When you hear this word you automatically think of offense. Putting the ball in the net, endzone, out of the ballpark or past your opponent in tennis. Clearly defined outcomes leading to a measure of your effectiveness in playing a game. Used often as a measure of your skill against an opponent. It also implies that someone else is keeping score. We see it openly on a display of some type for all to see.
In life though, scoring takes on a much different tone. Life is much more fluid. Outcomes are less obvious. Situations that need your involvement are many more and continuous. There are no clear boundaries that delineate that what you did resulted in a “win” for you or your team.
Scoring in daily life is much different than in a well defined game. We first need to determine what a “win” would look like in the situation we face. Our metrics need to be defined as to how we will score ourselves. Then we need the discipline to be self-aware enough to check in (with ourselves) from time to time to see how we are doing against our definition of what a win would look like.
But our work doesn’t end there. There then needs to be some time to reflect on what aided us in either winning or failing to achieve the metrics we defined. So we can adjust and adapt to get closer to achieving the metrics we have defined for our given situation.
Many in our lives readily want to play the part of scorer in our lives. They do this well when we don’t clearly see ourselves. We benefit the most, though, when we do it ourselves.
Why? Because building skill in our lives is the same as building muscle. Everyone says it takes both work and time. I contend though, that without reflection to understand what worked and didn’t work you don’t get very far because life always demands that we adjust. Always.
Most of us are not self-aware enough to score ourselves objectively. Remember, it’s not about making ourselves feel bad. It’s about helping us get better. Learning continually, adjusting and adapting, while listening more, provide great foundations to do extrodinary things. No matter what your interests are.
So take up scoring as a life’s companion to get better feedback on a timely basis as life continues to throw at us our next day as well as our next challenge.