There are a range of possible reasons why you should aim to do your best in everything you do.

You could do your best:

  • To assist you in your career
  • To inspire those around you
  • To win the plaudits of others
  • Because you work for a noble cause
  • So that you stand out from the mediocrity around you
  • To be a great role-model for your kids
  • Because you’re afraid of failure
  • To develop your skills for the future

But I think you should do your best just because you can.

If you’re not doing your best, then you’re operating at a lower level, you’re compromising your standards and you’re setting yourself up to create bad habits and attitudes that accept consistently substandard performances.

Martin Luther King Jnr. said it best when he said:

 “If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.”

Every day, in every aspect of our lives, we have the option of doing our best work or something less.

At those moments, there may be numerous excuses swimming around in your head that tell you not to give it your all.

But there’s still a compelling reason why you should do your very best that overrides them all.

Because you can! 

Why do you think you should always do your best?

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