A Letter from Chris Suarez
ONE THING YOU NEED TO KNOW TO BE THE BEST AT ANYTHING
We are all surrounded by constant displays of high performance and incredible achievement. The internet and social media has driven awareness of standout performers across all industries and categories.
When we think of the best, perhaps we think of world class athletes or incredible teams. Maybe we think of word changing companies, or iconic entrepreneurs.
The 2015 Golden State Warriors come to mind in a season where they won 73 games while losing just 9. The 1998 New York Yankees show up having won 114 games while losing just 48. The iconic Roger Federer is hard to overlook as the greatest male tennis player of all time with 20 Grand Slam titles and 310 weeks ranked as the #1 tennis player in the world.
Amazon could be described as the best in it’s class with its $1.6T evaluation and its over 200M members, as it ships 1.6M packages a day (yes, 66,000 every hour). Or Apple with its $2.08T market cap and its 728M customers walking around with an iPhone in their pocket - or more accurately in their hand. Perhaps Tesla is on the “best of” list with its $602B value and its 79% market share of all U.S. EV registrations last year.
What about us? What about you?
Are you the best in your field, in your class, in your industry?
Perhaps more appropriately:
Are you trying to be THE best or to do YOUR best?
Over the past few weeks this question has been resurfacing and has led me to really break down the difference.
The “best” is defined as “that which is the most excellent, outstanding, or desirable”.
As we think of THE best in any field or category, it shows up as that based on metrics, numbers, and comparisons.
Michael Phelps definitely shows up as THE best competitive swimmer of all time. With 28 Olympic medals and his nearest competitor with just 11, it’s easy to say that his spot as “the best” is inarguable. He won his first gold in Athens 2004 at just 15 years old, and he showed up as the best for the next 25 years. More recently however Phelps has opened up and talked about that time in his life, where he was THE best, but clearly not HIS best. When the focus became being #1 in the world, when the focus became winning gold at all costs, when the focus became just winning, he wound up losing, himself. In the drive to show up at the top of the game, he wasn’t at the top of HIS game. He was depressed, internally conflicted, unhappy, and unfulfilled.
Being THE best could actually be in conflict with being YOUR best. As we review athletes, sport teams, companies, entrepreneurs (many of whom are reading this right now), the challenge is we always define “best” with numbers, and statistics, and percentages. And of course, with any ranking, with any scoring, with any judging, there must be that comparison.
But the drive to be #1, or the drive to be THE best, or the drive to be the biggest may cast a shadow on whether or not we are waking up every day to be OUR best. On our quest to make the list, get to the top, walk across the stage, we can give up becoming the best version of ourselves. We wind up becoming a second rate version of someone else. Of course THE best and YOUR best don’t have to live in opposition. Oftentimes a focus on being our best will lead us down the path to being the best.
So what’s the one thing you need to know to be THE best in anything?
High performance is about simply hitting your goal, not hitting someone else’s goal. That means your high performance can never and should never be defined by anyone else but you.
Every one of us “excellent, outstanding, and desirable”. If you feel that you are not one of those today, well, choose to be that tomorrow. That is your best. Whatever you do, do excellently. Whatever you do, do outstandingly. That will make whatever you do, desirable. Remember, if it is YOUR best, then it is THE best.
Chris