The Best Myth – Why Bestness Is the Death of Excellence (Part 3)
- Brainz Magazine
- Sep 29
- 17 min read
Updated: Oct 20
Fabio da Silva Fernandes knows what it's like to stumble. In 2021, he left his long career in the fintech industry to start his own wellness practice focused on mindfulness and Reiki, and now he explores the complex topic of resilience on his inspiring podcast called The Stumbling Spirit.
In Part 1 and Part 2, I demonstrated how bestness can distort our perception of reality. Drawing from examples in the present and referencing dark moments in our past, I showed how it can be cruel and oppressive, as well as block and reverse any progress made by society. I also shined a light on the benefits of pluralism and diversity. In this third and final instalment of this series, I emphasize the importance of breaking free from scapegoating one another, the nature of competition in sport and business, I share tips on embodying excellence and its connection to resilience, and I ponder the path forward for humanity with a lesson from Achilles himself.
Fruits of our labour
Historically, whenever there was economic uncertainty or hardship, people scapegoated others for their problems, namely immigrants, ethnic minorities, People of Colour, Women, and the LGBTQ+ community. Just take a look at what happened in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.
After World War I, the rise of populism, extremism, and fascism in Germany was fuelled by dire economic conditions exacerbated by the reparations that it struggled to pay to the Allied Powers as mandated by the Treaty of Versailles. Consequently, Nazism took hold, and after many years of racist propaganda campaigns, the German public was deceived into believing that ethnic and sexual minorities were to blame for their misfortunes. It's more than likely that prejudice was already prevalent and primed to foment within German society.
Now, across the globe, marginalized communities, immigrants, and even tourists are being blamed for society’s woes, many of whom come from homelands that were once colonized by the countries that now reject them.
This might be controversial, but I don't think that the degree to which we're experiencing anti-immigration sentiment globally would be happening today if not for COVID-19 or rather perhaps the pandemic accelerated the inevitable. After all, between Brexit and Trump’s border wall, we have already seen a rise in nativism for well over a decade now. The pandemic only made it worse. Furthermore, as mentioned in Part 2, racism and xenophobia have intensified over the past quarter century. While I'm not excusing these kinds of toxic mentalities and behaviours, it's quite possible that the fallout from the pandemic has significantly contributed to the current landscape, and it's important to talk about. Ultimately, the global pandemic was in essence a wartime situation, where free will and freedom of movement were restricted for many months, if not years at a time. During that period, countless people lost income, even if temporarily. Innumerable businesses fell under the weight of financial losses and closed up shop. Many jobs were lost. Our lives were upended, which included social isolation and drastic changes to daily routines.
Regardless of your position on vaccination, the trust that people once had in long-established systems that delivered security now offers uncertainty. Supply chains were disrupted, resulting in price hikes and gouges that we’re still experiencing at grocery store tills today. Meantime, wages and salaries have not kept up with the affordability and housing crisis, which we have not seen since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.
On top of this, I don’t think that we as a society have fully processed the collective trauma caused by the pandemic, least of which the millions of lives lost from COVID-19 and the estimated tens of millions more who still suffer from prolonged symptoms of this disease, as per the World Health Organization (WHO).
Arguably, governments, companies, and industries have not done enough to support people in the aftermath. It’s likely that some of the anger and frustration that we are witnessing across the globe is because of unaddressed physical, psychological, emotional, and financial stress.
Another phenomenon that occurred in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, was labour revolts in the form of strikes and protests to improve workers' rights and wages. I would not be surprised if a new global labour movement emerges demanding more from governments and employers across the board to address income inequality resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unfortunately, some politicians serve up the lowest hanging bitter fruit to constituents who feel disenfranchised, just to get into and hold onto power, pointing fingers at government misspending, and new immigrants and refugees (who are often accused of taking jobs away, not working hard enough, or being criminals).
