 Opportunity doesn’t just happen. It happens because it is provoked by excellence. It is the quality of our lives demonstrated by our work, our character and our attitude that brings a favorable opinion from others which incites them to offer us opportunities.
In the words of Aristotle: “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” There is a reason why mediocrity is so popular: excellence is hard. If it were easy, everyone would be exceptional. The very nature of excellence is to excel, to be better than ordinary. A more specific definition is this: “Excellence is the discipline of consistently performing towards the upper range of your talent and skill beyond accepted levels of mediocrity.” From this truth, we understand three things about excellence: it is a discipline, it is consistency and it is to excel above mediocrity. First, excellence is a discipline. It does not come natural. Excellence doesn’t “just happen,” it is a condition we force upon ourselves: a discipline. Merriam-Webster defines discipline as “training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character.” Discipline is the athlete who spends hours and hours in the gym perfecting certain routines and motions. Discipline is the student reading and re-reading, memorizing and recalling new facts and information to master a certain subject. Discipline is the musician who rehearses hours on end to train her fingers in the proper motions. In each of these examples, the one in training is forcing himself or herself to act outside of their ordinary boundaries. To do something that is above normal or beyond ordinary to them. This is the beginning of excellence: to push beyond ordinary and consistently force ourselves beyond what is easy or comfortable. Those who cannot do that are destined to meander in a maze of mediocrity. Check back next week for the second quality of excellence. Or, check out my new book, Upward: Taking Your Life to the Next Level now available on Kindle. 6/19/2017 04:42:57 pm
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It was concerning King Saul that David said, “How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war perished.” His was a life that began with great promise and celebration, but ended in miserable failure and humiliation. His life is an example of how the mightiest of leaders fail.
Why do great men and women fall? How do leaders, quick to ascend with such promise of unparalleled success, find themselves awash in disastrous failure and disgrace? More importantly, can the path toward one’s downfall be discerned before it’s too late and be avoided? It is the premise of my newest book, How The Mighty Have Fallen that such a decline can be detected and reversed. The life and leadership career of King Saul, Israel's first king, provides us with a treasury of examples of "what not to do." The below blog post is the first in series of excerpts from the book to examine and avoid Saul's mistakes and find a successful path through leadership. READ AN EXCERPT |
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