Success or Excellence

In my practice as a Life Coach I often advice people to focus more on personal excellence and less on success. This is an unusual advice, which is often misunderstood, in a world that loves to focus upon success.

 

What is the difference between success and excellence? The major difference is that while success is often measured in comparison to others, excellence is about being the best that we can be. It is about maximizing our gifts, talents and abilities to perform at our highest potential, at any given time. It is about realizing that our greatest competitor is not someone else, but we ourselves.

To achieve personal excellence, and be the best that we can be, we have to remember a few golden rules:-

·         Do not worry about who your competitors are. That is irrelevant.

·         Do not focus upon winning. Instead, focus upon mastering the fundamentals of your job. Focus upon daily improvement in your performance, however little that improvement may be. If you are working in a team, focus on teamwork.

·         Do not spend your life looking around to see how your competitors are doing; instead, march straight towards the vision of greatness you have for yourself and your team.

·         Do not look at others as ‘the’ standard, to measure your progress against; instead, embark upon a quest for excellence and focus 100% of your energies to become your best…and let success find you. Ironically, when you do not measure yourself against others, you become the measuring stick for others. Apple’s iPod, iPhone, and iPad are examples of products that didn’t focus on competition.

·         Work to the best of your ability and be happy with the outcome, whatever it may be, for that day.

No matter what we do in our life, doing it to the best of our ability brings in the greatest rewards. Making a commitment to personal excellence ensures a life full of success, passion, and fulfillment. Excellence is important because the results we experience are always in direct proportion to the quality of our actions. If we put in half-hearted actions, we achieve minimal results, but if we give our absolute best to what we do, we achieve miracles.

Concept of excellence must be applied to all areas of our life: health, wealth, career, and relationships. Sometimes we do just a ‘good enough’ job and call it our best effort; we don’t fool anyone but our self by doing that. We can get good results from putting in a ‘good enough’ effort, but we get excellent results by doing excellent work.

When we start putting in our best efforts into everything that we do, it becomes a habit, which brings added benefits of joy of learning, enthusiasm of stretching our limits, and satisfaction of a job well done.

Excellence is our birthright as we are a shining example of excellence created by nature; and when our goal is excellence, success is often its outcome and byproduct.

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