Canadian author Michael Saver made an interesting observation on Season 3 of my podcast. He said, “Young people look at our institutions and the way that we failed them. You know, it's interesting, in David Bowie's song “Changes,” he says at one point, ‘Where's your shame? You’ve left us up to our necks in it.’ Well, I think that if that was true in 1971, that's way more true now. Like, where is our shame? We’ve left them up to their necks in it. So they look at generations that claimed to be caring for the planet, that cared for people who find themselves economically excluded, people who, often times, are refugees and come to this country (Canada) and are then abandoned. I think people look at our institutions, young people do, and say, there's a disconnection between what you say and what you do. Unfortunately, I think the fear that produces a lack of sense of control makes them particularly vulnerable to those who will say, well, the problem is that there is one right way, and they're usually very simple ideas that prefer certain people over others. I think there's a selfishness that goes with this, too, that's very disturbing. I think in some ways we've really set up a circumstance where they're ripe for the picking, so to speak, for people who will use them and manipulate them.”
In 1972, my parents arrived in Canada from Brazil with my one-year-old brother in tow. I was born the following year in '73. My younger sister was born thirteen years later. There were very few Brazilians in Toronto at that time, but we were hard-working and eager to establish new lives in Canada. I grew up in a blue-collar immigrant neighbourhood of new Canadians that included Armenians, Filipinos, Italians, Jamaicans, Portuguese, etc. Many of these first and second-generation families had more than one job or side gig, and we often supported one another in our working-class community.
Human nature is migration. Reflect on your own family’s history and that of your ancestors. Surely there were immigrants and refugees somewhere along the line. Connect with those stories and also with your compassion.
The alternative to bestness
According to Oxford Languages, Excellence means, “the quality of being outstanding or extremely good.” This is in sharp contrast to Best, which claims to be the top crown or “the most excellent,” whereas excellence is more substantive, qualitative, and aspirational. Google’s take on excellence is that it means “having extreme merit” and “refers to a high standard of quality or achievement”, and “the continuous pursuit of that superior quality.” Interestingly, the French term par excellence literally translates to ”by the way of excellence,” as per Etymonline. In other words, there’s a striving or journeying aspect to excellence.
Excellence correlates with resilience because of the continual pursuit of improving our existing situation, despite our adversities. When we strive for excellence, we are continually raising the bar to be the best human beings we can possibly be. While goal setting and achieving milestones are important from a personal standpoint, in terms of our collective excellence, it’s key to recognizing and acknowledging the wrongs of the past, the problems of the present, and the challenges yet ahead. Ultimately, this means making amends and forgiving one another. With excellence, we can work together to bridge divides and make life more equitable for all of humanity, and build a better future.
At some stage, the whole world will have to collaborate for the common good. If we do it right, we can all prosper. Building a society that is just and equal for all people, and working together as one big human family, are necessary for excellence to thrive.
On the other end of the spectrum, bestness is the death of excellence because it assumes that we know it all, that there’s only one way, that there's nothing else to learn, and no room for growth. In the futile quest to be “best" at all times and at any cost, there’s an incessant insecurity and a desperation to stay on top and dominate others, which often translates into bullying, coercion, cheating, deception, manipulation, and the list goes on.
Bestness would have us act through the lens of fear, individuality, selfishness, and a general lack mentality, whereas excellence takes us on a path of gratitude, abundance, innovation, problem-solving, connection, community, and more resilient qualities.
In Season 3 of my podcast, renowned molecular anthropologist, Dr. Himla Soodyall, explains that while competition is a part of human nature, we must learn from the past to become better people towards one another and our planet. She said, “So history is important because it teaches us lessons. I believe that as conscientized individuals, we have the ability to distinguish good from bad and to learn from those lessons to enhance a better future for all. That's the swan song. But how many of us are conscientized in that way? How many of us look towards the betterment of humankind rather than focusing selfishly on the self? And that again is a human dynamic. It's part of our cultural evolution and may also be part and parcel of our selective advantages going forward. Why did Homo sapiens sapiens outlive Homo neanderthalensis? Because maybe we had better selective powers to adapt, to fight, to do things for our survival. So, competition, survival instincts, basic instincts, at the same time, while we try to live in an acculturated, more meaningful, sophisticated society. So, there are both of those dynamics that are the power play, and if we can control that balance, I believe we have a better chance of a better world and a better existence going forward.”
