Play to your strengths

Hopefully, in the first exercise you were kind to yourself as you started to notice those times in your life when you were playing towards your personal best and you have noticed what conditions needed to be present for that to happen. The more you can focus on replicating those conditions the better.

For this exercise, I want you still to be kind to yourself, but I also want you to be honest. Start looking at what you have achieved these last 12 months and understand where you haven’t been at your best.

Don’t beat yourself up but evaluate the consequences of those instances where you haven’t been at your best. For me, this year, I am a bit disappointed that I have only read 24 books and last year at this time it was 36. However, in the spirit of kindness to myself I am not beating myself up about it. I understand why this has happened – while I have read fewer books, I have read a better and more useful selection and I have gone deeper into each one.

I realise it is about quality, not quantity.

There is a poster on my office wall which carries a quote from the athlete Steve Prefontaine which says, “To give anything other than your best is to sacrifice the gift”.

Just ask yourself, have I given my best? If the answer is no, then why don’t you make some commitments to change that?

I don’t believe any of us were born to be mediocre but sometimes we allow ourselves to behave that way. It is not that we lack the talent, but it is often that we stop ourselves giving our best.

So, pick just one thing that you are going to commit to getting better at. Don’t try to conquer the world at this stage, just pick one thing and commit to improving it. Often, we try to do too much and quickly get dispirited when we don’t achieve it.

Pick something simple, like ‘every time the alarm goes off, I am going to get out of bed immediately’ or ‘every meal I have I am going to leave something on the plate’. If you pick something small and almost inconsequential you can start to develop a more helpful habit. Once you have done this, it is just a small step to start ‘stacking’ successful habits on top of each other.

Like all journeys, it starts with a single step, make it an easily achievable one.

When you were born, you cried, and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.

Begin by being the best you can be one small step at a time.

You weren’t born to be mediocre, none of us were. Let’s start making sure our behaviours honour that fact.