Just got back from a weekend away doing what I love to do – three sports, all separated by a quick additional competition of who can get undressed and changed the quickest. Triathlon. Had a great time. Saw some real gains in the swim, got all bossy and shouty on the bike and had a nice flat charge home to the finish. How else would you want to spend a Sunday?? Finished off with a mocha with a straw in it (I know, don’t ask, I told her that was not a sensible thing to pop in the top of a hot drink either…)
I had a barrage of calls and texts on the phone when I finally checked it. You know what I did? “Meh, I cba with this carnage.” Replied to the essentials, rang dad and put it away, marked everything as read and went about my day. Why didn’t I reply to them all excitedly you all ask??
I’d had a great lead up to the race, culminating in a really enjoyable race. There was very little I could have done better on the day. I responded to circumstances and gave my best performance on the day. And that’s just it. I knew that what a lot of the messages were getting at was the time and the position. Those are not performance metrics. They’re results.
Of course, results are important. But you know what’s more important than results? Your internal evaluation. Performance isn’t about the numbers and the outcomes. While they’re what we’re aiming for on an external level, they’re also somewhat out of our control. In a race, we can’t control the performance of the people who show up on the day – some days, competition will be easy, other days the standard will be high. In business, we can’t control the movements of the markets or buyer trends, we can only try and work with them and anticipate them as best we can. What we CAN control are our own human factors. We can put in the hard work, we can prepare for the scenarios that matter, we can plan, we can reflect, we can make steps to improve the stuff that isn’t going well and maintain the stuff that’s going great.
For me, I had a great race. I didn’t know what the numbers would be. I came across them accidentally, a bit earlier than I’d hoped to see them. They were okay. I’d made some gains in some areas and although automatic qualification hadn’t fallen into my lap, I’m not out of the running just yet. But those numbers didn’t reflect how I felt. Why? Well not just because I’d had a good time, but because I’d done everything I possibly good to get the best out of myself in that given moment on that given day in that given situation. What else can I ask of myself??
Sometimes, as competitive people, it can be easy to get distracted by where we fit in in the world in comparison to others. We compare ourselves based on other people’s values. But that either leads to disappointment or artificially inflated ego. Neither is helpful. If we’re only ever comparing ourselves to the standards of others, we’re never going to get the best from ourselves because we’re never taking time to evaluate whether we’re reaching our OWN potential. We also need to remember that being disappointed in how we measure up compared with others is kind of pointless because we have no control over their performance. If you can be completely honest and say this is my BEST, then you should NEVER be disappointed with that. That doesn’t mean you don’t have room to improve and it doesn’t mean that you are the best among others, it means you did your best at that given moment. That’s all you can ever ask of yourself.
So if you’re out there giving it your best shot, keep going, stay in your own lane and remember it’s what’s going on INSIDE which encompasses your performance. The rest is just outcome. But I can safely say if you start getting the best from your own performance, you WILL see the results change too…