Call it inspiration or determination, the fact remains that when you concentrate on doing your best, you constantly improve yourself, your performance, and over-all effectiveness.
You need to know yourself, to be your constantly-improving best. And you also need to decide if you want to be your “best,” or if you want to improve only your “average performance.” There’s a lot of difference between the two. If you want to improve “average performance,” all you need do is cut down on mistakes-the safe and traditional way; but it must be obvious that the reduction of mistakes has nothing to do with the improvement of your best work. The reduction-of-mistakes approach merely raises slightly the level of mediocrity. Besides, if all you want to be is upper-crust mediocre.
You need to understand what your “best” is; so you need to explore and appreciate those experiences which applied your “best” capabilities. You need to appreciate them. My understanding of what I think is your “best,” will surely be different from how you feel about your own experiences. Only you know how you feel about your experiences. You may have done something that brought you praise and an increase in salary, but if in your own considered opinion it was a stroke of luck, that’s all it was. Or maybe you worked to all hours completing a project that was greeted with apathy or even antipathy; it still is a big achievement if that is the way you feel about it.
Once I was invited to speak to class of engineering students on the subject of self improvement. I was getting ready to start, right then there was a small power failure in the building, while some electricians worked on restoring the power, I asked the professor of the class if he ever conducts any one-on-one’s with his students on the subject of achievements, He sarcastically mentioned: I am yet to have a few of my own, what do I share with thim? When I insisted he completed his PHD’s from IIT( a premier institute in India) and that is a marvelous achievement in itself??¦
“No” replied the professor, that was just a fluke. I just so happened that??¦but quick to say “look at what have you done for yourself even though you do not have a PHD you are successful and renowned”
Obviously the professor considered as achievements only the successes that contained public recognition as an important factor. Another man with the same kind of degrees might regard it as an act perseverance and superior form of achievement
This is an important thing. To create your own success, consider only those achievements of yours that are important to you, regardless of what tradition, or your boss, or your friends might have to say about them.