A - Z of Getting The Life You Want, B - Be your Best

Encouraging Excellence's tag line is "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well". And the idea behind that is, if we are going to start something we want to be really good at it. If I was to see a client and only give them 50% of my attention, I would not be able to help them make the changes they want to make in their lives effectively. They would in all probability go away feeling very let down and quite annoyed and depending on their own method of dealing with issues would either completely slate me to others or just not turn up for the second session. And I would not blame them either. But I do listen 100% and I want to help them to make the very best of their lives. And yes, I get paid to do it and that in itself is a reward, but the feeling of a job well done is every bit as important.

To know that you can be instrumental in helping others make positive changes to their lives is a really nice feeling. It doesn't have to be as a coach, it can often be smiling at the stranger you pass on the street. Going that extra mile for someone you care about. Picking the piece of rubbish off the ground and putting it in the bin, or even just holding a door open for somebody. Finishing things off and tidying up after you, especially if you don't always do it, get into the habit of not leaving your mess for others to clean up or finish off for you. In business it can be simply returning a call within the promised time - even if you haven't got the information you'd hoped to have, keeping a customer updated on time makes a huge difference and it is a simple easy task to do.

With everything you do, do your best. Much easier said than done.....sometimes. There are times when we get caught up in the day-to-day tasks and add a little bit more to our already busy schedules and then we start to feel the pressure building up to maintain standards that are becoming increasingly difficult. It's at times like these that we start cutting back on our best. We shave a standard back a little to make sure we can finish all our tasks and slowly without realising we let them slip until we are not performing at our best and often we don't have time to notice. It's when our children say things like "you always say, 'we'll see' but we never go anywhere anymore 'cos you're always busy". Or you find yourself cancelling nights out with pals because you are either too tired to bother getting ready to go out or are finishing something else that needs to be done.

So what's a body to do when we slide into the realm of just enough instead of being our best? For me, it meant stopping! Literally! And then taking stock of where I was, and where I wanted to be. Then it was a matter of making a list of all the things that were really important to me, then the things that were less important and so on until I had a list of what was not important at all. The not important at all list got my attention first because it was here that I was able to weed out the things from my life that I was spending time on half-heartedly or fully resentfully and stop doing them. That freed up time in my schedule for me to then allocate time to the things in my life that are important and re-schedule the whole list into a manageable timeframe. It gave me the freedom to be better at the things that are important and that is rewarding in itself.