I bumped into one of my old diaries recently when I was packing some of my stuff. I began to open up a few pages and was marvelled at some of the things I wrote two years ago. I can’t fully express how some of them were so funny, interesting but mostly insightful. One thing in particular blew my mind off and I knew I had to share. The diary entry dates 14 May 2015. The entry was inspired by a book I had read and I wrote “The outcome of excellence is as a result of consistency and diligence.”

This blew my mind both in the positive and negative. I sat there quietly and for a few seconds, I really looked deep into my heart pondering what this meant for me at this point in my life.

What is excellence? According to the oxford dictionary definition, “excellence is the quality of being outstanding or extremely good”. In a lot of our dialogues we often speak of excellence and success as a power couple and I have to agree that this is a perfect union. When we express excellence at school, work, business, and our relationships, it’s because our overall objective is to attain success. Obviously that success mirrors differently for different people.

Back to the line that got me thinking, consistency and diligence equals excellence. Most people I have met want to be excellent and successful in everything they do and I want that so much too. I cannot tell you how I read this line at just the perfect time. I was complaining to myself about myself a few weeks about how I lack success in two particular areas of my life. And when I read this, I reflected and realized that actually I have been deceived, I was neither diligent nor consistent, and how then did I really expect excellence let alone success in these two areas of my life?

I fundamentally believe excellence and even success should not only be limited to our careers, businesses, academics or even relationships. There are other deep areas of our lives, i.e. our thoughts, our motives, our inclinations; shouldn’t we also place a demand of excellence in these areas? I mean personally I will give an example, I have an issue with someone being a great CEO and having received all accolades but that person comes home and is abusive to their family. Their behavior in turn affects their children, they grow up to be dysfunctional members of society and the vicious circle continues…now tell me how that is excellent and successful?

We so rush to be excellent for the outward things that others will celebrate about us. But my friend let the excellent attitude exude every area of your life…I mean literally, your mind, your soul, your heart, your body etc…

My enjoy life tip is this: We simply cannot “change” or make a difference in the world as most of us like to echo, if we have not learnt to make basic changes in our own individual lives. How do we conquer the world if we have not conquered ourselves? Remember again the mystery of your excellence lies in diligence and consistency.