BEING YOUR BEST

While in high school I was boggled by this mental dilemma: Why study hard when what you are doing now, in this moment, didn’t really count in the end. Let me explain: In Standard 1 you may have a test and find yourself poised with this question: should I study hard or shouldn’t I? You don’t really have to study hard; or do you? While in primary school who cares whether you’re first or last in class, as long as you make it to the next standard or grade. I mean as long as you pass all is well, and once you get to high school then you can start picking up the pace. (I say this absentminded of the potential psychological implications of Loafing, but say it to present a point)

It’s coincidentally the same question you ask when you’re cleaning your car or house, working, or doing some mundane task. Should I give this my best, or shouldn’t I? It’s the same question whether you go to gym, walk a mile, relax, have fun, or whatever you can think of: At what level should I be performing in this activity? Tomorrow there will just be more work, and another dirty car and another hungry stomach to feed, so why bother with doing my best now?

It’s not until much later in my life (20s) that I grasped to what extent excellence cuts across the spectrum of your life. I’m not even sure how it works, but it does. When you’re excellent in one area of your life there’s a good chance that you will also be excellent in another. Sure, there are exceptions, this is not a rule. Yet I can’t help but notice that those who chose to integrate excellence into who they were, into their being, also experienced it in their doing.

Loafing is a slippery slope, once it sets in its just that much harder to get out. So if you ask me, I say, be excellent!