Is giving your best good enough Published June 28, 2012 By Chief Master Sgt. Howard Teesdale 47th Operations Support Squadron LAUGHLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Texas -- Recently, I pondered whether or not I was giving my best towards accomplishing my responsibilities and I found I was having a difficult time coming up with an answer. Even after taking the weekend to think about it, I was still stumped. Then it dawned on me, perhaps I needed to group my responsibilities according to the different roles I have: chief, chief controller, supervisor, husband, son, brother and friend. As a chief my responsibility is to serve Airmen by helping them develop into today's and tomorrow's leaders. As a chief controller, my responsibility is to ensure the controllers I lead have the right tools, training, qualification, procedures and equipment, necessary to safely and expeditiously sequence and separate aircraft. As a supervisor, my responsibility is to grow, develop and care for my subordinates and their families. As a husband and father, I'm responsible for loving, caring, sharing and enjoying life with my wife, son and daughter. As a son and brother, I'm responsible for keeping up with my family and being ready to be there, good times or bad. As a friend, I'm responsible for filling the void that life sometimes deals us. So what's my point? The point is only you can judge whether you're giving your best and if it is good enough. Simply being human makes us want to do good. However, what may be defined as good to one might be second best to another. No two people are alike. As Airmen, we are constantly being graded, rated, evaluated and tested. But who exactly is doing the grading, rating, evaluating and testing? Your chief, supervisor, spouse, son, brother, sister or friend? Aren't they all different? Let's use military fitness standards as an example. Is a score of 80 good enough? According to the greater Air Force it is. But is your score of 80 good enough to satisfy the expectations of your supervisor? If your supervisor is a fitness guru, do you think an 80 would be good enough? I'd be willing to bet that to your spouse or friend, a score of 80 would be met with a high five...I mean, isn't an 80 on a test a "B"? I can't speak from a perspective of a fitness guru, but I suspect their expectation would be a score of 90 or higher. Is that okay? How about preparing for a Comprehensive Unit Inspection? Is a satisfactory rating, good enough? Last I checked the definition of satisfactory is 'good enough to be accepted'. Is a rating of 'satisfactory' good enough to be accepted by the wing commander? I could ramble on and on using many examples to get my point across. The answer I discovered by the end of that weekend was: I was giving my best and giving my best is good enough! Whether you're a chief, chief controller, supervisor, spouse, son, daughter, brother, sister or friend, simply giving your best is and should always be good enough. It is okay for positive motivation from a fitness guru and it is okay for the wing commander to set a goal of excellent or outstanding. What's not okay is not accepting that your best is not good enough. The fact is only you truly know whether or not you're giving your best. Are you?