There's much talk about excellence and the concept of being excellent - i.e., doing things to the best of your abilities - producing breathtaking results. And being in ICGC and with CLP, it's a requirement. A must, by all standards and by all means possible. A necessity, dare I say.
Well, since becoming a BOE in 2021, I've been thinking quite a lot about it. What is excellence and how do I become excellent? Can anyone at all become excellent?
Here's what I theorise.
Excellence at its core starts with confidence. As in, the confidence to believe that you too can do something consequential. Good. Big. Great. That what you're doing is meaningful enough.
Through reflection, I realised that you can't be excellent with low self-confidence. So it starts from there. Then it moves to being present and paying attention. Believing you can do this, but paying attention to what you're doing. Understanding the details. Being uncomfortable with imprecision.
The more I think about it the more I conclude that excellence isn't about becoming better than everyone else. It's not even about becoming the best there is. That's futile.
Excellence is doing better than you did the previous day every day (even if no one ever notices). Hammering that nail more precisely each time you attempt it. And once you develop that confidence to attempt to be excellent, you won't go back. It becomes a habit.
Because you start to see that good is never good enough, and good always has room for improvement. You see that the nail can be hammered better every single time you attempt it.
Excellence, I believe, is acknowledging that you will fail at the start but being humble enough to rise again and again and again. To dot that "i" better than you did yesterday and to cross that "t" - even if you failed to yesterday.
It reminds me of MLK when he said, "If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'"
Here's the thing: your first sweeping will not be your best. If it was, then you're a BIG problem. Yes! Your first attempt at sweeping will be filled with lots of dust in every corner. But you need the confidence to believe that you can sweep better than you did yesterday, commit to it, and be consistent at it.
That way, your first attempt at sweeping will be starkly different from your 100th attempt. And your 100th attempt at sweeping will be starkly different than your 200th attempt. Yet you'll be uncomfortable because you know that that is not your best attempt at sweeping.
That is EXCELLENCE!
Excellence starts with confidence, continues with commitment, and ends with consistency. Yet, that is what makes excellence incredibly hard but absolutely worth it! If you can afford excellence, absolutely go for it. If you can't, attempt it.
Here's to Cohort 5, and all who read. Excellence won't come easy. It doesn't - never does. Nonetheless, you need to be confident that if you can commit to and be consistent about it, you too can hammer nails in a way that gets the hosts of heaven to rise and exclaim "This is a man who hammered and hammered well!
Congratulations and welcome (in advance) to the table of men! God did, innit?
