Always Our Best

We have all heard the adage, “Do your job and do it well.” In life, you can count on having to do things that you would rather not do; but in becoming your best self, you should strive to do ALL things with excellence.  In officiating, we have unwanted responsibilities that still must be done with excellence--cleaning locker room after a long game, still studying rules halfway through the season, taking quizzes upon quizzes to test our knowledge, cleaning shoes to rid of turf stains, etc. Keeping the attitude of “everything matters” keeps us striving to be the best.  Even if we have achieved a certain level of success in our profession, we must keep taking pride in all that we do and keep pushing ourselves to do even better.

When we live as if everything matters, we take personal responsibility for all we do.  But we should also push others to reach their greatest potential too. However, this is a big commitment!  So, what is one important trait it takes to meet this challenge?  Being unselfish.  A person not centered on just self takes pride in all things, never thinking anything is beneath him or her.  Being unselfish takes all the credit away from yourself and how much you get noticed, meaning you may not get the credit for a smooth-running clock or incorrect calls waived off. Sometimes, another person may even get the credit for your well-done job. But still, our responsibility is to continue to do our best understanding that “just doing our job” is not excellent enough.

Proverbs 13:4
The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.

If we approach all situations, projects, and tasks attempting to be our best and performing with excellence, we can be confident in our body of work.  There may be setbacks, our weaknesses may be exposed, and others may even get credit for our successes, but it should never be because of the lack of “doing our job and doing it well.”

Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing and wherever we are going, do it well!