Here are the rules

Be your best and Try your hardest.

When I was growing up, we had very few rules in our house. I’m not sure why that was. My parents were young — my mom was 22 when she had me and I was her third child. That might account for some of it. I think young parents parent differently because there are fewer things to worry about when you’re young. Sure, you understand, intellectually, that every time someone walks out the door you may never see them again. Or that the loss of a job could be devastating. Or pain and injury, starvation and war could be lurking around every next corner. You understand those things as a young parent, but you don’t have much sense of the gravity of them. Not like when you get older.

Or maybe it wasn’t so much that they were young as they weren’t super consistent with rules. Here’s an example: some random Saturday morning, we kids would wake up to suddenly find a chores list on the refrigerator door. It was probably at the beginning of summer. Our list featured the good old standards: clean the bathroom, wash the dishes, dust the living room… You can picture it, right? But the thing is, with my parents, that sort of thing usually lasted a couple of weeks. Then it would be forgotten. We kids never complained about it…

Of course, maybe our list of rules was so short because both of my parents liked to keep things simple. Why complicate life if you don’t have to. Fewer rules are easier to keep track of. So we really only had those two. Be your best. Try your hardest. That pretty much covers all the bases.

Be your best means, “don’t hit your sister” and “be polite” and those kinds of things. Be your best is about who you are. And who do we want our children to be (not to mention our friends and spouses and bosses, etc.)? Their best. It doesn’t matter what else after that.

What about Try your hardest? Yes, that’s just as easy; it’s about what you do in the world. Try your hardest means whatever you do: DO. IT. With every ounce of your being. With every pound of your muscle or brain, and with the immeasurable totality of your soul. Do it.

That sounds about right to me, but here’s something else. Actually a couple of somethings else. FYI: They’re things my parents never told me, but probably because I was meant to learn them for myself. This is the first — When you bring your kids up with these two rules, they learn that every single thing they do is a direct result of their choices, and only theirs. If they choose not to be their best, then whatever the consequences? Honey, it’s on you. If they don’t try their hardest? Too bad… It’s called learning accountability. That word is everybody’s favorite buzzword these days, but let me say I hate buzzwords. They are so overused they become meaningless. So let me say it this way, too. By being raised with these two simple rules, I learned to be my own worst critic. A lot of days that sucks because I am really good at being hard on myself. But I wouldn’t change that about me for the world.

The other something is this: Some days your best is simply amazing, and some days it’s not. Some days trying your hardest leaves you sweaty and frustrated and only inches further on your path, or worse maybe despite all that work you moved backwards. But it’s okay because you’re going to try your hardest again tomorrow.

And there’s always a chance that tomorrow will be better. (I learned that part from my parents, too.)