Excellence. It’s a characteristic highly sought after by employers as well as personal relationships. Let’s face it, we all like to be around winners. However, excellence goes beyond just being a valuable player on a team. What is true excellence? True excellence involves going that extra mile and pushing yourself to be the best. You need a burning, unyielding desire to achieve and pursue perfection.
Excellence involves three major components: inspiring, performing, and delivering.
Ok. So being inspired may not be your strong suit. You may not even think it exists within the fabric of your being. That’s your problem – it’s all in your perspective. Changing your perspective can literally propel (or hinder) how well you perform. Vocabulary plays a pivotal role and can have a dramatic effect on your level of excellence. Words are powerful. Have you ever considered removing words from your vocabulary? Phrases like, “talent” and “I just got lucky”, infer that you happened to fall into succeed by chance. They suggest your victories are a fluke. Instead, consider replacing these with words like “driven”, “skilled” or “efficient”. These are empowering words that can actually change your perspective, demeanor, and even focus.
Sure, chasing perfection is a near impossible task (at least it should be if you’re pushing yourself) and you’re not always bound to succeed. However, it’s what you do in failure that truly measures the caliber of your excellence. Do you wallow in grief? Or do you ignite that fire inside and push on through more determined than ever? Again it comes down to perspective. Henry Ford understood this quite well when he said, “whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.” We are all capable of outperforming even our own expectations, it just depends on where we set those limits.
Make no mistake, delivering excellence is not for the meek. There are not corners that can be cut. You can’t take a magic pill and “poof” you’re a guru. Excellence is not something you’re born with. Delivering phenomenal results takes grit and effort. Even if its the sum of a thousand small daily victories; by striving for excellence you’re bound to leave those around you in awe.