Doing the best you can! What does that mean? How important is it? Is doing your best good enough? Or is BEING the best what it’s all about?

When I was in second grade, I brought my report card home. In Social Studies, I got a “C”. (In the 1950s, teachers graded all students from first through twelfth grade using traditional letter grades.) I was mortified. I had never gotten a “C” before and I was worried about what my mom would say.

I do remember that we had been studying the Plains Indians and I couldn’t understand the concept that there were groups of Indians that were part of different tribes and they all lived on the western plains. I’m not so sure what I found so difficult, but I didn’t really get it. He had never been much farther west than the state of Vermont, so he didn’t understand how the topography of the United States could be so different from what he knew in Vermont.

So I didn’t do well: I got wrong answers on the worksheets and on the test at the end of the unit. I was used to getting B’s and a few A’s. I thought a “C” was the end of the world as I knew it.

I brought my report card home and showed it to my mom. She asked me, “Barbara Ann, was that the best you could do?” I assured him that she was. What she said next was a lesson that I have carried with me for the rest of my life. It was a lesson that I have used in all walks of life: as a student, as an athlete, as a parent, as a teacher, as a coach, in fact, in whatever endeavor I have undertaken. What she said to me was, “Barbara Ann, I don’t care if you get all the ‘F’s” on your report card, as long as that’s the best you can do!”

wow! What a relief that was! All I had to do was do my best and whatever it turned out to be, that was good enough. That released a ton of pressure! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said to myself, “Do your best because doing your best is all you can do and all you can do is enough!”

As an elite athlete, competing against the best skiers in the world, sometimes the pressure got to me. I would start to worry about how I was going to go. But every time I found myself deviating from this lesson and was able to get back on track, racing was so much easier. Whenever I gave myself permission to do my best, ski racing was fun. When my last thought before leaving was “I’m going to do my best!”, the results were much easier.

Thank you mom, for teaching me this lesson! (Years later, Mom told me that when she gave me that advice, she thought I was “slow.” Never mind, it’s still a lesson I carry with me today.)