Do you feel under pressure to show up, hit your goals, and make awesome happen? If so, you’re not alone. In a world of social media highlights, it can feel as though everyone else is living the perfect life! Comparisonitis shows up and before you know it you’re comparing where you’re at with those influencers you admire on Insta. Why aren’t you as far along as they are?

Grrrrr. It’s not a good place to be. Feeling as though you’re not where you ‘should’ be undermines your confidence and steals your motivation. It’s a habit that takes away from your achievements and undermines your current success.

So instead of setting yourself up to fail by measuring yourself against the wrong benchmarks, why not simply commit to do your best?

Take this approach and the only person you’ll ever have to beat is YOU.

It’s an approach that’s hugely motivating and inspiring. When you are your own competition, you get to control the game. You get to hold all the cards. You get to set the finish line and choose the metrics you want to crush.

And let’s be honest, all you can ever ask of yourself is to do your very best - in every situation.

But how can you make it more likely that you’ll do your best? Here are five powerful strategies to try.

1. Write down your wins

When you’re always on the go, juggling a big to-do list, and hustling after your goals, it’s easy to lose sight of what you’ve already achieved. It’s easy to see why… when you’re always busy, it’s hard to take a pause and reflect on how far you’ve already come.

That’s why writing down your wins is such a powerful strategy to adopt. It can actually fuel further success and inspire you to do your best.

When you write down your wins, you crystalize your successes. You take ownership for them and this helps boost your confidence and self-esteem. Writing down your wins also allows you to reflect on your performance. This helps you get clearer on what it looks like for you to do your best.

It’s easy to get distracted and skip over your wins, but write them down and you’ll build up a record of what’s possible when you do your best.

2. Prioritize your day

Do you regularly hit the pillow wondering where your day went? When you’re busy, but not productive it’s easy to fall short of your goals. And when the needle doesn’t move because you’ve run out of time, your confidence takes a hit.

Being your best doesn’t mean doing everything. In fact, it’s impossible to do it all - there just isn’t enough time. Instead, focus your energy on doing the most important things - or the 80/20. Identify which tasks on your to-do list will move the needle furthest and fastest and do those first.

When you prioritize your day in this way, it’s easier to do your best. That’s because instead of wallowing in overwhelm and doing lots of things badly, you can ramp up your performance and output on the tasks that really count.

One of the simplest ways to prioritize your life is with a Weekly Action Plan. Write a list of everything you need to do, by when. See everything that’s on your plate in one place, and you’ll find it easier to figure out which tasks to do now, next, and later (or even never).

3. Create good habits that stick

Good habits make it easy to do the things that matter - on autopilot. When you don’t have to think and you remove decisions, you can get more done with less time.

So if you want to do your best, cultivate the habits that empower you show up as the person you want to be - in all areas of your life. For example, take daily walks, start meditating, practice journaling, make Friday night date or plan your week on the Sunday before the week begins.

Then go a step further and track your habits until they become so ingrained, you feel wrong if you don’t do them. A tool such as the Habit Roadmap will help you do this.

4. Become an evergreen learner

Your best is a moving target. Each time you learn something new, take a risk, or step out of your comfort zone, you get a new insight into who you are and what you have the potential to do.

So if you want to do your best, commit to a learning diet. Become insatiable about topping up your skills, sharpening your strengths, and overcoming your so-called weaknesses. The more you know and understand, the more you’ll be able to think, problem solve, and create.

There are countless ways to learn. So mix it up and discover what ways work best for you. For example, you can:

In today’s information rich age, you can create your own learning curriculum around the topics, special interests, and knowledge that matters to you.

5. Do your best with S.M.A.R.T Goals

If you want to do your best, you need targets to head towards. Without a clear target, your efforts will be more scattergun. That’s why we advocate S.M.A.R.T goal setting.

This strategy goes deeper than setting intentions alone. That’s because a S.M.A.R.T goal is:

In other words, S.M.A.R.T goals create a specific finish line. This creates the clear direction you need to figure out your action steps and get busy implementing. With a stretching, but clear goal to work towards, you can hustle with purpose. You can hone in on the tasks and actions that move the needle. And you can feel inspired to do your best to get the result you want.

In the absence of a clear, achievable goal it’s more likely you’ll drift. And when you feel aimless in your day-to-day it’s a lot harder to do your best. If you want some help setting S.M.A.R.T goals for everything from business, to health and relationships to money, download these S.M.A.R.T Goal Setting templates - they’re all free!

When you do your best you can feel your best.

And when you do your best you get to live with the satisfaction that you gave it your all and achieved the results and outcomes of which you are capable.

A commitment to do your best - in every situation is a catalyst that can help you step into your best self. And with this five strategies to try, you may find it easier than you think to get the results you want.