Grasping Excellence

As a whole, perfection is an unattainable state. It lies just outside of our purview and because of the nature of what it is, perfection will always be just short of our grasp. Excellence, on the other hand, allows for imperfections, allows for personal appeal and tastes and therefore is a much more sane pursuit.

I tend to pursue excellence in my life. In things I bring into my life and the standards I hold. Does that I mean I obtain excellence? No...in a lot of instances I fall short of my own mark. But because I do look at life and try to apply a standard I find that I am always reaching, but I do obtain, and am satisfied with certain marks that I have reached. Could I have done better, can it be improved? Yes, but that does not take away from the excellence that exists on its own. Something can be excellent, and still be improved upon.

As such, we can find a satisfaction with excellence that we cannot find with perfection. If you knew you could improve something in your life, with just a small, slight minor adjustment, would you? Or does comfort and complacency tend to cause you to choose not to change until the pain of not changing becomes greater than the pain of changing? Such self examination is often times harsh and shines a light into corners of our lives that we would like to leave under the dust covered boxes and faded photographs. It calls attention to things we would rather ignore. Our bad eating habit, our closets, the birthday's we seem to always forget....and like children who are misbehaving begs us to address the situation.

Pursuit of excellence is not a total life overhaul. It is small changes which improve the quality of life. Just noticing, "Hey, if I make this small change I will see this improvement." and then doing it. And continuing it over time until it becomes a part of who you are. By asking yourself in every activity, "Is there a better way to do this?" we can fine tune things that we might not ever take notice of. Taking out the garbage, driving to work, cleaning out the spare room....

We can probably think of more ways to improve upon something than we can actually implement. But chances are if you implement one change and see a positive affect you will choose to make another.

And by doing so, you are in pursuit.