Who doesn’t want their life to count, to suck the marrow out of life, to live large, to be known as a man or woman who makes the world a better place; in short to live an excellent life? I think it’s safe to say that pretty much everyone does. Yet life doesn’t usually provide us with the knowledge and skills we need for excellence.

Our upbringing, formal education and what is  modelled to us in our formative years seldom equip us with what we need to build an excellent life.  For most of us there are key principles to understand and life skills we still need to develop, and in the process unlearn a lot of what life has taught us. Here are twelve keys to an excellent life that anyone can learn and apply:

1. Self-belief.

What we believe about ourselves is the single most important foundation stone for building an excellent life. We will only ever aim for what we feel we deserve and what we believe we are capable of achieving. Nothing empowers us more than self-belief and nothing restricts us more than self-doubt. From the very beginning life seems to conspire against us developing a positive, healthy  sense of self.  The words of parents, peers, and teachers, dissapointments, losses, media images of what we should be like, rejections and hurts are just some of the many things that erode our self esteem in our formative years. Restoring a robust self esteem requires a process of re-parenting ourselves,  recalibrating the thinking patterns and beliefs that have become hard wired into our psyche’s over years. If we don’t believe we are both capable and worthy of excellence we will either never aim for it or if we do we will continualy sabotage our own success. 

 

2. World view.

What we believe about the world plays a major role in determining what we expect of it, what we are willing to give to it and ultimately what we will get out of it. Everyone has a set of beliefs about the world and how it operates, and these beliefs inform how we interact with life. We learn our world view during our formative years from the people most influential in our lives. We are often not conscious of the complex set of beliefs that make up our world view, they are just part of us, they are what we believe to be true about life. Some world views are dangerous and destructive, like the suicide bomber who believes that it is God’s will to blow up people who don’t believe as he does, others are empowering, like the belief that all people are of equal value. All of us need to question our world views and engage in an authentic quest for the truth about life and the universe.  The more we operate in truth, the freer we will be and the greater will be our capacity for excellence and making a meaningful contribution to the world.

 

3. Passion.

Without desire nothing great was ever achieved. Want power is far greater than will power. How well we do in life is directly related to how well we want to do.  The reason so few new year’s resolutions result in long term change is that we don’t want it badly enough.  Want power is far greater than will power. External discipline without internal desire is simply not sustainable. If you want something badly enough you will do whatever it takes to get it. Top sportsmen and women often stop winning when they lose their hunger to win.  It’s the eye of the tiger, the hunger deep in your heart and soul that drives people to great heights. Sadly life often kills our passion.  Dissapointment drives our hearts into places of safety where little is risked and little is gained.  What we want most we pursue, what we desire most deeply we sacrifice for.  Passion is the fuel that drives a life of excellence.

 

4. The power of habit.

Our lives are the sum total of our habits. How we dress, sleep, talk, eat, walk, spend our free time, work, think, conduct our relationships are all an aggregation of the myriad habits that make up our lives. Aristotle rightly said,”We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”. Habits are our life’s strategy in action. They are the irrefutable evidence of what matters most to us and how we have chosen to use our time and resources. No matter what we say we value, what we actually do shows what we truly value. Most of our habits are unconscious and almost all of them we can change. Our lives are built on what we do most of the time, not just some of the time.  The power of good habits is enormous.  We live in a world of quick fixes and instant gratification and sadly that’s not how life works.  Everything of great value is built slowly, step by step, over time, by consistently doing the right thing.

 

5. Emotional Intelligence.

EQ is the measure of how well you manage yourself and your interactions with other people.  Managing one’s own emotions, thoughts and actions is probably the most important life skill we need to develop.  People with high EQ deal with negative amotions like anger or disappointment well. They are able to control their feelings effectively and respond appropriately to whatever life throws at them.  They handle conflict well and build healthy, productive and harmonious relationships with other people.   They cope well when things don’t go their own way, with set backs and people who let them down.  They are in control of their feelings, actions and attitudes.

