The Courage to be Excellent
What does it take to be excellent? Are you willing to pay the price? What I’ve come to learn is that excellence is available to everyone, we just have to be willing to pay the price to be excellent. What do I mean by paying the price?
Excellence is demanding. It’s easy to be “normal,” and do mediocre things just like everyone else. Excellence demands that we be willing to give up everything, so that we can stay focused.
Excellence is not popular. Sure, it’s popular for people to speak about excellence, but how many are truly willing to do what it takes to be excellent? Besides, what will our family, our loved ones, and our friends say when they see we are changing towards excellence? Can we handle the criticism from the people closest to us when they ask us “who do you think you are - do you think you are better than the rest of us?”
Excellence takes courage - courage to face all of this and keep going. When I look at the truly excellent people throughout history, the one common theme I read is that they kept going, regardless of what life threw at them - whether it be severe sickness, serious financial woes, broken relationships, etc. They kept going because they had a dream and an vision that had to fulfill. Their dream and their vision became their singular focus. They saw all the obstacles they were experiencing not as terrible things that made them victims, but rather as tests to assist them in understanding how devoted they were to their dream and vision. For them, it was a privilege to go through the process.
Do you have what it takes to be excellent? Do you even want to be excellent? What price are you willing to pay? Are you able to handle the criticisms of family, loved ones, and friends as they ask you “who do you think you are?” and “Do you think you are better than the rest of us?”
If you need a last bit of inspiration, watch this video. It’s a 10 minute segment from Oprah, when she had Randy Pausch on as a guest. Randy is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and he’s dying. At the time of the program, he was told he only had a few months to live. He gave a final lecture to his students, the same lecture you’ll see in the video, on how to live life. This video says everything you need to know about excellence - Randy Pausch understands excellence - learn from him.