Making Excellence A Part of Your DNA

“We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle

Excellence is our birth-right. Each one of us is born with great gifts. To express that gift with your complete totality of spirit and action is the key to excellence.

Excellence, therefore, is not an end result or a static conclusion to an act. It is an ever evolving, organic process, an art and an acquired habit.

Excellence means doing your best at whatever you do. Doing your best requires competence; but that competence doesn’t come without effort. As Olympic swimming medallist Mark Spitz put it, “We all love to win, but how many people love to train?”

Eugen Herrigel, German philosopher and author of ‘Zen in Archery’, says, “The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull’s-eye which confronts him. This state of unconscious is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill, though there is in it something of a quite different order which cannot be attained by any progressive study of the art.”

Excellence requires consistent pursuit and practice. Once you make excellence a habit, a quality of all that you do, it ceases to be an effort and becomes a part of your very DNA.

A Corporate Sufi knows that all that we do carries a potential to become a sacred expression of physical, moral, and spiritual development; but to infuse this quality of excellence calls for discipline and character. It is not about competing with others; it is about enhancing your own abilities and competing with yourself.

It is about becoming passionate and enthusiastic in your work and displaying excellence in the moment of choice.

If you want to achieve excellence, strive to become extraordinary. As Elbert Hubbard, a prolific American editor, publisher, and author, put it: “One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary people, but no machine can do the work of one extraordinary person.”

The path to excellence is also the path of self evolution. Both work hand in hand and each is enriched by the other.

So take up the mantle of excellence today and watch your individuality flower