. At the end of the day, I was too exhausted to even accept the client’s kind offer of a drink in the bar. I’d climbed Mt Everest again, and once again I felt triumphant and peaceful knowing I absolutely did my 100% best.
Thinking about these two situations got me thinking about what it means to do your best. If I used these two incidents as the sole measure of success, then what about all the other times I’ve been on my A game? Does it take feeling totally wiped out to do our best? Is this even a realistic or wanted standard of behavior?
Don Miguel Ruiz helped me resolve this dilemma in his book The Four Agreements. Ruiz’s fourth agreement is “Always Do Your Best” defined as, “Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less.”1 This means being fully aware and engaged in each situation and deciding to do your best moment to moment.
Suddenly, I understood the lesson of the hotel strike and the training in India. In these two situations, I’d been conscious of how much I was tapping all my resources. I pushed them as far as I could. They were extreme situations and called for extreme measures. It didn’t mean that I only did my best twice in my life. It was simply that I didn’t see any way I could have improved. Most situations are not extreme but they still require us to show up with our A game. I can remember many times where I’d been equally conscious of pulling on inner resources to handle challenging situations. I finally realized that doing my best was about being awake and aware in the moment. Paying attention and being fully engaged. It is those attributes that allow all of us to look for ways to improve. Just go through the motions of doing anything, means I can’t possibly be doing my best.
So please join me as I resolve to be more awake and aware in every situation. This applies to everything from driving the car to talking to a client. Let’s constantly be on the lookout for the opportunities to stretch ourselves beyond what’s already comfortable. Do our best being open to constant improvement and grateful for the extreme opportunities that show us just what we are made of.