Your Available Better

‘The false best is the enemy of the available better.’
- Dave Evans, Designing Your Life

The idea of ‘being your best’ is a false construct. There really is no such absolute as ‘your best’, and the pursuit of such an ideal inevitably leads to frustration and a sense that you are never good enough … that you are in a constant state of having let yourself down. It creates and reinforces a negative sense of self that, rather than being inspiring, is self-defeating.

However, the concept of an ‘available better’ comes from Stanford University’s popular Designing Your Life Course, taught by Dave Evans and Bill Burnett. The course is designed to support participants to find ‘good’ problems to solve so that they have a meaningful life.

It got me thinking about our entrepreneurial clients and how they are often profoundly transformed when they discover that, despite their best intentions, they have been unwittingly pursuing their false best.

If it is your best, what could possibly be false about it?

The nugget here is that you may be blinded by how you have framed your best.

This is what happens when you focus on what you ‘should’ do, or what you ‘must’ do. These ideas are imposed on you by other people’s expectations and perceptions of what it takes to succeed. And these ideas will, almost without exception, put your attention on reinforcing a version of ‘you’ that is not your uniquely personal best. The version sold to you may be the ‘best’ as defined by the market, by your peers, by your family, by your industry … but that version is most definitely not the path to finding your unique contribution. The contribution that only you can make. The contribution that only you can see.

No one else can possibly envision your personal best as well as you can…

  • They are not you.

  • They do not have your unique lifelong perspective.

  • They have not lived your unique experiences.

  • They are not living your life.

And so, your false best is always designed, framed and limited by others. Not because they aren’t trying to help you, but simply because, after a point, they are not able to.

What if there were a choice available to you that would transform your current best into something remarkably better?… Your available better?

Your available better is only accessible to you. You are the only one who can see it.

  • Imagine the impact of that discovery! 

  • Imagine how you might feel to realize that you are restless and unsatisfied because, despite your success, you have been building your business on ideas that are out of alignment with what YOU feel that it takes to succeed.

  • Imagine what might open up for you if you were able to identify the ‘false bests’ that have been distracting your attention, and put more intention towards your ‘available better’.

What might change for you? Are you ready to discover your
available better?


Here are 3 small steps to get you started:


1. Refine Your Platform
This is the foundation of your business. Define what value looks like from your perspective. Identify the core components that must be present for your work to be valuable … from your perspective. Be courageous. Make it uniquely yours. Get rid of any platitudes. If you don’t think it is valuable, get rid of it. Take out ‘false bests’. As we identified above, they don’t serve you. (Hint: Less is more.)


2) Simplify Your Processes
Review your client experience promises. Be honest with yourself and reinforce the promises that make you proud of your work. Get rid of all the rest. They dilute your offer and your credibility. Instead, create simple processes that support you to show up with your best and at your best, every single time. (Hint: Promise only what you WANT to repeatedly deliver without exception.)


3) Bring Yourself into Your Business
Although KPIs and ROIs measure business success, emotions are the actual drivers behind business success. People do business with people. Give your business a personality and bring it to life. The business is just the structured mechanism that supports results. Without a personality, your business is simply a robotic tool devoid of meaning, and people cannot connect with it at an emotional level. People don’t want to support businesses. They want to support engaged, committed and inspiring people … and those people are often found running great businesses.

If you’re ready to step into your available better on a whole new level, please reach out to us! We’d love to hear from you and explore how we might be able to help.

To your Success, Differently!
   - Michèle

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