Related article: What We've Gotten Wrong About Resilience
The humble gladiator
Throughout history, humans have gathered together en masse to witness live events. In ancient Rome, gladiators fought to the death in colosseums full of spectators. Today, athletes take the field in stadiums to roaring crowds, and while these strong competitors occasionally get bloodied and injured, they typically walk off the pitch alive and in one piece.
That said, there’s a stark difference between the combatants of the past and the contestants of the present. According to The MET, Roman gladiators had no rights. They were usually slaves and prisoners of war, and occasionally, they were volunteers who sought fame and fortune, but in reality, they had no social status and were looked down upon by society.
No matter the arena, we see bestness play out in modern times. The most obvious example is the usage of performance-enhancing drugs, which have infiltrated just about every sport and competition globally. Whether it is the Olympics, Tour de France, or Major League Baseball (to name a few), we have witnessed infamous doping scandals where athletes were stripped of their medals, suspended, and/or banned permanently from professional competition for taking steroids and other illicit drugs. Regardless of whether this unethical practice was state-sponsored, encouraged at a team level, impelled by coaches, prescribed by doctors, or taken by personal choice, these drugs were administered for the sole purpose of gaining an unfair advantage over opponents to win at any cost and be the “best”.
Of course, the whole point of team and individual sports is to compete and win against opponents. However, there’s a difference between unhealthy competition stemming from cockiness and ego versus tactical competition and sportsmanship, which are rooted in excellence.
Even if cheating is not a factor, bestness can manifest in other ways. For instance, Brazil has always been one of the most favoured teams to win the World Cup due to their unique style, fine skill, and proven track record, and yet they lost in what is arguably the worst upset in semi-final history when Germany clobbered them 7-1 on Brazil’s home turf in 2014.
Why the upset? One can argue that Germany had the better team overall. Another reason is that two of Brazil’s star players weren’t on the field, one due to injury and the other a yellow card suspension. Is it possible that Germany mastered the field because their training focused on their collective excellence rather than on a reliance on one or two star players, which perhaps Brazil considered to be the “best”?
Bestness can blindside teams when their star players are unexpectedly sidelined, affecting their ability to play cohesively, efficiently, and effectively against their rivals. So the question becomes, how do we enhance the potential of realizing the star quality of every player on a team so that even when the squad is down one or two athletes, they can still perform powerfully as a tight unit? That is excellence.
While excellence is pervasive in all kinds of sports, including football/soccer, I think endurance athletes like marathoners and triathletes have a unique understanding of the meaning of this concept. This is largely due to the many circumstances that can humble them throughout their training, which is often solitary. These variables have the potential of derailing their training and performance on race day, including fitness level, physical injury, burnout, weather conditions, course difficulty, cramps, involuntary needs to use the washroom, etc. By and large, their mindset is primarily focused on competing with themselves, and although they might have achieved a personal best on race day, there’s always another goal with new challenges on the horizon.
Take a moment to reflect on what motivates you in competition. Are you setting a higher bar for yourself and your team, or is your sole motivation centred on beating your opponents, at any cost, to be the “best”?
Does Goliath always win?
In an article published in The Guardian, journalist Stuart Heritage interviewed tech writer Jonathan Margolis about the downfall of BlackBerry, the once-famous Canadian tech startup of smartphone devices. Heritage writes, “Margolis suggests that some amount of hubris on the part of BlackBerry” might have contributed to its demise, and further notes that “BlackBerry had become quite smug. There was a time when they thought that typing on to a flat sheet of glass wouldn’t work, but within a year, the clicky-clicky BlackBerry method of typing seemed completely antiquated.”
According to Margolis, BlackBerry saw itself as the “best” and didn’t view Apple as a threat to its market share. However, when the iPhone was released to rave reviews in 2007, the consumer success that followed secured Apple’s dominance in the smartphone space.
This specific case illustrates the big lie of bestness. It’s quite possible that BlackBerry was arrogant in thinking that nothing could topple its market success.
The moral of this story is that excellence fuels innovation and paves a braver path towards a more promising future for businesses.
While corporate executives might talk about fostering excellence within their organizations, this aspiration goes well beyond quarterly and yearly goal setting. In order for excellence to truly thrive, it needs to be built into a company’s framework from the top down. This includes having a strong mission and values, hiring the right staff at all levels, cultivating a healthy work culture, etc.
