Excellence

Excellence : (The quality of being outstanding or extremely good; of the highest ... NOT second!!) Steve Jobs said "be a yardstick of quality ... where other people measure their excellence by you."

Vince Lombardi said "perfection is not attainable, but if you diligently chase after perfection, you’ll at least catch excellence."

Often, asking yourself the right questions can produce a change of patterns and conduct that will produce excellence. So, here's a few great questions to ask yourself (and not just once, but regularly):

Are you giving your life your best? When you measure your performance against the crowds, you will end up average. It is your God-given potential that must be your plum line.

Do you have moral clarity? You can't do the right things only when it suits or benefits you. Moral clarity is when you do the right things all the time--simply because they're the right things!

Do you seek to add value? What would you do and how would you do it if you were charging people to experience you?

Do you follow through? It is your ability to follow through that gives your life credibility. Without it others perceive you as a mere dreamer without execution. And, execution is key.

Do you close the communication gaps in your life? Good communication is key to living in the excellence zone. Communication gaps occur when we arbitrarily shoot out comments, instructions, opinions, and ideas, expecting people to automatically correctly discern our intent. Again, It's not intentions but rather outcomes that are the final judge. The danger in haphazardly shooting out a text, email, or social media post without circling back around to assess whether or not you were properly understood, is that you spend more time trying to undo or redo efforts in your life rather than growing in your capacity to create solutions and add value.

Do you stay prepared for success and maximum achievement? I love the 7 p's of success: Plenty of Proper Preparation Prevents the Possibility of a Poor Performance!

Do your patterns of conduct match the bold confessions that come out of your mouth? The words we speak cannot be judged or evaluated by our intent, but rather by their outcomes. We are what we repeatedly do, therefore excellence then, is not an act but a habit or prevailing attitudes in how we execute patterns.