This post isn’t about your business goals or your financial goals. Rather it is about the goals that hopefully you have for how you live your life. The post is inspired not by my usual source of inspiration, Pastor Freed and his blog, Jack’s Winning Words; but, rather by a little saying that I saw in a news post from Reddit –
“Good, better, best. Never let it rest. ‘Til your good is better and your better is best.” – St. Jerome
It is not unusual as one unwinds at the end of a day to reflect on the events of the day and perhaps upon the decisions that one made during the day. It is probably a little less usual that one reflect on how they lived their life that day and whether what they did and how they did it reflected well on the goals that they have for themselves. That’s where the St. Jerome quote comes in.
Hopefully one is not satisfied with “good enough” and is always striving for better. Were you a better person today that yesterday and how can you get even better tomorrow? Are there still things that you can do, once you get better to make you the best person that you can be? Did you let pre-conceived notions or prejudices creep into your decision making today? How can you eliminate them for tomorrow so that you can make better decisions then? Did you fail to stop and help someone in need today and how can you plan your life better tomorrow so that you can take the time to help?
Just like the enemy of love is not hate, the enemy of making progress to get better and moving towards being your best that is common to both is indifference. If you become indifferent and accepting of things, rather then constantly trying to improve, you begin to accept good enough and that is just sad.
A key to making progress on being the best you that you can be is to understand that it is not all about you. A quote from Dr. Martin Luther King comes to mind – “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is ‘What are you doing for others?'” In order to be the best you that you can be and the you that is most pleasing to God, you need to serve others. Dr King had a good quote about that, too, which maybe you can add to your prayers – “Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.”
So, perhaps you can use your nightly moments of reflections and prayer to ask God to help you become better at seeing and reacting to the needs of others, helping where you can and not becoming complacent or indifferent to what you see around you in our society – prejudice, homophobia, systemic racism and inequities in opportunity, wealth and healthcare.
As I wrote in a post a couple of days ago (see Don’t go over to the dark side), ask God for the insight and strength of character to be a part of the solution to the problems in our society that you see around you and not a part of the problem. The final Dr. King quote that I’ll throw in here deals with that – “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
Are you are one of those good silent people? You can be better. And, at your best, you can work to resolve those problems, first within yourself and then within society.
Reset your goals tonight and be the best you that you can be tomorrow.
NormsMilfordBlog 