Over the course of my career in the tech industry, I worked for companies that changed their mission and values every few years. One reason is due to the conflict between excellence and bestness. It’s hard for companies to adhere to guiding principles because they are often overridden by the need to meet immediate financial targets and maximize shareholder value. Companies with this mindset are consumed with bestness. While achieving the bottom line is one measure of success, it’s not the full picture. Missions and values are really about implementing big, bold visions for a company’s sustainable future. The alternative stifles excellence and fuels shortsightedness. Ironically, the effective implementation of a clear strategic direction (encapsulated by mission and values) represents a company’s real worth because of its direct link to employee morale and overall productivity.
This relates back to what I highlighted in Part 2 about capitalism and the climate crisis. We know that climate change is real, but not enough is being done about it because there’s more money elsewhere, i.e., Big Oil.
Take a moment to reflect on what the “climate change” issue is within your organization. You know, the one big problem that everyone knows about, but is avoiding (it might literally be reducing your company’s carbon footprint, or maybe it’s something else entirely). Why aren’t you focusing on it? Ultimately, it might mean the difference between your company’s success and demise.
As Jonathan Margolis suggested in The Guardian piece, the reason for BlackBerry’s downfall might have been because it ignored trends in the industry. Perhaps it was complacency.
Now that we are thrust into the enormously unpredictable world of artificial intelligence (AI), it will be interesting to see, as this new technology evolves, how bestness and excellence manifest themselves in both business and life. AI is already at our fingertips with instant browser search summaries and voice assistant tools like Siri and Alexa. Have we created yet another filter through which to see the world? Certainly, there are (and will be) many benefits and applications of AI, such as improving the delivery of healthcare to patients. However, will we get used to the conveniences of not having to think for ourselves in favour of trusting a self-learning machine? Will we eliminate job roles because of AI? Will we stop doing first-person research, analyzing data, discerning information, and forming our own opinions? Will we surrender our god-given gift of creativity?
If we consider the reality of what we’re living through today, that’s a dangerous proposition.
Perhaps the “fourth wall” that we’re called to break is cutting back on our reliance on such technologies and connecting back to our authentic humanness.
12 tips on how to shift from bestness to excellence
1. Recognize your faults
Having the humility to acknowledge mistakes is so important, but it doesn’t rely only on self-reflection. It’s also essential to be open to feedback and criticism from friends, family, colleagues, and strangers on what we could have done better and how we might improve going forward. Above all, reflect on this feedback and make changes towards self-improvement.
2. Make amends
Whenever possible, apologize to those we have hurt and self-improve to not make the same mistakes again. Making amends also means forgiving those who have wronged us. That said, it’s okay to set up safe boundaries where necessary.
3. Collaborate with others
In a similar way that collaboration is required in multilateralism, we can also apply this principle at work and at home. Cooperation and compassion are very much tied to collaboration, too. They all go hand in hand. It’s important to see the other side of the story and compromise, when necessary, to ensure that everyone’s needs are met, not only serving our own interests. For excellence to truly succeed in our society, we have to care about the excellence of others, in addition to ourselves.
4. Know your values
It’s important to ask ourselves deep and sometimes hard questions to determine our values. This doesn’t only happen at the political and corporate levels. It’s essential for each of us to have a conscious understanding of what we stand for, a moral compass to guide us through life to help us discern the best course of action. While it’s vital to connect with people with common values, it’s also wise to remain flexible enough to learn and grow from people who are different from us and who hold different opinions than we do.
5. Set a high bar
Setting a high bar isn’t just about crossing accomplishments off a checklist. It’s about doing things that are in alignment with our true selves and stretching our limits, not only from a goal-setting perspective, but in terms of expanding our compassion to be kinder, more understanding, forgiving, and loving people.
6. Produce good work
While it helps to be passionate about a hobby or career, it's important to care about the work that we do, no matter what we do. Whether it's a big project or a small task, produce good quality work. We don't have to be experts, we just have to endeavor to achieve high standards.
7. Focus and practice
Studies have shown that when we focus on a task and practice it over time, that it helps with learning and building new skills. Whether it's fluency in a language, playing a sport, or painting a portrait, the keys to learning and mastery are "attention, rehearsal and repetition," as per American Psychological Association.
