Committing to Excellence

The important thing is to commit to excellence with whatever you do.  Don’t clean out the garage because you “have to”. Clean out the garage as if it were the most important thing you were doing that day.  Clean it out as if a neat garage was of the utmost importance in the grand scheme of things.  Clean it out as if you would rather be doing nothing else in the world.

Why?  What does your attitude matter when cleaning out the garage?  If you approach any task with a sense of boredom or grudging obligation, a few things will happen: First, you won’t enjoy the process at all.  Your mind will be focusing only on “getting it done” and you won’t be giving your full attention to what you’re doing.

Consequently, you will end up missing out on the enjoyment of the process. Secondly, since you didn’t pay full attention to what you were doing, your results will be less than stellar.  The garage might look “okay” and you might be fine with that. But wouldn’t “good” be better than “okay”?  And wouldn’t “great” be better than “good”?  

Finally, with a ho-hum attitude, you will also miss out on that great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that comes from a job well done. Perhaps you think it doesn’t matter, that doing a job for its own sake is fine and dandy.  Sometimes that might be true. However, if you want to experience greater joy and fulfillment in your life, it makes sense that you’d want to enjoy the things you do and experience better results from them.

The only way to do that is to commit fully to whatever you do. Focus your full attention to it and allow yourself to be immersed in the process.  Give it your absolute best effort and watch how it dramatically enhances the result!

Investing in Every Move You Make 

One great way to increase your personal excellence is by choosing to see your effort as an investment in the end result. What is an investment?  In a financial context, it is money we allocate (to a fund or program) with the intention to expand and grow it (with interest or other gains) so we get more money back. How does this apply to actions and excellence?  If we see our every action as an investment, it will remind us that we stand to gain much more than we give.

If we invest in our relationships by strengthening communication and spending quality time with loved ones, our relationships grow and expand into meaningful connections that enrich our lives.  If we invest in our career, by giving our best effort, continuing our education and striving for long-term advancement, we gain more money, greater job satisfaction and more opportunities for success.
If we invest in our personal growth and development, we gain a greater understanding of ourselves, our aspirations, and our potential.

It’s exactly the same for everything you do, whether you’re working on your passions or your obligations.
Would you want to have an operation done by a surgeon that was only half paying attention to what he or she was doing? Would you want to be driven by a taxi driver that was only half watching the road?
Would you want to eat a meal that was only half cooked by a chef? Granted, most of the things you do may not be as life threatening as these examples.  But why should your results be any less important?

Never Settling for Less 

Have you ever caught yourself settling for less?  Perhaps you had a big goal in mind but you doubted your ability to achieve it, so you set your sights a little lower. I’m not referring to starting small and gradually increasing your goals as you go along.  That’s actually a great way to build your confidence and stretch the limit of what you believe is possible.

What I’m referring to is the person who dreams of being a best-selling novelist, but instead settles for a job writing newspaper articles because “it pays the bills”.  This person is not slowly working toward a larger goal; he or she has given up on the larger goal and settled for what he or she thinks is possible.

Have you written off your big dream because it seems unattainable?  Maybe you still harbour a faint hope that “some day” you can have what you want, but you don’t have a plan in mind.  Have you simply settled because you don’t see any way to get what you really want?

Settling is really a self-protection mechanism.  Not having what we want is discomforting, so we find ways to rationalize it, which lessens the pain and disappointment.  Instead of fighting for what we want, we settle into a state of resignation and numb  defeat – before we even try! That’s the funny (yet sad) thing about settling – we usually do it before even trying to get what we really want.  

We simply convince ourselves our lofty goal isn’t realistic and stow our dreams away in the shadowy recesses of our subconscious mind. Yet, no matter how hard you have tried to forget your ambition, it still whispers to you, doesn't it?  It still haunts your dreams and it fills you with envy when you see someone else doing what you want to do.

Pay attention to those little whispers, because they hold an important message: you are capable of achieving anything you want and with such a pervasive essence of excellence that it would blow your mind if you could see it now. You just have to believe it and commit to doing it. 

When it comes right down to it, bringing out your personal excellence requires you to stop settling.  It requires an open mind, a belief that what you want is entirely possible and a willingness to demand nothing less than excellence from yourself – no matter what you do.

 If your life has been blessed by this article. Please, share with others. Who knows,  you may encourage a soul by doing that? You are blessed in Jesus name.