Stop Thinking About Being The Greatest And Just Strive For Greatness

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Yesterday was the 4th of July and if you are like me your social media feeds were probably blowing up with patriotic statements and love for our country. I love this country too, and all of the benefits that we are automatically granted by being one of the lucky 327 million people out of 7.6 billion to be born here. One thing I read a lot that made me stop and think today was "America is the greatest country in the world." But are we really the greatest? There is a lot of good things that happen in this country, and it is filled with great people. But so are a lot of other countries. I have no doubt we are a great country but the greatest? When you look at rankings on education, work-life balance, national debt or health care costs we aren't the greatest. Heck the US couldn't even qualify for the stinking World Cup. I think we live in a great country but I'm not going to ignore the fact that there are things that other countries are doing far better than we are. We are a great country and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, but there are still some things we need to be better at.

When we say we are the greatest, it makes it feel like a competition to me. We have to beat all of those other countries. Yeah, we aren't the best at soccer, but we have them in basketball (most years). We try and look at every category and add them up to see if we are still the greatest. There doesn't have to always be winners and losers though. Why can't all countries just strive to be great?

Translate this into your work or your team. Why do you have to be the greatest on the team? Shouldn't our goal be that everyone on the team is the best version of themselves they can be? If each of us as individuals worked to be the best version of ourselves, to give our best to the teams (work, family, sports, church, etc.) we are a part of, what would things look like? When we stop comparing ourselves to our co-workers or the neighbors with the big house, when we stop telling ourselves, "But I'm still better than that person.", we can allow ourselves to set a higher standard. Whether you are the best person on the team or the worst, the question should be, "What else can be done to make me better?"

Ignore the rankings and the scores, are you being the best you can be? Even if you are the greatest, you can still be better. Aim for greatness, stop worrying about being the greatest.




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