Operating at Our Best
I love the idea of being in your best place, doing your best work, being your best person, with the emphasis on what works for you because we all have our own version of ‘living our best life’. My thoughts this week centre around what this means to me and how you might also investigate what it means to you and your family and children.
Each week I write my blog here in the State Library in Brisbane. It’s a beautiful space – very open and the workspace I always choose faces the Brisbane River through a vista of trees. Aesthetics are important to me. Somehow being in beauty and being in an ordered environment help my creative juices to flow and for me to operate at my best. It’s not the same for everyone but this is what I’ve discovered through trial and error what works best for me.
I know of others who can sit amongst any manner of mess and stare at a blank wall or computer screen and it’s an open invitation to create. For them, it’s like the mind can best create when their outside world is not ordered. Then for others, they create an entirely different environment as they seek what is best for them.
One of my children finds she can’t do her best creating on a computer – it must be hand-written in a journal and then transcribed to the computer. She finds it inconvenient but has conceded to herself that this is part of how she creates at her best.
Not everyone has being creative as their focus for ‘living your best life’. For me to be creative is where I feel at home, where I feel calmest, most focused and most definitely most fully myself. For others, that is not the case and some feel their best uploading data or creating systems, managing people or places or any other manner of activities!
It’s part of the process of getting to know yourself and what works in your life. How fortunate we are that we are all different and have different ways of operating at our best.
There are naturally restraints that don’t allow us to live in our best place all of the time but it’s a goal worth working for and prioritizing for an amount of our lives to be in that space. It will make a difference to our levels of contentment and joy.
As parents and teachers, there are opportunities to make sure we help our children to be aware that we all are different, to feel it’s a goal to find what allows us to operate in our ‘best place’ and to also help them find what is their own best place.
We can offer them alternatives to try in their lives by way of experiences, activities, clothes, foods, environments… the list is endless really. Remember when they become engrossed in an activity, or in a particular space then it is a good indication that this entices them to be their best selves. Being there allows us to almost lose knowledge of time, to feel exhilarated and contented but most importantly, in this space, we can be truly ourselves.
I’ve always admired this quote from Michelle Obama and wanted to use it – I think it sits well here to close.
'Find your space. Find your spot. Wear what you love. Choose the careers that may have meaning to you, because there’s always somebody who will say, ‘I wouldn’t have worn that colour,’ or ‘Why didn’t you do that job?’ But if you’re comfortable in the choice and it resonates with you, then all that other stuff – it’s just a conversation.’
- Michelle Obama