 

6. Benchmarks.

Excellence is about being the best you can be, and that means benchmarking yourself against the best. It’s easy to be a big fish in a small pond, to excel in the company of people who have embraced mediocrity. As the old saying goes. “in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king”. Surround yourselves with excellence, benchmark yourself against the best and you will become your best. You may not become the best but you will become your best. The benchmarks we choose set the ceiling on our performance. For example if you play squash try and you always play against people you can beat you may feel good because you win but your game won’t improve, it will stagnate and regress.  If you want to get better play opponents wo are better than you.

 

7. Effectiveness.

Excellence comes from focussing on what works. There is a big difference between busyness and effectiveness. It’s possible to work hard but achieve little. Excellence comes from doing the the things that achieve the results we want and cutting out the activities that don’t produce results. The 80:20 or Pareto principle states that 20% of what we do produces 80% of the results we achieve. That’s an astounding principle that can revolutionaise any life. By simply discovering which 20% of actions and strategies produce 80% of the results and spending 50% of our time doing them we could produce double what we are currently producing in half the time! This is what makes some people so successful and others not. It’s what working smart is all about.

 

8. Building your tribe.

True excellence can never be accomplished in isolation. We need each other. We are all unique and have a different set of skills and talents, strengths and weaknesses. Excellent people know their strengths and limitations and surround themselves with people whose skills they need and who need their skills.  For example visionaries need administrators and administrators need visionaries. One without the other cannot succeed, but together they can build an empire. Building a complete team, a group of people who collectively provide all the skills and knowledge needed to achieve what needs to be done – that’s what leads to excellence. We can achieve so much more when we surround ourselves with great people.  “The Power of combined effort knows no limitation.

 

9. Risk.

No-one ever achieved true excellence by staying in their comfort zone. We can only really discover what we are capable of achieving when we push ourselves to the limit of our capabilities. That’s when growth happens and that’s when excellence is achieved. Excellence requires pushing the envelope.  We lose much by fearing to attempt. As someone said “A ship is safe in harbour, but that is not what ships are built for.” The best way to gain self-confidence is to do what you are afraid to do. You will miss every shot you fail to take.  Take the shot.  The worst than can happen is you miss, and try again.

10. Tenacity.

To achieve excellence in anything requires pushing through the hard times, through the pain barrier and through failures. It means never giving up. As the saying goes. “winners never quit, quitters never win”. The road to excellence always has obstacles. Always.  And it’s the people who persevere in spite of these obstacles who achieve the reward of excellence. “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent”. The slogan Press

 

11. Vision.

Successful people know what they want.  They aim for something. If we don’t know what we want out of life or what we want to achieve we will effectively be aimless wanderers.  We will be at the mercy of life. We will live by default, responding to whatever life throws our way and chances are at the end of our life we will have the distinct feeling that we didn’t sign up for this. “Where there is no vision the people perish”. Proverbs 29:18.  If you don’t know what you are aiming for you will hit it every time. In the story of Alice in Wonderland Alice came to a crossroads where the path split into three.  She asked the Cheshire cat: “Which path is the right one?” to which he answered, “Where do you want to go?”. Alice replied “I don’t know”, and the Cheshire Cat said “Then it doesn’t matter which path you take”. If you don’t know where you want to go any path will take you there.  Have a vision of what you want your life to look like.

 

12. Compassion.

No life lived without compassion can be considered a great life. No matter what you achieve or accomplish, if it’s only for you it is nothing but selfishness. The opportunities, resources and gifts we have are given to us to bless us and for us to use them to bless the world. One of the first things we learn in the playground at school is to share our toys.  At the top level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is self-actualization, which can only happen by giving back. “A great legacy is not what we leave for people, it’s what we leave in people”.

 

 

Live these 12 principles and you will build a life of excellence and leave a legacy that will not be soon forgotten. It’s a guarantee.