Five Things I Never Say to My Kids, And What I Say Instead: #3

(These are being published one at a time. Go here for #4. Stay tuned tomorrow for #2!)

#3 Do your best.

Here’s why “Do your best” bugs me: because “best” to me is like infinity on the number line. 

A brief math review: you could start counting from zero this very second and you would die not having finished. That’s what infinity means: there is no end. And “best” has that same quality. 

In my own life, particularly as a parent, I’ve often exhaled with a “Well, I can say I did my best…” and I get about three seconds of peace before a voice says, “But really, was it really your best? Be honest, you coulda done more.” There’s alwaysmore. There are more hours you coulda stayed up before hitting the pillow. There’re more books and information you coulda digested before making a decision. There’re more miles you coulda clocked on the treadmill. 

Our kids, especially if they’re of the perfectionist, achieving variety, will eventually catch on to this trouble. 

I say teach this: Plot a point. Stamp down a marker. Dangle a ribbon across a finish line. Have kids predetermine what their fixed cut-off point of labor will be, how far they want to and are willing to go and – the toughest part - have it based on life circumstances.

The hard and cold truth: Anytime anything is based on life circumstances, stuff gets complicated. Meaning, since no two seconds are the same, the marker-for-success is going to have a new location each and every time we undertake any endeavor. This, done well, is way more challenging (and interesting) than the blanket mandate “Do your best.” Instead, we get to teach that the markers our kids set are transient; their bull’s eye gets to move according to each pursuit’s value and placement and season of their lives. They get to recreate the wheel of discernment each time. 

That’s lofty stuff. It requires intimate self-knowledge. I know lots of adults (ME, ME!) for whom this is  freaking hard.

In this way, your kids might find themselves wondering: 

"Am I so whipped that habitually falling asleep standing upright at the bus stop is causing neighbors to question my sobriety? I plot my current pursuit’s marker-of-success accordingly.”

"Is family life so high-drama-cray-cray at the moment that I find Jerry Springer’s guests deplorably boring by comparison? I plot my current pursuit’s marker-of-success accordingly.”

"Am I bursting with such ample amounts of ambition, energy, and sass that a gorilla couldn’t hold me back? I plot my current pursuit’s marker-of-success accordingly."

“Best” gets too much attention, if you ask me… way too much fanfare. I want to have a “I’ll die trying” attitude with approximately one thing in my life (certainly, I’d need to be a cat to have that attitude with more than one). Everything else is going have to get slightly less than that. And I think our kids, instead of slipping down a slope of laze towards homelessness, will actually perk up when they begin realizing that they don’t have to be doggedly limping towards the infinity of Best all the time.