Is Doing "Your Best", Enough?

Welcome to Scar Tissue, the podcast. I'm your host, Melissa Dugalecki. And here we understand the power that lies within our pain, that lies within the scars and the wounds and the nicks and the burns that come with the experience of life. When we learn how to leverage this, it is a powerful tool. And capital is that not only can take you to your next level in your life, but can make massive impact on others as well in the most beautiful ways.

So here on Scar Tissue, we have.

Real, raw, and relatable conversations that will show you that there is not one way to live, that the word should doesn't exist and doesn't serve us in the vocabulary of our lives. That you are meant to live and create your most authentic self, and that we are worthy of everything but entitled to nothing. It is up to us to create it and to create from a place of love, opportunity, possibility, and authenticity. Let's dive in.

All right. You guys probably remember a few weeks ago, I had Michelle on here as a guest, and we talked a lot about toxic positivity, and we talked about spiritual bypassing. We also talked about the importance of balancing doing the work, but also giving yourself a little bit of reprieve, a little bit of a break. And so I want to build on that today for the 100th episode. To be honest, it took a lot to get here and get this podcast up and running. This wasn't something that I just picked up my computer and said, let's do this. I feel great about it. I have no blockages. In fact, it took me months. A couple months of having the idea, a couple of months of thinking of the name of, you know, what I would want the visual to be, what I want it to look like, of reaching out to my editor, Andrew, who came recommended to me. Andrew is literally the MVP and why this podcast is running, because I'll never forget when I was first starting it, I couldn't. Right. I couldn't. And he would write to check in, like, hey, you're gonna have a recording, or, how's it going? Did you see what I sent you? Were you able to get this set up? Everything I was carrying was so heavy emotionally and energetically. I couldn't find the capacity to really get my message out there. It was really difficult for me to begin to talk about, you know, grief and to be open in my voice and anything, whether it was like, you know, signing up for Spotify or itunes, or, I don't know, even just confirming an email. It just felt so. So labor intensive and so you know, honestly, teammate here, my podcast editor, really helped me to break through that. But the truth is, is, you know, I was doing my best at the time, but if I wanted to grow this and I wanted to get to episode one, episode 10, or now episode 100, I really had to do the work. I had to do the work. And I think this is a hard thing to talk about because so often we just want to say, you know, we're doing our best. And yes, that can absolutely be true. But what we need to look at is where is that balance of doing our best and not allowing that phrase to become a blank check for complacency, not become a blank check for not having the tools, not become a blank check for being, you know, emotionally impulsive or reactionary or destructive or self destructive. And so it is. It's a gray area. And I think it's a very important topic to dive into as we think about where is it that we're doing our best and where is it that we're doing the work, and where can we find the dance of the two? You know, sometimes in that theme of toxic positivity, we'll say, well, they're just doing their best. And of course, I mean, in those moments, I was doing my best, but ultimately, I had to look at what I wanted. If I wanted to show up differently, if I wanted to show up more powerfully, if I wanted to create something, I was either going to have to do the work or I was going to have to adjust what I wanted. And I think the same is true with ourselves and in relationships. And we look around and we say, okay, I'm doing my best. Right? I'm absolutely doing my best. And is this all that I can do right now and all that I want to do right now, or am I seeking to grow and develop? Do I need to cultivate more tools? Do I need to do the work so that I can show up more powerfully for myself and show up for others? And the trick is, is there's not a one size fits all answer. There's not a right answer. There's not a wrong answer. And what this really falls into the balance of is the difference between enabling and empowering, enabling and empowering. And there's no judgment. There's no right or wrong like doing our best on any given day. I mean, look, it's one of the four agreements, right? Always do your best. I live by that. If at the end of the day I know that I did my best, I, like everything else will fall where it can, right? Everything else will fall where it's meant to, where it's supposed to, where it aligns. But what we want to look at is, are we growing our best muscle over time? Right. Are we taking steps, whether emotionally or physically, energetically, intellectually, to really grow the muscle of, quote, unquote, our best? And that's the goal, right? That's the goal. To then be able to take what is our best and to expand it so that when we do our best, we're expanding ourselves. Because sometimes we enable ourselves. When we really look within and go to that phrase of, you know, I'm doing my best, we're doing our best, of course. But if day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, we're stagnant and we're leaning on that phrase doing our best, well, then we might need to examine what do we need to do to grow our capacity to do our best. And on the flip side, are we pushing too hard? Can we allow our best in our capacity to be what it is and not try and force to the point of burnout? I like to think of it a lot as physical exercise, right? If we want to change our results in physical exercise and our workouts, we've got to find that point where we're out of our comfort zone. We're pushing to improve, but we're not burning out and forcing. It's very much the same in our emotional fitness and our emotional peripheral, in the ways that we see things and the ways that we approach things. Right. Really, our emotional