8. Embrace differences
Don’t act like colonizers. The very nature of our differences can make us stronger as long as we work together. This includes learning about other people, their cultures, and their stories. As stated before, embracing diversity is both essential and beneficial for humanity to come up with better solutions to our common problems. Diversity is who we are.
9. There’s enough to go around
Recognize that there’s enough abundance to go around. Sharing is caring. Recognizing that everyone deserves fundamental human rights regardless of who they are and their economic status is essential. This includes affordable access to housing, food, education, healthcare, etc.
10. Respect and honour the land
This is a big one. It’s time for humanity to understand that the land does not belong to us, but rather we belong to the land, and we should really act as stewards of nature and all life on this planet, through conservation and immediately addressing the climate crisis. We each have the ability to make adjustments to reduce our carbon footprint, i.e., meat consumption, water usage, transportation choices, etc.
11. Upgrade yourself
Part of upgrading ourselves is recognizing our weak points and vulnerabilities. What is your Achilles heel? What are your triggers? Where can you improve? Reflect on your intentions, motivations, and actions. Leaning into these tender areas allows for growth because it challenges us to learn new things about ourselves and expand in ways that help us align with our purpose. This upgrade process might require the help of a therapist or another healthcare/wellness professional.
12. Learn to discern
I believe that discernment is tied to compassion, intuition, and wisdom. Above all, it requires awareness to access the truth within our inner reality, recognize what is true in our outer reality, and use this intelligence to make loving choices for ourselves, others, and our planet.
What happened to Achilles can happen to us
I have always found Greek myths hard to follow. A single story is equivalent to 30 years of the American soap opera “Days of Our Lives” with its many characters and complex web of intertwined plot lines about love, betrayal, murder, and revenge.
Revenge is what ultimately kills Achilles later in life, based on Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey (which I’ve never read). As history.com explains it, Achilles slaughtered the prince of Troy, Hector, to avenge the murder of his best friend, Patroclus. Afterwards, “Paris (Hector’s brother), who was not a brave warrior, ambushed Achilles as he entered Troy. He shot his unsuspecting enemy with an arrow, which Apollo guided to the one place he knew Achilles was vulnerable, his heel. Achilles died on the spot, still undefeated in battle.”
Achilles saw himself as invincible - the very “best.” In his arrogance as a valiant and ruthless warrior against his foes in untold battles, Achilles thought he could never be destroyed.
Is our fate destined to be struck down by a final arrow of humility, or will we awaken from this perpetual selfish cycle of bestness in favour of actualizing our full human potential of collective excellence?
As Dr. Himla Soodyall said quite candidly, “We should be meandering our life's journey and our intersectionality with others on a path of converging towards a path that makes us much better humanitarians, starting with the story of climate change. There was a time when humans did not contribute to the Ice Age, but we went through a period where the temperatures dropped. Humans did not contribute to the extinction of the dinosaurs, but that’s part of the trajectory. Crocodiles survived. Some bird species have survived. The cockroaches survived, but other things just died out. So we are vulnerable even though I don't believe that humans could be made extinct, because we occupy such vast niches of the globe that unless you destroy the globe in its entirety and all the biodiversity, there will be some smithereens of these humans that would reproduce and create another species from this bottleneck.”
To learn more, book me for a talk and consultation today. To listen to The Stumbling Spirit Podcast, click here or find it on your favourite podcast streaming platform.
Read more from Fabio da Silva Fernandes
Fabio da Silva Fernandes, Resilience, Mindfulness, and Reiki Enthusiast
For most of his professional career, Fabio da Silva Fernandes worked in the tech industry as a customer support leader. About a decade ago, Fabio began his mindfulness journey, incorporating the practice of presence into his life on a regular basis. In his pursuit of personal wellness, Fabio attained several mindfulness certifications and, in 2018, delved into the world of energy work and started his Reiki training. Fabio is now a certified Reiki Master and Reiki Master Teacher. In 2021, Fabio left his career in fintech to launch his own wellness business called Resting Bell Wellness Inc., which is now branded under the name of his resilience podcast, The Stumbling Spirit.
