Put Your Best Foot Forward

A few weeks ago, I challenged myself. I decided that I was going to stop living below my potential and skating by and actually do and be the best I could. This applies to the spiritual, emotional, mental and physical areas of my life. The area that was most beneath the bar was the physical area. While I am not as unhealthy and overweight as some, I knew I could do better. And that was the issue for me – I COULD DO BETTER.

So I hired a personal trainer and started going to the gym regularly. I also cut out pictures of how I would like my body to look eventually and then the thought came to me. I was cutting out pictures of people at their physical best. The key word there is THEIR. I may not look as ripped and muscular as they are. But the point isn’t to work to their best, its to work to my own best. What’s the best health and conditioning I can achieve? So while I can use the pictures as motivation, I can only do the best I can do.

And that’s all that any of us can do, in any area of our lives. We can only do our best. But so often we measure our success by the success of others. We want to be as healthy, rich, wise, intelligent, etc as people we see on TV or in magazines; we even set our bar by our family and friends. And we become discouraged because we don’t achieve what they achieve or attain what they do. And even if we do, we aren’t satisfied because there is then someone else that is doing more and better (in our eyes) so we go after that.

Satisfaction and success come in knowing at the end of the day that we put our best foot forward.

And our best foot forward might change from day to day. You can’t work as hard with you’re sick as when you are well. You can’t focus as well when there is emotional turmoil in your life as when things are smooth sailing. You have to know, not your limit, but the point where you have done as much as you can. And this is all that God asks and expects from us.

Christians refer to themselves as the body of Christ. As such, each part has a different function. Think about your own body. While all the functions work together, they perform separate tasks and each task is just as important as the next. And if one breaks down, it throws the whole system off. And when working at their peak, all parts are joyful in doing what they do and not trying to be like any other part of the body. The hand doesn’t try to be the heart, and the eyes don’t try to smell your dinner.

Taking the earlier thought a little bit further; Satisfaction and success come in knowing at the end of the day that we put our best foot forward doing our part and expressing our gifts in the world.

It’s about being the best you can be at what you were born to do that will fill you with peace and make you prosperous. And this “best” will look different for each of us. Even if you are I are gifted to teach, we may teach different subjects to different grades at different schools. I don’t come try to teach the same way you do to your students, I would be miserable because that’s not how I express my gift. In this way, there is no comparison and the only thing we can do is uniquely express our gift to the world around us knowing that our best expression of that gift works to keep all of humanity operating closer to its peak. And as more people do the best they can do at what they are gifted to do, the closer the body of Christ gets to being in the best shape it has ever been in.

So:
1. Discover your gifts, your passion, what work you can do that would make your heart happy.
2. Ask yourself (God) how can I incorporate this in my everyday life.
3. Go about doing the best you can at what you do and stop holding yourself to standards that aren’t realistic for you as an individual.

Working with a coach or mentor could help you discover your unique function in the world and brainstorm ways you can express that. But, no matter how you come to know it, your expression of your unique function makes us all better in the end.