agility, very similar to our physical agility. Now, we could do the same thing every day physically and say, we're doing our best and we're probably not going to grow. We're going to maintain, and that's fine. But if maintaining keeps at a place where we're not showing up as powerfully as we want, we don't feel good about ourselves, we're not able to do what we want to do well, then we really got to look around at that and say, what do I need to do to expand and grow what my best is? Now, many people steer away from this and they'll lean on. They'll ask somebody for opinions or advice who they believe are going to give them the answer that they want. And this is where I do believe coaches, counselors, mentors, advisors are so important because it's hard for your friends or family to say, I think your best could be better. Right? And also they're biased. They don't want to hurt your Feelings, they don't want you to get upset with them. They're not thinking just about you. They're thinking about their. Because they're human, right? And so as we're seeking to do our best, I really believe that the power is in receiving, allowing, right, Surrendering and saying, like, when I'm so in this, it's very hard to see myself. And for me, I'm so grateful that I had coaches and support or advisors or my podcast that, or whoever it may be to help me get the things that I really wanted to get off the ground going. You know, I had some coaches tell me, you're pushing too hard. You need to pull back. I had some say, you're avoiding this. You've got to dig into this. You know, we'll use the podcast example. I had, you know, Andrew say, like, okay, why don't you try and get just this part done by this time? What do you think about that? And really help me see how I can grow my best to be a little bit better. And it's just a little bit of progress at a time, guys, because when we do that, right, we're accumulating momentum. We're really growing. We're racking up the wins. I told clients I was working with last week, like, let's all set the intention to just begin to rack up some wins, right? Little wins, and watch how they. How they escalate, right? How they grow, how they build momentum. Because so often we try and look for these massive wins, these huge things, these gigantic things, and that can become overwhelming or pressure or stressful, and it's not attainable. And so what do we do? We quit. We shut down. So how do we skip that whole quitting, that whole shutting down? By being really clear about just finding small little ways to grow our best, eating each and every day, and also accepting where our best is. We're doing our best, right? For agreements. Let's not beat ourselves up, let's not judge, let's not compare, let's not shame, right? Let's be proud, let's be compassionate, let's be empathetic, but let's also be committed to growing our best to be a little bit better. So just a little bit of space here to reflect on this topic and to think about how are you doing your best? How are you making space for your best to be enough? And how are you also making space to grow your best to be even better so that you can expand for yourselves and for others, knowing that your pace is gonna be different than someone Else's right? This is not a one size fits all, right? It's not a one size fits all life. This is not a one size fits all path of growth and embrace that. Enjoy it, right? I look back at these different versions of me and even though there are times where it was painful and it still is, right? Times where it was painful or exhausting or overwhelming or burnout, like, love those parts of you, love the parts of joy and dance and play and surrender, Love all of these parts of your journey because it's your journey. You're not going to get it back and it's no one else's job to write it for you. So enjoy it. Truly, truly, truly enjoy. I had a client say last week, you know, it's a power move, Melissa. A power move is to be so fucking joyous for no reason. And I was like, you know what? That is a power move and let's try to do that. So, guys, as you are looking at, are you doing your best? Look around, right? Look at the people around you. If somebody is doing their very best, but they're not meeting your expectations, they're not meeting your standards, they're not communicating, they're not showing up for you, you might need to draw a boundary, and that's okay. Don't judge them, but protect your energy. Draw that boundary. If you yourself are not giving yourself permission for your best to be okay, you've got to find more compassion and allow what your best is to be okay. And if you're leaning too heavily and creating your best to be a crutch, to not take action, to not move forward, well, then you got to look in the mirror. You got to call yourself out and you got to say, how can I make my best better? Because I deserve to show up more powerfully for me and I deserve to show up more powerfully for the people in my life. Thank you guys so much for jamming here, for opening your minds, for opening your hearts, for opening your souls, right? And for finding ways to grow, to ascend, to co create. It is an absolute honor to hold space for you guys. To reflect, to think and to grow. Any questions, you know where to find me on Instagram. We got some updates coming with the pod. I will be dropping soon requests on episodes. Send them my way feedback. Send them my way as always, when you're rate interview it helps spread. This work helps spread Laden's light and for that I am forever grateful. We'll talk soon.

Thank you so much for tuning in and sharing the space of Scar. Tissue with me. I hope you found value in this episode. It is truly my commitment and goal to bring what I believe will serve you in your life no matter what you're navigating. Again, this show is inspired from the loss of my daughter Laden and through my grief journey. Really understanding empathy, understanding empowerment, understanding how to be the creators of our lives in whole new way that is stronger than circumstance, that focuses on progress not perfection, that loves the process, loves the process and lets go of attachment to outcome.

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