If you’re reading this, you’re someone who is striving to excel, push yourself, learn, grow, and get better every single day.

As I’ve been on this same journey, I always come back to a core question: What’s driving that deep desire to improve?

Dr. Michael Gervais, a sports psychologist and host of the Finding Mastery podcast, asks each of his guests, “Do you want to be the best, or is your drive to be your best?”

After listening to enough episodes, I realized there isn’t a simple answer, and Gervais himself confesses that there are trapdoors in both approaches.

If you want to be the best, you’re constantly comparing yourself to others. The measurements are external, and often outside of your control. That can leave you feeling powerless when you don’t hit the number.

If you want to be your best, you can be haunted by the question, “Am I enough? Is my best good enough?” Especially if the “wins” and accolades aren’t coming at the pace you hoped for.

The Hunt to be “The Best”

When our drive is to be the best, we focus on external measures. We ask: What is the number, the rank, or the performance that will put me at the top? Max Verstappen isn’t satisfied with winning the Formula 1 championship; his drive is to win every race. Tiger Woods didn’t just play to win a tournament; his goal was to beat the course record by ten strokes!

In business, I see folks comparing the value of their exits or their company’s sales growth, constantly pushing to hit specific, arbitrary numbers.

If this is your bent, I invite you to pause and ask yourself: What happens when you miss? And even more importantly: What are you willing to give up—in your time, your health, or your relationships—to achieve that external goal?

The Desire to be “Your Best”

When our drive is to be your best, we might still hold those same ambitious goals, but it’s usually clearer what’s driving us. The desire to be your best often involves choices about your personal values or your deeper “why.” This perspective focuses more on effort, learning, and character than on trophies. Bob Bowman, whose swimmers have won over 30 Olympic gold medals, never sets a goal to win a race. Instead, he works with his swimmers to establish a pace that should win the medal. You can’t control how the other swimmers do, but if you are on a world record pace, that’s enough.

Still, this path can carry an internal restlessness —a feeling that it’s “never enough” — and that feeling can drive us to workaholic levels, too.

If this is your bent, the question we need to wrestle with is: What is enough? How can who I am now be all the achievement I need?

Both pursuits can lead us down paths of external dependence or internal exhaustion. We can’t truly control the outcomes, and we can’t entirely quiet that voice inside that says we should be doing more.

What if we could skip the trapdoors of both? What if the choice isn’t “the best” or “your best,” but simply doing the work you know is yours to do, fully and completely?

This week, I invite you to focus on the next right action in front of you—that one thing you know needs your full presence. What is it?

Do that over and over again, and the results take care of themselves.