Josh's Weekly Insights - October 8, 2026

“To give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift.”

-Steve Prefontaine

In life, everyone is given gifts and talents. However, in order to make use of those talents it requires hard work and dedication over time to unlock the full potential that you have been given. One way I used to phrase that with my team is, “I don’t expect you to give one hundred percent every day, but I do expect you to give one hundred percent of what you have in you today.”

What that really means is that human beings aren’t robots. We can’t operate at peak efficiency every day. There will be days where we are sick, injured, distracted, or a whole host of other reasons that we just aren’t 100% that day. In those moments and on those days, the best of us still find a way to give their maximum effort. They give their 100% under their current conditions even though that isn’t the best they could do under perfect conditions. And, by pushing themselves to give their maximum effort in those difficult moments, it expands what they are truly capable of.

The challenge is recognizing what your best effort is. The brain can be an incredible muscle, but unfortunately,

it often lies to its owner. It doesn’t lie to us maliciously, but every human has a certain level of built in protection from our brains. It comes up with reasons to relax or go less than 100% as a way to protect itself. This is why when we don’t accomplish a goal, or we don’t meet our own expectations we have a million different things that pop through our head to justify why we missed. Our brains are great at protecting our egos, so it tells us what we want to hear.

Let’s use my favorite football team as an example here. I am a big UGA fan and many of you may know that we have a big game against Alabama this weekend. While I don’t know what the outcome of that game will be, I do know that one team will lose. And after the loss, there will be plenty of opportunities for people to explain why their team lost. For example, there is supposed to be a hurricane in the area so “the weather” may be something we hear a lot about after the game. However, does the weather excuse a loss if our team winds up not giving their best effort?

You see, when people have an excuse ahead of time it can allow us to give suboptimal effort and still argue that we “gave it our best shot.” We can blame other factors instead of looking in the mirror and owning our outcomes and responsibilities.

So my encouragement this week is to take a closer look in the mirror. Is there a gift or skill set you have that you haven’t been putting enough effort into? What could you accomplish if you gave your best effort every day? You may not reach all of your goals even if you do that, but I can guarantee you will make it further than if you gave it less than your best.

Now get out there and crush your week!