Giving Your Best Effort More Often
What happens when you give your best effort? Does something change, does a spark ignite, or does your confidence grow?
Your first day on the job and you may not even be sure where the rest room is located. After a few weeks, which quickly turn to months, you start to find a rhythm and you get more comfortable.
Finding your rhythm as an individual, a team, or an organization is often the game changer.
Improving Confidence
Confidence is built through two primary channels, self-efficacy and self-esteem. Each small successive win and your confidence grows. Make a mistake and learn to improve for the next time.
The very first time we do anything is probably not going to be our best. When we try it again, and again, things start to improve. More results pour in, more discovery, and adjustments.
It is the fluidity of the process that helps us tweak things by drawing ever closer to building it better and better.
The first time we cook a steak is hard. The twenty-fifth time and things seem easier.
It is the same for giving a presentation to the board of directors, developing a process for closing the sale, or making a cold call. Practice seems to make it easier. Success also seems to come easier.
Confidence improves.
Best Effort More Often
This is exactly why we have to give our best effort more often.
Doing so creates more demand. More demand means you’re having more opportunities and more opportunities to practice and hone your craft will make success look easy.
There really aren’t any shortcuts. The overnight success often occurs across five, ten, or twenty-five years.
On-lookers believe it was luck, fate, or personal connections. They can always help, but they aren’t as compelling as the story you write on your own.
Best effort matters. It matters more.
-DEG
Originally posted on October 3, 2019, last updated on September 10, 2020.
Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.
